Future of WotC PDFs: Unofficial Sneak Preview?

[fanboy2000]

This opinion confuses me.

I'm happy to unconfuse you.

If you want to read a book, why don't you just buy the hardcopy of the book?

Good question. The answer is, I do buy the hardcopy the book. And I do so because it's easier to read.

For example, I thought about getting the both the print and hardcopy of the new DC Heroes game through a special deal Green Ronin was having. But I ultimately decided against it and just went with the hardcopy.

PDF's have a lot of use: reference, storage, access, cut-n-paste, cheaper cost...

Very true. I like them when I need to cut-n-paste. I also like them when I'm going to print them. If all I need is reference, storage, access, and cheaper storage I'd prefer an ebook format like MOBI or ePub.

My city library has a number of Sony eReaders available for loan and I checked one out. I only had it for 3 weeks, but I feel in love with it. I got all the L. Frank Baum Oz books, all the Doyle Holmes books, and many of the Edgar Rice Burroughs Tarzan and John Carter books. Frankly, it's awesome to read something on one of those readers. I would much rather have an ePub or MOBI ebook than a PDF one because it's easier to to read on those devices. The provide the easy reference, storage, access, and cheaper cost that PDFs do, and they have readability. I love it.

But if what you want is, ultimately, a hardcover book, why wouldn't you just buy that in the first place?

What I want is the content of the book in an accessible and easily useable and readable format. Right now I buy PDFs under the following circumstances:

• The Book is only available in PDF.
• Hardcopy is too expensive.
• Hardcopy is hard or difficult to get.
• The book is one that is best used in an electronic format. (E.g., short adventures, books where it's more paractical to print out the section(s) I'm going to use.)

The new Villains and Vigilantes book is, to my knowledge only available in PDF form. So that's the format I bought it in.

OD&D books are an example of something where the hardcopy is too expensive or difficult to get. My last purchase (literally the day before they were pulled) of an old D&D book was the Rules Cyclopedia. Really, you can't beat that.

The Paranoia XP adventure books are great for PDFs. I typically print the adventure out + any props it comes with. (E.g., the he YELLOW Clearance’ Black Box Blues.)

I mean, iTunes purchases are not the same thing as hearing live music, or even buying vinyl. Clearly, the format changes the way you use the thing. Why wouldn't that be true?

Quite true. I prefer an electronic format that I can read. The formats I'm familiar with scarifies the precise page layout that PDFs provide, but it's worth it to me. I'm not particularly enamored with the page layout on an RPG book.

 

[I'm A Banana]

The answer is, I do buy the hardcopy the book. And I do so because it's easier to read.

Perfect! Problem solved!

If all I need is reference, storage, access, and cheaper storage I'd prefer an ebook format like MOBI or ePub.

There's the rub.

Problem with that from a business perspective is, of course, limited new market potential with expensive new gizmos that are mostly controlled by one or two big companies upon whose whims your entire electronic distribution model hangs.

Neither of which are insurmountable, of course, they're just things you'd have to keep in mind if you were going to go that route at this point. In a few years, that might not be true anymore.

But, hey, I think we'd all like to see something easily readable with all the benefits of PDF in a cheap, free-market package. It remains something of a holy grail in e-Publishing that hasn't quite been achieved yet, though.

What I want is the content of the book in an accessible and easily useable and readable format. Right now I buy PDFs under the following circumstances:

Those are all pretty much the reasons I buy PDFs, too (and the reasons I make some out of the books I own).

I really don't expect more from WotC at present then to fill that niche.

I'd generally agree that a better format is probably the logical next step, but WotC hasn't taken this step yet. And for me personally, they wouldn't sell me any more MOBI or ePub books than they sold me PDF books yesterday. I can't use those formats. A lot of the non-techy/mid-class/broke-ass-college-kid community falls into this camp, too (though that might not be true with the next few generations of iPads, forex). But even a broke-ass college kid can afford a $30 book once in a while, and could probably finagle $10 to get it loaded onto the laptop they bought with student loan money.

Heck, maybe they'd do both.

One can dream!

 

[Greatwyrm]

First... many companies are confused about downloading and piracy. If WOTC pulled their stuff and blamed piracy... Who cares? Piracy with 4e is rampant however. Many companies have the same level of paranoia and fear regarding this.

We care because they've chosen a strange business model. With people lined up to give them money for a product that's already made, they've chosen to take none of their business. They could have had some of that money and lost the rest to piracy, but they chose getting no money instead.

