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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DanMcS" data-source="post: 1824184" data-attributes="member: 6530">Actually, I think electronic book publishing is a more viable business model than publishing dead-tree RPGs.  They need a bit of security (NOT the brain-dead DRM that currently exists, but it will get better), and will be off to the races.With electronic books, a higher portion of the purchase price goes to the publisher.  If they sell it direct, it ALL goes to the publisher, less bandwidth fees.  They can afford to sell it really cheaply, and still make more money per-item than they would selling paper.Electronic books can be produced smaller.  You can make extraordinarily focused products (there are many on RPGnow that are a single prestige class, template, or whatever).  If someone wants just that, they can buy it quick and easy.  Print costs are getting such that only a hardcover does well, and nobody wants to buy a thin hardcover, you have to make them pretty chock-full.  Huge development cost, lots of time to proofread and edit, many chances for errors to slip in.The RPG market is really tiny, and very spread out.  If you do a print run of 5000 books, how do you get them to where they will sell?  There's no marketing data available for such a small market, but you have quite a bit of money sunk into those books.  If they get to the wrong store, they won't ever sell, they'll sit on the shelf (I know that's not a direct problem for publishers, because they sell to distributors, and thence to retailers, but if your first book doesn't sell to customers, no retailer is going to order your second book).  If you are selling electronically, they are available 24x7, to anyone that wants one.  Never run out of stock, never be overstocked.  No warehouse space to take care of.Honestly, I think most RPG book publishers are kidding themselves.  I don't think there's enough money in this industry to support as many people as want to work in it.  Writing roleplaying games, like many creative endeavors, is probably destined to become a semiprofessional job at best, where people have day jobs and write in their spare time, or sell only over the internet.In the next couple of years, all the books that are produced softcover will probably end up being produced as pdfs.</blockquote>

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