NDA Early access to 3.5 rules for d20 Print Publishers

[tensen]

PDF Publishing is almost zero risk. That's why there are so many more low-quality PDF products when compared to print products. You can put garbage on the market, sell a few dozen copies, and move on.

For you it is zero risk... since you are paying on royalties.
For Dark Quest... we deal exactly as if it is a print product. The only difference is.. that we have't released a print product yet. My risk isn't zero... it is less than a print release. Maybe only 50% of the risk... for 10% of the return.

But then again... we probably are an exception to the general rule.

But risk... or dollars per item has no real issue in this situation. In 10 PDFs... I can guarentee that I've spent more money into the products... then the print publishers with 1 or 2 products only. If it takes them 6 months to get out a product normally... or more.. does a delay of some months hurt them?

 

[HellHound]

I think you shortchange yourself there, Jason.

How much did your copy of Quark Xpress cost you?
How about your copy of Acrobat?
How about the "cost" of paying your writer - you (say, at $0.03 per word) ? I am sure there are other ways you could have spent your time to bring in money - even if it is something so simple as working at a fast-food joint.
How about the "cost" of paying your editor? (you)

Actually, if you re-read my initial post, I explain how I don't pay these people ANYTHING out of hand, EVERYONE in the process is paid using a royalty system. My editor (not me) is paid with royalties from the books. My writers (myself and others) are paid with royalties from the books. Acrobat I already have from other publishing ventures, ditto for Quark XPress.

My initial works had ZERO outlay, they were done entirely in my spare time, when at work at the steel mill mostly... sitting in the crane working on d20 materials. Heck, effectively I was being paid $24.83 an hour to work on this material.

You may still consider that outlay negligible compared to that of a print product, but remember that the "talent" cost (writing, art, editing) for a book is about the same as the "print" costs. That you provided Ambient's talent in-house rather than writing a check in no way diminishes that cost.

But we do cut checks, we do buy art and hire writers (I don't personally, as I am but a writer and designer @ Ambient Inc, all actual business decisions are handled by the CEO)... but all at ZERO RISK and ZERO INVESTMENT. Ambient Inc. currently works cooperatively with our writers, artists and editors to produce our products, with no outlay besides my own time at the system, which is paid for in the end through book sales royalties, just like everyone else working on our projects.

Mind you, this is NOT the prefered way of publishing, and goes directly against statements of what artists and writers should be looking for, but it works for me and produces a pleasant cooperative feel to our venture.

 

[sigfried]

Re: Re: Why not try anyway

Careful how you refer to yahoos. Do you mean me? Sigil? Tensen? Phil?

No, I just ment folks who are likely to break the NDA. I know lots of folks that sign one and then procede to tell me and everyone else the things they learn. They get excited and dont take it seriously. There are plenty of yahoos that publish printed games, but less than those who just want a scoop and don't make anything. Remember I'm a PDF publisher myslef so I'm not casting dispersions.

 

[jmucchiello]

Joe,

Those numbers are great, but they completely ignore the other costs that go into having a print product get to market. I find it illuminating that out of the PDF publishers, not a single one has mentioned anything to do with distribution in any meaningful fashion (not to mention warehousing and shipping). PDF distribution is a matter of uploading a file to RPG Now and giving them their cut (what, 20%?). Print distribution *is* orders of magnitude beyond that, and accounts for much of the cost risk that a print publisher undertakes that you *don't* see.

The numbers aren't as clear-cut as you seem to think. That's what *I'm* trying to say.

The numbers are exactly as clear cut as I believe. Are you using a different definition of Order of Magnitude than I am. (Each order of magnitude multiplies the cost by 10.) In my example, shipping and warehousing would have to cost you at least $48,000 to get one order of magnitude over the PDF cost of $6,000. (6,000 creators cost + 6,000 print run + 48,000 = 60,000). Until someone here tells me they spend that much on shipping and warehouse space, I'll continue to say that there is no order of magnitude difference. Print products have up front productios costs perhap 2 - 3 times that of PDFs. Period.

In fact, I'm willing to bet that for the small time print publisher, warehousing costs nothing but a little space in the garage.

Your argument should be quality.

