D&D 5E How Much Would You Pay for Digital Access?

[the Jester]

I'm not interested in digital products if I can find them in print, so I voted "Only If Free."

 

[Jester David]

Honestly the more I think about it I'm leery of any licensed product WotC puts out. A big fear is that they trump up reasons to withdraw the product only to sell it through a different* vendor some time later...


* or is dndclassics the same company as RPGNow/DTRPG/FoolMeThrice? I only bought a few PDFs back then, but I'm already burning up just thinking about it again.

DnDClassics is run by DriveThurRPG. If you bought a D&D book from them in the past and it's available, you should be able to download again.

 

[Uder]

Well, not everything was there, but it's a step up from the kick in the nads it was previously.

 

[Jeff Carlsen]

I selected $20, but my real price is $15. Don't know why, but that feels like the maximum to me.

I'd definately prefer hardcover books to come with a registration code for the digital tools and various PDF and ebook options. Once I've paid for the book, I don't want to have to pay again for a different format.

As for a subscription, I couldn't imagine paying more than the price of an annual magazine subscription.

 

[Li Shenron]

If WotC begins charging for Digital Access to books (either PDFs or as an in-app purchase for DungeonScape) how much would you be willing to pay for full access to a single book?
(This would be the one time fee to own the digital product, and not the per annum subscription cost. )

Trying to do some market research.
I'm mostly just curious, but if the results are interesting I might end up doing a blog.

Zero for subscriptions.

Zero for digital books.

Near-zero for digital tools.

I'm fine with the current price of printed books.

 

[Meliath42]

If WotC begins charging for Digital Access to books (either PDFs or as an in-app purchase for DungeonScape) how much would you be willing to pay for full access to a single book?
(This would be the one time fee to own the digital product, and not the per annum subscription cost. )

Trying to do some market research.
I'm mostly just curious, but if the results are interesting I might end up doing a blog.

$25-35 for a book like the DMG, $10-20 for a singular module...more if it was specifically designed to upload into a VTT like Roll20 complete with the needed maps. My gaming group has gone completely online after having to move due to work.

 

[Jester David]

Okay, so I did some fan wanking math, pulling numbers from you-know-where.

We D&D books will sell roughly 100,000 copies. Assuming 10% of the fanbase will buy digital books that means WotC has a potential digital audience of 10,000.
Assuming the numbers in the poll are representational, rounding to the nearest percentage, and assuming people will also pay less than their maximum, it's easy to figure out how much money digital sales will generate.

1% will buy at $50 = $5,000
5% will buy at $40 = $20,000
12% will buy at $30 = $36,000
42% will buy at $20 = $84,000
69% will buy at $10 = $69,000

So at $20 the most money is generated despite selling to fewer people than the $10 price.

I've seen a few references to $15 on the forums here, and that's close to what I want, so guessing at those numbers. Assuming half the people who payed $10 would be willing to go up $5 to $15, that puts the number at 57%.
56% will buy at $15 = $84,000

So you theoretically make as much money selling for $15 as for $20. That seems to be the sweet spot.

 

[BoldItalic]

Okay, so I did some fan wanking math, pulling numbers from you-know-where.

We D&D books will sell roughly 100,000 copies. Assuming 10% of the fanbase will buy digital books that means WotC has a potential digital audience of 10,000.
Assuming the numbers in the poll are representational, rounding to the nearest percentage, and assuming people will also pay less than their maximum, it's easy to figure out how much money digital sales will generate.

1% will buy at $50 = $5,000
5% will buy at $40 = $20,000
12% will buy at $30 = $36,000
42% will buy at $20 = $84,000
69% will buy at $10 = $69,000

So at $20 the most money is generated despite selling to fewer people than the $10 price.

I've seen a few references to $15 on the forums here, and that's close to what I want, so guessing at those numbers. Assuming half the people who payed $10 would be willing to go up $5 to $15, that puts the number at 57%.
56% will buy at $15 = $84,000

So you theoretically make as much money selling for $15 as for $20. That seems to be the sweet spot.

There is another factor - some people might buy digital instead of hardcopy. So for that many people, you need to take account of the difference between the profit on a hardcopy and the profit on a digital copy. The vendor might want to make that number zero, so it's profit-neutral, or to slant it in favour of hardcopy by making the digital price a bit higher. But we'd have to guess more numbers to do that.

 

[fjw70]

For the PH or MM I would probably pay whatever it costs. I'd be happy if it was no more than $30 but I would pay more. I wanted a PDF of Iron Kingdoms RPG and paid $40. I thought it was too much but I wanted the PDF.

 

[Jester David]

There is another factor - some people might buy digital instead of hardcopy. So for that many people, you need to take account of the difference between the profit on a hardcopy and the profit on a digital copy. The vendor might want to make that number zero, so it's profit-neutral, or to slant it in favour of hardcopy by making the digital price a bit higher. But we'd have to guess more numbers to do that.

The Rule of Fives in production suggests WotC gets 20% on a book. So $10 for each hard copy sold.
We don't know the licence WotC struck with DriveThruStuff for PDFs, but they could get somewhere between 60-80% of sales.

If they make 75% from a PDF sale and retail for $15 they're making the same money per copy.