Second... online sales are worthless. Read the book by Mongooses owner. 60 units a month world wide constitutes a super platinum best seller. (He knows... he's done it.) This is beer money. Not something real businesses get excited about.

How many sales you get is a direct function of what you're selling. I'll bet you lunch that WotC's core books outsold most of the Mongoose catalog. Not a knock on Mongoose, but WotC's the 800# gorilla here. If I started writing books, Stephen King would still get more sales than me with something he scribbled on a cocktail napkin.

Third... the cost of producing a PDF is the same as a book, less the printing of course. If a book can't sell in real form, the game is no where.

I'm not sure what you mean here? Assuming you mean PDF only just isn't viable, there is evidence to the contrary. When Monte Cook went on his own, he originally wrote PDFs and then started doing paper publishing afterward. And if that can't be done again, kiss White Wolf goodbye.

Fourth.. WOTC is listening. I think they want to do whatever they can to shut up the angry old guard. Now what are they going to complain about?

Oh, that's easy. Essentials.

Fifth.. The cost of producing a PDF is the same as a book. The problems are worse though. Sales are insignificant in ebooks. To get volume, you need real books in brick and mortar shops.

You mean having lots of books in stores like WotC does?

And as far as the cost of producing the PDF, its essentially nothing in the case of a PDF of a published physical book. They use those files to send to the printer to make the physical books. There might be some minor formatting, but its something they're doing anyway.

Its like how ADM doesn't really go out of their way to make high fructose corn syrup, its just a by-product of a bunch of other stuff they make. They've got the stuff, whether they like it or not, and they found a way to make a buck off of it.

Sixth.. I want all my books in digital format myself. If WOTC is selling it.. great! Cutting out the middlemen.. RPGDriveThrough... great plan. I don't know about you guys, but I want it in both formats.

I'd love both formats, too. Don't really care who I have to pay to get them.

 

[DracoSuave]

We care because they've chosen a strange business model. With people lined up to give them money for a product that's already made, they've chosen to take none of their business. They could have had some of that money and lost the rest to piracy, but they chose getting no money instead.

The problem here is that the number of dollars lost to piracy does not equal the number of dollars in sales of PDFs lost to piracy. Included in that are loss of sales dollars of hardcover books to piracy.

This also doesn't account for loss of sales dollars of hardcover books to legitimate PDFs. On top of that is the cost involved in defending the IP in the court systems of not just the US, but across the world in places where Wizards would like to sell some products for the hard work they do.

And the reason might not even be just 'dollars lost to piracy.' It could be 'sales for pdfs were less than expected' which when combined with 'dollars lost to piracy' = 'So why are we doing this then?'

How many sales you get is a direct function of what you're selling. I'll bet you lunch that WotC's core books outsold most of the Mongoose catalog. Not a knock on Mongoose, but WotC's the 800# gorilla here. If I started writing books, Stephen King would still get more sales than me with something he scribbled on a cocktail napkin.

Not arguing this point, but by the same token, that also means the scale that wizards has to deal with to make a meaningful profit is greater. If you're a small company that pays 30 people, and you make a hundred thousand dollars more in sales off of one product, that's something to be confident about, because that's a measurable piece of the pie.

If you're hiring 3000 people, and you make a hundred thousand dollars more in sales off of one product, it's a substantially less piece of the pie. It might add up... but your business will look at what the people involved are doing with that piece of pie, and decide to put them towards an endevor that will instead bring in 10 million dollars in additional revenue.

Something could be profitable, but if the profits it makes are less than the profits you'd be making by moving that work to a different product, then by continuing on that first product, you are actually losing money.

'Cost of opportunity'.

I'm not sure what you mean here? Assuming you mean PDF only just isn't viable, there is evidence to the contrary. When Monte Cook went on his own, he originally wrote PDFs and then started doing paper publishing afterward. And if that can't be done again, kiss White Wolf goodbye.

There is evidence that PDFs did not work for wizards. That evidence trumps evidence that a smaller, different company got it to work for their smaller, different product lines.

Not to crap on Monte Cook, I love the guy's work, but his company... and most companies in the game... are just not in the same scale business as Wizards.

It's like comparing an indy-video game company to Microsoft and saying that the business model for the indy-game company would work for Microsoft... it's not credible.

And as far as the cost of producing the PDF, its essentially nothing in the case of a PDF of a published physical book. They use those files to send to the printer to make the physical books. There might be some minor formatting, but its something they're doing anyway.

There is the labor involved in maintaining the distribution line. That labor may be better off producing other things that make more money. It's not as easy as 'it's cheap to make.'

