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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest&nbsp; 85555" data-source="post: 8680078">Putting aside the whole monopoly discussion (which I think both sides have laid out their arguments for exhaustively). The big advantage of sites like OBS and other online sales platforms and other POD arrangements, is if you can scrape together enough money to cover the costs of the art, editing, etc; if you spend you budget wisely, you can put out something pretty easily. OBS also has a big advantage in term of giving you access to a large audience. When you first put up a book it is on the first page as a new release for a bit (which I find more helpful than buying banners or doing interviews: but that could be largely due to having a small marketing budget). And OBS is where most gamers seem to get their impression of what is out there and available. Just as an example, I sell print books elsewhere. So all my PDFs that are on Drivethru, can be purchased as print books on other platforms (but not on OBS itself). One of the most common questions I get is when we are going to release our games in print (because they see we have PDFs on OBS and assume if the prints are not also there, they must not exist). Something like Kickstarted is not anything I can comment on because I haven't used it myself. But it is a very different set up where you need to get enough initial backers (though I think the main advantage is many Publishers find they can generate more money for production value that way: and they basically know how many sales they have). Both models are clearly good for the hobby. Both allow smaller operations to compete more. They make publishing more accessible in a very niche industry. I think there is a valid question, because they are such important platforms, what 'oughts' there are in terms of what these companies should be avoiding and doing so they aren't abusing that position (but that isn't a legal question as much as a moral one, and we are going to have to accept people arrive at different conclusions about that: as they do in most debates about ethics and morality because you often are trying to balance competing values, competing rights, etc).</blockquote>

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