Frostburn at DriveThruRPG

[RangerWickett]

That is just not true, sorry. I'm not surprised to see that some of the early misconceptions about DRM are still alive and well (someone suggested the DRM might prevent printing them, which has *NEVER* been one of the real issues with DRM), but I would not have expected such a respected, longtime poster to be among those perpetuating them.

The misrepresentation was wholly unintentional. Also, I was very very sleepy.

 

[maddman75]

Sure, but with the hard copy there is still only one unit floating around and at one time you will probably go to the current holder and ask him to give it back because you wanna work with it again. With a free pdf each those 6 buddies will actually "own" a copy. Quite a difference there IMO.

This is an irrelevent argument. So what if he shares it with his six buddies? When someone buys a paper book, the rest of the group doesn't go out and buy copies of it too. Generally IMO there's one or two collectors in a group that buy everything under the sun. Everyone else uses their books, or has just a couple of their own.

DRM is spyware, and I'm not paying to put spyware on my computer. I also hate Adobe 6, as its slow, bloated, and ugly IMO. I have a full version of Acrobat 5, and don't want to switch. I also use linux half the time where Adobe is unavaialable but other PDF readers are. I also like to get my books printed at the local print shop, which is impossible with DRM.

The problem with DRM is that it makes the pirated version more attractive than the legitimate version. If someone wants to pirate something they will. Not a single pirate is stopped by DRM - in fact cracking the DRM on one of these pseudo-PDFs is far easier than cutting off the spine of a book and feeding it through a scanner. So as an RPG fan I have a choice with electronic books - pay for the DRM'ed version or copy a pirate version. The pirate version is more useful than the pay version. Why would I pay for something that is less useful?

I hope that DTRPG fails. I would rather see the big publishers not involved in online publishing at all than have the industry standard become DRM garbage. The price isn't really an issue - I wouldn't download this pretend PDF for free.

Hit RPGNow and sites like that to get real PDFs that you can use however you want.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

When I saw the price, I thought it was a mistake. This looks like a cash grab to me (in that people who can't get the book will be forced to pay ridiculous prices for a limited-use .pdf file).

Really, if WotC wanted to support a secured electronic format, why would you charge a surplus for it?!?

This whole thing is just bizarre to me. If this is a piracy thing, the only strategy that works is creating a product good enough that people will want the real deal. You make crap, people will download it for free. And they certainly won't download it for more than the cost of the book itself!

Bizarre. Just too bizarre.

 

[Scribble]

My question is why do people print out the pdfs? I mean when I looked into that the price came out to be more then if I were to just buy the print copy...

But you know what I'm thinking? I bet people have it backwards and this isn't a WOTC test run. Notice how Drive Thru states they finally came to an agreement with WOTC?

Maybe it went: Can we sell PDFs of your books? No. Please? No. Please??? NO! What if we sell them as DRM and at cover price so it doesn't mess with the regular sales too much? ARRRG! FINE!

In any case I'd like to see something like if you buy just he pdf it's marginally cheaper (to account for them not having to actually print it...) if you buy the hardback AND the pdf the PDF is a whoooole lot cheaper. That way you can have one print copy, and one for your computer at work where you work on the night's adventure but don't want your boss to know that's what you're doing.

 

[Voadam]

My question is why do people print out the pdfs?

Some print out the whole thing because a book is only available in pdf and they prefer reading in print.

Some print out only the sections they are interested in.

For instance, if I am planning on using a salt demon from Complete Minions by Bastion Press in my upcoming game I can print out the two pages it is on and bring those to the game instead of bringing a whole 128 page book.

Do this with five sources, 10 printed out pages is a lot more convenient to lug around than five full books.

I also have a number of pdf counter sheets where if I want more orc paper minis for a specific battle I just print out more orcs.

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

Some people download off the net and then print off in b&w. It's still cheaper than buying the book (especially if they use work printers). Not that I'm saying that's right or anything.

 

[Scribble]

Some print out the whole thing because a book is only available in pdf and they prefer reading in print.

This I can understand because I prefer reading in print as well.

Some print out only the sections they are interested in.

This I can understand as well, as I do this all the time with the limited PDFs I have, and the SRD...

Maybe I misunderstood the intentions of a few posts... It just sounded like their plan was to purchase it and then either print the whole thing or take it to a print shop to do it... Eitherway it seemed silly with the effort/cost involved.

 

[Lars Porsenna]

A question about this DRM stuff.

I want to buy some of the D&D 1e and 2e stuff off of SVgames and such. I want to take these to a printer like Staples, Kinkos, etc so that later I can rebind them into a hardback book format. Are these ESDs using the DRM system? Does this mean that Staples will not be able to print these out (i.e. I'd have to use my own printer at home...a much less desirable activity)? Has anyone any experience in this?

Oh, yah, the Frostburn PDF is way overpriced, though I see the logic behind it; Wotc wants to encourage us to buy the print version, since most of the costs for this are up-front (i.e. paying for the paper/resources, printing costs, etc), so they need to recoup the costs invested in the product. Charging $10 for the PDF means that some of the customers that would've bought the print version will go for this, and they may not be able to recoup their investment, or at the very least, show a profit...

Damon.

 

[WingOver]

I think its pretty exciting. Its a worthy experiment, because some day digital content may become more popular than print.

I am currently contemplating the purchase of a tablet PC. I hate reading PDFs in landscape mode, even on my laptop. But a light weight tablet PC in portrait mode? That's an entirely different experience.

I suppose we'll see if this is a successful experiment if WOTC releases any more titles this way. I hope it's a success. This could lead to cheaper WOTC content in the future.

 

[jmucchiello]

Again I'd like to hear from DriveThru.

The reason you get books cheaper online is because the retail outlet (Amazon, walmart, etc...) Takes less of a profit on the sale. That's how those stores operate. They rely on MASS sales to make a buck, whereas smaller stores rely on the 40% profit margin.

So what's Drivethru's take?

I don't speak for DriveThru but what do you mean, what's their take? They provide a service that WotC has purchased. WotC sends a PDF to DriveThru and says "sell this for $xx.xx". DriveThru adds the DRM and puts it on their website with the listed pricetag. The private agreement between DriveThru and WotC most like states that DriveThru keeps a percentage of all sales and passes the net income to WotC. DriveThru is not going to share what that percentage is with us and it isn't our business either. But the important thing to remember is that WotC sets the price, not DriveThru.