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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JohnNephew" data-source="post: 3145426" data-attributes="member: 2171">I agree that OBS is unlikely to change their policy.  The sent out terms, not an offer inviting a counteroffer.  However, there are several reasons that it's worth debating what is going on, whether it is a good thing, and how things could be done differently, and to do so in a public forum.For one, as a publisher who has decided to decline the new terms of business at OBS, it is in my interests to encourage other publishers to keep their options open and to actively support other sites.  Because of the value of competition for the future of this market, I think it is also in the interests of those publishers and consumers as well.For another, some of the ideas that are proposed -- for example, suggestions I've made about the extra money being available to the publishers as a credit that they could devote to their own marketing through the PDF vendor (e.g., your extra 5% or 10% builds up in an "account" that can be spent on banner ads that would direct customers specifically to your products on the vendor's site -- generating profit for vendor and publisher); or the idea of switching a wholesale price rather than discount-off-MSRP structure -- may not be of interest to OBS right now, but may be seen and adopted by other market participants, as a competitive way to distinguish themselves from OBS.After all, the fact that RPGNow offered PDFs *without* DRM quickly forced DTRPG to change their tune quickly from being all-DRM.  (Heck, at the outset the high cost of DRM was one of the justifications for DTRPG taking a much bigger cut than RPGNow.)  If RPGNow wasn't present as a thriving competitor and proof of success without implementing a DRM scheme, DTRPG might have been much slower to respond to consumer demand on this topic (if it ever did), which would have meant slower growth and less money for their own publishers.  It's one thing to say, "We think you should change this policy, which you used a cornerstone of your business plan, on the theory that it will make your customers happier and not hurt you."  It's far more persuasive to say, "Your competitor does things this way and the sky isn't falling and their customers love it, why can't you do it that way too?"  It's a lot harder for a company to brush off feedback of the second variety.</blockquote>

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