Clark, I agree. My post before Sigil's mini-rant stated that I felt slighted only because I feel my stuff is better than certain (unnamed) print publishers' stuff. If I didn't believe that I wouldn't bother putting out PDFs.

For you (Hellhound) it is zero risk... since you are paying on royalties. For Dark Quest... we deal exactly as if it is a print product.

I guess I'm in between these guys. I have paid up front for quite a bit of artwork now (that hasn't gotten out yet) but my writing fees are royalties since it is just me doing the writing at the moment. Still, tensen is correct. There is plenty of monetary outlay on the PDF side if you run it as a business.

 

[tensen]

I have paid up front for quite a bit of artwork now (that hasn't gotten out yet) but my writing fees are royalties since it is just me doing the writing at the moment. Still, tensen is correct. There is plenty of monetary outlay on the PDF side if you run it as a business.

Hehehe. You claim your writing fees as royalties. This is assuming you actually pay yourself back. I am sure there are more than a few print publishers in that boat.

How is everyone credit card debt?

 

[EOL]

I had mostly decided to stay out of this because I basically agree with the arguments that printing is a much greater investment of money, than PDF publishing.

I guess the problem I see is that there are PDF publishers and there are PDF publishers, some people certainly do toss together 25 pages of poorly playtested, badly written, horribly illustrated house rules and put it up on RPGNow. While others invest as much time playtesting, writing, designing, laying out and editing as a print product. There is still a gap between this person and a print publisher, but when comparing the highest end PDF publisher with the lowest end print publisher the gap narrows.

And I hate to bring my own stuff into the equation, because it seems immodest, but with the amount of time, money and effort I put into the dynamic generation system my adventures use I could have put out a print product. But of course the whole concept doesn't really work in print. I pay market rate for the adventures and the art. So what's the difference between me and a print publisher?

Well time for one thing I'm still just getting started and like Clark when he first requested a copy of the new rules, I haven't really proved myself and that's a perfectly legitimate argument for them not to include me. One day my goal is to have enough name recognition that when I send in my NDA, WoTC says "Well of course we'll make an exception for him." But I don't think I'm there yet.

So I'll send in the NDA and see what happens. And if they decide not to include me, then it's their ball game and if they don't think I'm on the starting line-up I'm still pretty happy to be on the bench, waiting for my chance to prove myself.

Just my two cents.

 

[d20Dwarf]

There is a bit of intellectual dishonesty going around this thread, but I won't call anyone specifically out on it.

The fact is with *very very very few* exceptions, the PDFs on the market today do not even come close to matching the production values of even the worst printed products. Many pdfs have little or no art (Joe's Book of Enchantment), the art is blurry or grainy, elements aren't aligned, and a host of other issues. Almost universally PDFs have these problems that would KILL a printed book. Ever picked up a book with no art? Look how print products get savaged by this site's reviewers when they have not enough art, bad art, or a bad word count/price ratio. Do PDFs take this flak? No, because most of the reviewers are aware of the differences and take them into account when they are reviewing products. It's the same reason that many WotC books get lower reviews than clearly inferior d20 products....there is a different standard.

I would very much like PDFs to become a viable market, but so far there is really only one well known exception to the rule that PDFs do not a real business make. Just the data cited in this thread shows that it is nigh impossible to build a business selling PDFs online. Until this happens, I think businesses (WotC) are well within the bounds of good practice not to deal with what amount to fan productions. Good fan productions in some cases, but fan productions nonetheless.

I'd like to see someone back up the conceit shown in this thread by actually producing a viable product in PDF format. Like I said, I'm rooting for PDFs, but the quality has got to be there! If the quality was there and someone figured out how to market them and utilize the unique platform, then I think the market could become reasonable and grow.

 

[philreed]

Professional Level PDFs

While I don't think that my writing and editing are as good as some print publishers I do feel that the layout and art on my PDfs is better than most print products.

 

[d20Dwarf]

Philip,

I didn't single anyone out, so noone should really take offense on a personal level.

I must say I haven't had the pleasure or viewing one of your products, though.

 

[philreed]

I can fix that . . .

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=580&

Check out the three pages of the demo that's linked to from the site. Or use the links below.

http://www.philipjreed.com/mechanuspreview.pdf

And here's another sample.

http://www.philipjreed.com/images/blackwaterdemo.pdf