Opinions needed on advertisments...

[mroberon1972]

Once again, I ask you to give your opinions and vote on a question for my education:

I was wanting to add a two page advertisment to the back of products I publish (32+ pages minimum). One would be for RPGNow, while the other would just be a page of four quarter-page advertisments for myself and possibly other useful products from other vendors.

Since it would be the very last two pages, it would not have to be printed with the rest of the book. It would not be in any POD versions. I would also make certain that the file size was not unreasonably increased due to this.

The reason? Piracy. If I add an advertisment to the back, I would like to think that some of those downloading would purchase the book. I think that many downloading such PDFs may not even know that RPGNow exists in some cases.

Many believe that adding an advertisment in the back of a PDF would alienate customers. I would also like to hear from those who believe this as well...

Well, that's about it for the moment. Thank you for your time.

 

[adembroski3]

I believe in the long term health of the industry. Long term health = Income. It's PDF, not print, so as long as the ads don't detract from the quality or length of the product, I have no arguement.

I think also that advertisement in gaming products is a good source of info about other gaming products. I learn of a lot of interesting new gaming resources through ads in Dragon magazine and such and then I look 'em up online to find out of they're any good.

So I say up with capitalism: make that money!

 

[Crothian]

Ads are fine in the back of a pdf. I've seen more then a few with them in there. Heck, I've seen more then a few print books with adds in the back. I say put them in!!

 

[astralpwka]

From a reader and publisher point of view, I value the ads. I've looked up a few books in the past from those ads, particularly from Sword and Sorcery. As far as ads, I shove mine behind the OGL, but still bookmark it in case someone's curious.

 

[jerichothebard]

As a consumer, I have no problem with ads in the back of a PDF as long as:

a) They aren't counted in the page count (in my opinion, a product billed as a "32 page PDF" should have at least 30 pages of content, a 'cover' page, and the OGL or license information. An ad should be additional to this.)

b) They don't have to be printed - they shouldn't share space with content. I would rather have an extra page with the ad, and some white space on the content page, and save the ink.

c) I don't think they should up the filesize very much. I'm on broadband, so I don't care that much about this, but I know some people really do.


I think you said that most of these things were on your list of considerations, but I thought I would just write them out clearly.


Bottom line, though, is go for it!


jtb

 

[JoeBlank]

Another "don't care, as long as I don't have to print the ads" vote.

I've been following your discussion of your situation, and I think this is a good idea. For one thing, at least you will be able to know you have done something in the face of an almost unwinnable battle against piracy.

 

[Tom Cowan]

I don't really care, As long as the ads do not have to be printed.
others have said it.
Do not count it as pages of Contains. it is Extra
A page or two does not matter if the pager or two are free. How much bigger will page make the file?
Most people know ads help pay for the product. Just do not rube their face in it.

Dyslexia: creative misspelling won word at a time even with a spell checker.

 

[mroberon1972]

Hmnnn... 2 say they will never buy one, and another 5 hate the idea...

Could those of you who feel this way speak on this. I want to hear your opinions as well. Speak about it and why it's so offensive. Perhaps I can make allowances to satisfy you as well...

I know I can't make everyone happy, but I would like to try...

 

[Banaticus]

I voted, "As long as I don't have to print them, I don't care."

Ads in the back of a PDF should be limited to one or two pages, and only in black and white. The time it takes to open a PDF document is related to the size of the document -- on my rather slow computer (Pentium 2 with 64 Mb of RAM) the bigger a PDF is, the more time it takes to open the document.

If the document contains a color graphic, Acrobat Reader pops up with a little, "Would you like to download new ... that will let you look at the picture better ..." or something like that. Well, I can see the picture just fine, and adding more "abilities" to my Acrobat Rader would just make me wait for a longer period of time whenever I opened a new document.

So, to sum up, as long as the ad graphics are in black and white, they're at the end of the PDF, and they're limited to a page or two and no more, I really don't care. Although I don't have the money to buy anything shown in an ad, :\ some ads have nice pictures that I enjoy looking at.

 

[Starglim]

I don't like the idea. Fundamentally, full-page ads are a benefit to the advertiser, not a service to me. I object to paying money to receive them, when I have already paid the full cost of production and distribution, and I don't trust publishers not to include them in the page count or blow out the file size. It's a conflict in principle between giving me what I paid for, and exploiting the transaction to suck back further benefit to the seller.

The question then is, does it really matter in proportion? Two pages in the back of a 20-page PDF, which are likely to be the largest graphics in the product apart from the front page, is a far greater impost than 3-4 pages in the back of a 200-page paperback which already feels like a lot.

I'm very choosy about which PDFs I buy and don't go by publisher's lines, so the products advertised are less likely to be of interest to me. One text weblink to the publisher's site on the title page, and some text listings of other products in the series, is as much information as I would value, and costs me far less.

One page of factual descriptions (not marketing-speak or useless fluff text excerpts) for other products that are currently released would be an appropriate and useful amount of advertising. In particular I would not appreciate a full page ad for RPGNow.com as a second ad page.