DriveThruRPG is down! GRR!

[DonTadow]

Personally I still buy PDFs, however I do not buy them unless I have access to either a preview of said PDF, access to other material from said publisher or author, or good recomendations from trusted sources.

To me influx of content is not a bad thing. Just means you got to be a smarter buyer of PDFs. I actually like the fact that a lot of people can publish. It really opens up the market as opposed to closing it. The fee of 500 bucks is not a small fee but it should be a bit more I think.

 

[Drawmack]

To me influx of content is not a bad thing. Just means you got to be a smarter buyer of PDFs. I actually like the fact that a lot of people can publish. It really opens up the market as opposed to closing it. The fee of 500 bucks is not a small fee but it should be a bit more I think.

$500 to start a business is pretty small, compare it to the costs of starting some other businesses.

I never said the influx was a bad thing. You have to be very careful with PDFs, hence my rules about a preview, previous works, or recomendation. I mean heck when Bastion was first getting into PDF publishing they put some free ones up there for us to look over before we bought their stuff and this is Jim Bastion.

 

[Jim Hague]

The biggest problem with PDFs may be glut and quality. You can become a PDF publisher for the modest out lay of about $500 for software. Let's face it, given a little time just about anyone can come up with $500.00. As long as it is easy to become a PDF publish there will be a lot of them.

Lower than that for eventry, even - Scribus is a free and powerful layout tool available on a variety of platforms. Sure, InDesign is even more powerful in terms of available tools for the user...but if you're doing basic PDF publishing, the cost of entry is practically zero.

Personally I still buy PDFs, however I do not buy them unless I have access to either a preview of said PDF, access to other material from said publisher or author, or good recomendations from trusted sources.

If I'm buying a $5.00 PDF I only need to find about 3 - 5 pages useful to justify the purchase. Whereas if I'm spending 20 - 30 dollars on a book I've got to find most of the book useful to justify the expense, because not only does it cost more but it takes up shelf space that I'm already out of.

This being the case I have PDFs that cover thousands of topics. However, I have print products that cover core rules, a couple settings (2), dungeon building, traps and such, a couple different game systems, a couple magic systems and that is all.

And this is why demos and previews are important. Hell, I'm working on one right now, and due to time constraints it's going to be double-sized. Free, of course, because it's there explicitly to drive sales for the full product. I'm of the opinion that if a publisher isn't one with a proven track record - say, Ronin Arts or Expedious Retreat - and the don't have a demo, I'll wait for the personal recommedation. The best customers to grow a market are informed ones - like Crothian (to whom I owe an apology).

 

[Crothian]

The best customers to grow a market are informed ones - like Crothian (to whom I owe an apology).

Don't worry about it; I love talking PDFs with people.

 

[Bacris]

the cost of entry is practically zero.

Yup - the cost is essentially whatever medium that's going to sell your PDFs - be this your own site or somewhere like RPGNow or E23. Some of these venues don't even have a set-up fee. With the growth of the GPL / freeware software like StarOffice and it's successors, you don't need the high-dollar suites to make a decent PDF, although they definitely help.

Word of mouth advertising is also the strongest from what I've seen in the past 6 months being the business manager for Dreamscarred Press. No other medium of advertising has done as much in the way of drumming up business for us than word-of-mouth. Our initial out-of-pocket setup was the cost of a domain name and hosting services, or around $50, far from the $500

 

[jdrakeh]

Which is why I quoted Don in my post.

Yes, but you addressed "you guys" in your typed response

 

[TheAuldGrump]

I do a fair amount of cardstock modeling, and in this regard inkjets are preferable. (The wax used for color laser printers flakes off at the crease.)

That said, my next planned purchase is a B&W laser printer, to handle everything else.

The copy shop W&S mentioned was most likely Kinkos, they are a royal pain and I have stopped going there. Most are much more reasonable about things - the one exception that I had was at Copy Max, where one of the employees had trouble with it, we called over a manager, who said 'print it'. The employee used to work for Kinkos and was confusing Kinkos policy with the law....

The Auld Grump

I went to Best Buy today, and there was this poor, sad, opened box laser printer of a model that was already on sale. For less than $80 I gave the poor thing a good home.

Merrily printing some large PDFs that I had been putting off. (Conspiracies for Spycraft 2.0, and the Gear section of Spycraft 2.0 second printing.) Laser printers have gotten a lot faster than the last time I used one. (The laser printer at my old job was already about 10 years old when last I used it.)

The Auld Grump

 

[Nightfall]

Well I got some new stuff from DTRPG.com and I can honestly say, I thought it was worth it.