Cost of Core Books PDFs

[Glyfair]

The cost/profit margins on PDF versus a print book will never justify greater than a 50% sale price to me. Its pure greed, IMO.

However, it's not all about cost/profit margins. WotC has a lot of factors to consider.

One of the primary ones is avoiding making the PDF a more attractive purchase than the print product. Game stores will complain if the product is available more cheaply online, and they are important to WotC's market overall.

Also, the cost of the print products are based on large print runs. If sales on PDFs ever make a significant dent in print products, prices might have to increase because of smaller print runs (not that I think this is a big issue right now).

WotC has stated before that there market for sale PDFs is not those looking for a secondary product. It is for those who have a difficult time getting the books at affordable prices, or those who place great value on a PDF version. There stance may have shifted since then, but not very much.

 

[malraux]

I am curious as to why people think PDF's have anywhere close to the same value as a book.

Cuz they both hit pretty close to the same result on my personal economic utility function? That's pretty much the definition of having equal value.

 

[Morrus]

Re: Complaints. I simply find it odd that almost nobody complained about WotC charging full cover price for their D&D 3x PDF products (which they have been doing for years now), but as soon as they charged less than full cover price for their D&D 4e products, a small group of people more or less went into meltdown mode. Why is that, I wonder? Is charging consumers less money suddenly a bad thing?

Actually, legions of people were up in arms about it; it was quite a noisy issue! I'm surprised you didn't notice it!

 

[Fedifensor]

I am curious as to why people think PDF's have anywhere close to the same value as a book.

Does a PDF get published? No. Does it take up 100's of pieces of expensive paper? No. Does it need to be shipped? No. Does it take up shelf space? No.

So, you don't mind paying the printers, shippers, and retailers...but not the people who actually came up with the material? What percentage of the price do you attach to the writing staff that actually wrote the material, the artists that illustrated it, and the graphic designers that did the layout?

Personally, I see people spend more in one night at a bar then the entire bundle of three books costs in PDF format. I'd like it to be cheaper, but the ability to have the books on my mini-laptop is a big enough plus that I'm willing to pay for the convenience.

 

[TheWyrd]

My personal test on the PDFs was to go onto amazon.com and compare prices. The fact that I can buy the real hard cover books for CHEAPER than what the pdf are going for just kills it for me.

And this is coming from someone who is a big supporter of PDFs. I have ever single PDF in the M&M line. I love it. But the reduced price is large chunk of what I love about pdfs.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Wasn't there something about scanning a barcode and getting the PDF for a few bucks more at one time or another?

 

[jdrakeh]

Actually, legions of people were up in arms about it; it was quite a noisy issue! I'm surprised you didn't notice it!

It happens. As i allude to above, it may have been when I was working out in California on crazy long work shifts in very isolated places.

 

[Voadam]

We're in total agreement here. Also, worth noting is the fact that the current PDF prices for the 4e core books are comparable to the same rates offered by other 'A-List' publishers on new PDF product. It's certainly not as if WotC is the only publisher with expensive PDF products.

It's funny, really, because there was almost no complaining about WotC charging full cover price for PDFs of their entire 3x line, but now that they've discounted the 4e core books to sell them for far less than their typical going rate, a bunch of people are suddenly up in arms.

Some people are trying awfully hard to be outraged, I think.

There have been many threads castigating WotC for their 3.x pdf prices. I participated in some of them.

I have bought hundreds and hundreds of 3.x d20/OGL pdfs. I own 5 3.x WotC pdfs, bought when they were on the 30% off sales. I used the pdfs of the Spell Compendium and the module I was running a lot, I would have liked to pick up a ton more but it was never worth it compared to the other pdfs available much cheaper.

Were you not here when WotC first put out their 3.x pdfs?

It started out full price and DRM restricted. ENWorld posters expressed a lot of dislike for the DRM and eventually it was lifted. I seem to recall when they lifted the DRM a bunch of threads saying "Yay! Now if only they would price them at a point I'd be willing to pay."

There has not been complaining lately because nothing has changed in a long time. Most just don't buy them.

 

[Kzach]

I didn't care about 3.x so why would I bother complaining about the PDF's?

I care about 4e and I think the PDF prices are just stupidly ridiculous. At the end of the day, no matter how you spin it, electronic copies are worth less than hard copies. I'd hesitate to pay even $20 for these. $15 would be my upper limit to even consider them. And yet, WotC would still be making close to 100% profit.

 

[The Highway Man]

Wasn't there something about scanning a barcode and getting the PDF for a few bucks more at one time or another?

Yes, there was. It was even explained at the 4E reveal at GenCon.