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Message: <blockquote data-quote="seebs" data-source="post: 7984604" data-attributes="member: 61529">This is an interesting line of argument, but as is so often the case with WotC and PDFs, there are many explanations offered over time, and they contradict each other.There's no evidence on offer that WotC would permit a vendor to sell PDFs. If they aren't willing to license the books as PDFs to some vendor, then no, no one would have jumped on it, because they wouldn't be allowed to. It seems pretty obvious that it would be trivially profitable, because the expenses of shipping a PDF are roughly $0, so it'd just be licensing, and whatever the licensing is, any price up to the price of the hardcover, there's probably at least someone who'd be willing to pay it.It's true that WotC isn't in the direct sales business, but that doesn't mean they couldn't be if they wanted to. And they don't, but it's not obvious that this is exclusively because of the model; it could be because they don't want to sell PDFs, specifically.I've also seen claims, from multiple companies, that bookstores used to refuse to carry books if the company also made them available as ebooks or PDFs. That obviously hasn't been true for a while, but it's what Steve Jackson Games said when asked about GURPS PDFs back in the day.Given that Drive Thru RPG does in fact sell PDFs of many WotC products that aren't 5th edition, I think the most plausible interpretation is that, for reasons Not Specified, Wizards is unwilling to license the 5th edition books to be sold as PDFs at this time. My guess would be that they want the hardcover sales and the corresponding visibility of their sales rank on Amazon, etcetera, and/or they're Very Worried About Piracy.</blockquote>

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