How much would you pay for a PDF?

[Shemeska]

I laugh at the idea of paying anything more than, at most, 15% of the cost of a print book for a pdf version. Paying full price for a book without getting that book is effectively the same as living next to a book store and just being able to walk in and browse through the book in the store every so often, but you're paying to do that and you're a sucker if you do.

There're some books that I'd balk to paying for a copy of, but I'd happily pay $10 bucks or so for a pdf of them just because I'd never use them but would like to read them, or I have concerns about the quality level of the book that prevent me from actually considering buying it.

 

[Mixmaster]

1/2 the regular price is just perfect. The other 1/2 would be from me printing and binding it.

 

[Mark]

Some publishers justify this by the additional capabilities of PDFs, despite drawbacks in portability and tangibility and the fact that we, as customers, realize they don't have to sink as much into print run costs or warehousing.

The main reason that publishers who primarily produce print products keep their price point the same regardless of the medium is because they do not wish to damage their relationships with retailers or distributors by being perceived as undercutting the prices on the same content. Those that hold this line aren't concerned if they lose some electronic sales that they might get at a lower price because their primary target market is to consumers in places where the print products are not available or to consumers who are not price conscious and are willing to pay the full retail for an electronic version, regardless of whether or not they already own the print version.

 

[PeterFitz]

I'd pay up to 50% of the printed product price, but no more. I have no objection to people making money from their hard work, but I don't expect to be gouged for a product that is substantially cheaper to produce than a physical book.

As far as the extra features PDF is supposed to provide over a printed book, to me the only worthwhile ones are a decent hyperlinked index and ToC. Both of those things can be created pretty much automatically from any worthwhile page layout programme, and I'm certainly not going to pay extra for them when they cost so little effort to create (I'm talking literally a matter of minutes for most layout progs). Internal hyperlinking is handy, but seldom essential if the index and ToC are up to scratch.

What infuriates me about PDF vendors is that they almost invariably produce pages that are clearly meant to be viewed from printed material; that is, multi-column portrait format, which is really irritating to read on-screen. It's one thing to provide a PDF as a document distribution format for printing, but if to get the best out of a PDF's read/search/hyperlink capabilities it should be formatted for use on-screen. It's a piece of cake these days to create multiple formats for the same content, but it's very seldom that the customers get any choice about what they're buying -- almost always you're stuck with a duplicate of file intended for print, and I'm not sure whether it's because of laziness or ignorance on the part of the author/vendor. What a waste of potential of an excellent electronic document format.

Rant over, I guess.

 

[Echohawk]

What I'd really like is the ability to pay say 125% of the standard cover price for a paper copy PLUS a PDF of the same book. I like collecting books, but it would also be very useful to have electronic copies of some titles. I would be quite happy to pay a little more for the advantages of both formats.

 

[Razz0putin]

I'd be in the 50% to 75% range 75% being if is was a really good product that fit a niche I was needing in my chronicle. Even then it would need to be by a producer that has proven to make good stuff like Malhavic. That said I'm not afraid to pay for something that I think is good since I'm pretty picky especially at this point.

 

[Bloodstone Press]

Oh, you know: copy-n-paste, searchability, bookmarks (though consider where the term comes from ), lack of bookshelf space/can put it on a laptop or CD.

Add to that
1. full color interior (at no extra cost)
2. audio enhancement (either external links or imbedded audio files)
3. Replaceable (RPGnow, the Digital Book Booth and most vendors support the practice of replacing any PDF you lose. Since records of all purchases are kept on file, it is easy to verify who has a rightful copy.)
4. Free updates and revisions. (not all PDF companies do this, but many, including mine, do)
5. Instant delivery
6. External hyperlinks (depending on the subject matter of your PDF, you may be able to dramatically enhance the content by including links to related material from across the internet.)

Can a printed book do that?

I think a well made, well supported PDF could be worth as much as 75% of the printed price.

 

[MonsterMash]

I'd go up to 60-65% of printed price, but that should include a free update with erratta fixed. Otherwise less. I can understand when a new book comes out publishers might be unwilling to cannibalise the market for print products by releasing the pdf at a low price at the same time, but as a work around they could either release the pdf after a period of time (3-6 months after print release) or alter the pdf content with less art, etc to make added value for the print version.

Personally I prefer print products to pdf, but will buy pdfs for stuff that's not readily available in print or is pdf only (no choice there!).

 

[Glyfair]

Personally, what I would pay for a product isn't related to the print cost. The product would have to be very strong for me to be willing to pay more than $5-$8 on one.

Usually, when a print price is higher, that means the book is longer. The longer books are the ones I would use least as a PDF. I have no desire to read through a book on the computer. If I'm buying something, I plan on either using bits and pieces or printing it all out. I'm not going to print out large book (say a campaign setting), when I can buy the print product much cheaper.

Of course, I'm not the primary target for those who sell such products. They would like my sales, but realize I'm not the sort of buyer who is going to spend much of his budget on PDFs.

Also, I was going to make the same point Mark had about those who sell both print and electronic versions. You do not want to undercut your main market, which is still the print market (at least overall, for certain companies this might not be true).

 

[Morte]

Willing: about 40% (which AFAIK ought to make the publisher more money than a print run sold through distributors)

Prepared: depends how bad I want it...