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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Cergorach" data-source="post: 1779834" data-attributes="member: 725">Why would Monte continue to sell books as standard pdf? Well, when he didn't (and used DTRPG exclusively) he got a lot of angry customers that pretty well might have cost him a lot of lost sales. Not only on the pdf front, but also the print front. Monte's ebooks are available, shortly after they are released as an ebook, on 'pirate' channels.The problem probably is established business practice of the company, customers are generally very hesitant of change. As Monte started as a pdf only business, going to print only might very well result in a lot of alienated customers. But i would bet that his print sales would increase.WotC books are high profile products, can the same be said for less well known publishers? Let's take another big publisher, AEG with the SpyCraft  and SG-1 line. Of the entire line of 20-25 products, there are currently only 3 of those books circulating in the 'pirate' channels.Why is that? Well, those quick and high quality scans destroy a source book. A source book costs money, and after destroying the binding often looses the utility to the owner. A 'cracked' pdf on the other hand doesn't loose it's initial utility to the owner, and as a result is far more likely to happen.Is a pdf far more efficient to the publisher? Yes it is, but if the publisher already has a well established printing business, the vendors might object to the practice of making a pdf available for less then MSRP. How do they object? By ordering less, this will directly impact the publisher, selling less printed books results in less books being printed in the first place and printing cost goes up. A 10% drop in print sales might make a product unfeasable as a print product, companies like Hasbro crackdown hard on that.WotC, as a wholy owned subsidary of Hasbro, might need to redirect x % of all the money earned due to printing game books directly back to the parent company. This might be a way to increase operating funds. Just speculation though, but i've seen some pretty screwed up business practicess...</blockquote>

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