rpghost said:
The problem with that theory is that the CSN product promotes the sale of something in the store or something they can order through the store.
The Downloader Monthly does the oposite. It tries to get people to spend their limited cash on something NOT in the store.
Thus no retailer will carry it. 
James
I just love it when people don't quite read what I wrote. I did say the focus would have to change to reflect the entire industry, rather than the RPGNow. Instead of discarding the idea as something that won't work, why not consider what needs to be done to make it work. For anyone who may become confused by this post, be aware that this evil thread is doing its business in three different forums right now, so some things that mention may be from one of those other forums. My mind happens to have a ridiculous habit of wandering around bright ideas like that. Now, onto the business at hand...
On RPGmall, you have dozens of previously PDF-only products that shops can obtain at wholesale rates there. And don't forget that quite a few PDF publishers also write material destined for paper publication by the big publishers as well. People like Monte Cook and Stan! can't possibly hope WOTC can afford to buy and publish all their bright ideas, after all.
As long as there is focus on material that isn't exclusively PDF-related consuming about half the paper, then I suspect retailers would be interested, as long as it also provided significant coverage of material that they can put on their shelves.
And if the idea seems like too much to bite off and chew, then try partnering with some distributors and fulfillment agencies, allowing them to absorb some of the workload or expense in producing such a thing. If you do partnering, make sure that you do include a general distributor like Alliance in the mix as well as a fulfillment agency like Tundra or Wizards' Attic; fulfillment agencies tend to have a number of product lines from lesser publishers that the big distributors don't carry.
It could even lead to some larger successful FLGS eventually having some interest in establishing some sort of kiosks to sell PDFs or PODs as well. While this may seem unlikely ATM, there will come a time when sacrificing a 2 ft x 4 ft x 3 ft cube of floor/shelf space will become worthwhile when it means the shop owner can keep hundreds of titles in stock constantly and available at the drop of the hat. Even if it is kept in a back room, a POD kiosk means the shop owner can keep physical merchandise on the shelves within minutes of a sellout, and the special order turn around time on some books can become astonishingly short. I can imagine retailers telling customers that if they want to pay an extra 20%, they can have the book in the store in under an hour, knowing full well that accomplishing this is as easy as walking into the back room and printing the book out on a POD Kiosk. Kiosk sales are even more likely in the future, thanks to the explosive growth of LAN gaming in FLGSs here on the east coast, where the computers on the LAN can be used to facilitate browsing by more than one individual. With a bit of ingenuity and reliance on older but reliable technology that can be obtained cheaply, even smaller stores can get into kiosk sales, since a DIY CD-burning Kiosk with LAN interfacing could be built for under $200 per unit and some hefty programming work(old 486 or pentium, 14 inch surplus monitors, 2x or 4x non-rw burners, surplus copies of NT 4 ypdated with the SP6 free download, cheap ethernet card, and an HTML-based intranet storefront with COM objects to control file access combined with database blobs). Heck, with this, it could even be possible for someone to order online, and burn the CD at their FLGS themselves in some instances, leaving the $6.95 "burn my order to CD" fee to be paid to the shop owner.