Its like how ADM doesn't really go out of their way to make high fructose corn syrup, its just a by-product of a bunch of other stuff they make. They've got the stuff, whether they like it or not, and they found a way to make a buck off of it.

They make a LOT of bucks off it. That stuff is in everything; it's ubiquitous.

I'd love both formats, too. Don't really care who I have to pay to get them.

I would to, and I'd love to see things in the market change so that it is viable for wizards to do. But it isn't, and they've got experience enough doing so to say 'Nope, not worth it for us at this time.' Things haven't changed; if things do change, I'd expect Wizards to jump on that market.

 

[vaultdweller]

I gotta say, PDFs of RPG books now annoy me. At first, it was awesome. Now, I just find them hard to read on screen. Sure, it's great if you print them. But I'm not printing anything over 50 pages. Even 50 pages is overdoing it.

In order, I would prefer:

• MOBI
• Amazon Kindle
• ePub

I admit I'm in the dark about eBook formats, but I'm pretty sure that I need to install some reader application to open any of those formats. I don't want to have to install additional software to access the books.

PDFs are what I want.

 

[Kurtomatic]

Acrobat Reader isn't additional software? While ubiquitous and commonly pre-installed on many PCs, it requires as much version maintenance as any other application (if not more).

The Portable Document Format was designed as a high fidelity document transport mechanism. If your use-case involves reproduction of hardcopy from a digital source, then PDF is your friend.

If, however, you have no intention on reproducing hardcopy, but wish to consume the document as digital media, PDF is the enemy of everything good and just.

For some of us, that makes PDF a frenemy. It's ubiquity tempts us into clumsily using this one format for divergent tasks. It's like using a knife as a screwdriver; it does the job, but you will cut yourself eventually.

By the by, the new Essentials digest format would seem ideal for a real ebook format, and I would buy Rules Compendium for my Kindle instantly.

 

[vaultdweller]

Acrobat Reader isn't additional software? While ubiquitous and commonly pre-installed on many PCs, it requires as much version maintenance as any other application (if not more).

Of course Adobe Reader is not additional software. WotC releasing PDF's adds exactly zero version maintenance. Like you said yourself, it's ubiquitous. Adobe Reader (or some other 3rd party alternative) is already going to be installed regardless of WotC does.

What exactly is it about the PDF format that is so terrible? It does nearly everything that I need, and it does it very well. My only complaint is that I can't grep it, but that is true of all formats other than plain text.

If WotC wanted to support multiple formats, that would be cool. But if they're going to release digital content in one format only, it had better not be a format I need to install extra software to read, and it sure as flying frack better not be a format that's tied to some device that I will never own.

As an aside, kudos on the avatar.

 

[drothgery]

What exactly is it about the PDF format that is so terrible?

It doesn't play nicely with different screen sizes, and the only way to change font sizes is to zoom the whole PDF. On a netbook or a regular Kindle (or similarly sized e-Reader) or a smartphone (which is to say devices most people might actually bring to a game), you have to scroll a lot on a PDF formatted like most RPG books (8.5 x 11 pages).

 

[Kurtomatic]

In my experience, pre-installed version of Acrobat Reader are inevitably 2-3 major versions out of date, which is fine up until you download a PDF requiring a newer version. Then you have to update Reader, which nullifies any convenience of not having to install anything. This has been my experience with Reader for many years; YMMV.

PDFs attempt to simulate a physical document (real or virtual) in a digital form. The layout and formatting of the document is fixed, regardless of the device used to consume it. I can't change the font size of a PDF or adjust the page size, but I can zoom in or out and scroll around the virtual page. The display is the same regardless what device I use to consume the content (printer, laptop, smartphone, etc.). This is by design, and what made PDF popular in a paper-centric world.

E-book formats designed for digital consumption invert these requirements. The document layout and format change according to the device used to consume it; there's no zoom and pan, you can change the font however you like, and the page size is handled by the display and not an attribute of the document. ePub and the like are entirely device independent. The Kindle AZW format is proprietary, but not device dependent; Amazon has Kindle apps for all the relevant platforms, except LINUX (ironic, since the Kindle is a Linux device).

 

[BASHMAN]

...Not to mention that taking the out of print books out of pdf circulation is actually encouraging piracy, since there is no other way to get many of the books. As far as I'm concerned there was no excuse for doing that.

While I wasn't inclined to believe their claims about "fighting piracy" by taking the current books off of pdf, the argument implodes when applied to out-of-print books.