PDF Industry - How do we help it grow?

[Orcus]

Hi everyone.

I had a few thoughts to add.

I started as a PDF publisher and the concept is near and dear to me. I really would like to see PDF succeed. To date, they have not.

Here is my observation. I share it beacuse I dont have the time to act on it.

You guys are focusing on increasing sales by marketing and increasing flow and stuff. But you are missing the point.

YOU ARE SELLING THE WRONG THING.

Here is, IMHO, why PDFs dont sell.

They are trying to be print products. Most all the PDFs I see are essentually print products that didnt have the backing and people took the cheap way out. The eventual intent is for the purchaser to print out the PDF. That product will NEVER compete meaningfully with a print product.

Instead, make a product that takes advantage of the portable nature of the electronic document.

Is your document formatted for a computer screen for each page, or does it require annoying scrolling to use "in game"?

Do you take advantage of the many electronic features you can do with a pdf or electronic document. Text with links to stat blocks for example. Thumbnails of maps that link to bigger ones. Things taht can be used in game.

I think you need to shift the product paradigm. You cant just make a PDF of a print product (unless your name is Monte).

So what, then, is the paradigm for a pdf?

How about a "usable in-game document."

Design for that.

Maybe that means you have to scrap things like traditional print products like settings and sourcebooks. You need, perhaps, to desing products that fit the medium. That hasnt been done.

Lets try it.

Pretend you are running your game and you have a lap top or a desktop turned on and there for the game. What product is useful in that platform? And dont just say "etools" or whatever. How about combat charts that are organized and thumbnailed and are formatted to fit the full page readably on the computer screen. Set the paper size so that it works. Scrolling PDfs in game sucks. Or how about setting up adventures that go scene by scene. formatted to the computer view size of a page.

All that has happened so far is people have taken a print product and just switched medium to PDF format and people are scratching their heads why the dont sell. It is because the product doesnt fit the format.

There are, of course, other reasons:

Burned by bad products and no chance to review before buying. You cant flip through a PDF. That is a huge draw back. People have had some sucky PDFs that were low quality and useless. You need to create a feature that lets people see the product before hand. I am no computer whiz, so I dont know how to fix that. But you need to make sure people can see the product.

The problem is not traffic. Lets quit kidding ourselves. People will come and download electronic format stuff and print it. They just dont like to pay for it. Our product support stuff as well as our classic free adventure Wizard's Amulet has been downloaded THOUSANDS AND THOUSANDS of times. So have the free giveaways of Ars Magica and things like that.

Though it is true that the percentage of internet saavy gamers who embrace PDfs is way less than one would expect, it isnt that they dont know where stuff is. When it is free they find it just fine. Until know, we havent really given them stuff that is worth paying for.

Some of you will say I am a dick for saying that. But it is a bitter pill and we all have to swallow it. I will say it again, and I dont mean any offense to the people who have made great PDF products. WE ARE NOT GIVING THEM ANYTHING WORTH PAYING FOR. Why? WRONG FORMAT.

Marginal Utility. There have been tons of products, tons of print products. How useful is your "PDF Guide to Gambling" if there has been a print product that deals with that? How useful is one more PDF sourcebook when a purchaser already has 10 sourcebooks. This is called saturation. I deal with it with adventures.

YOU NEED TO DO SOMETHING NEW.

Take advantage of the things this format and media allows you to do that a print company cant compete with.

To survive as an adventure publishing company, I had to answer the question "why should a kid spend $10 on my one module when he can spend $6 on Dungeon and get 4 adventures?"

I answered that.

Now the PDF publishers have to answer the question "why should a kid spend $3 on your PDF when they can spend a bit more and get a permanently printed product that they will have forever and can use at the table?"

My answer was to give them something Dungeon didnt. Something that I could do but that Dungeon, because of its restricitons, couldnt.

YOu guys need to do the same. You need to exploit the unique nature of the PDF format that lets you do things a print publsiher cant.

My print product isnt electronically portable. Yuors is.
My print product cant have a link on a page that opens up a guys stat block.
My print book, you have to flip around to the map. Your electronic product could have link to that map on every location along with lots of pop windows of hints and other things.
My print product cant be edited and rearranged and sorted.
My print product cant afford blank space; yours can have a page that has all the details for the players on one page and all your info on the next page.
Your document can be formatted to fit a screen without scrolling.

There are advantages. Make something THAT COULD ONLY BE A PDF PRODUCT. That will sell.

Just some thoughts with a little business theory mixed in.

I really do with PDF products the greatest success!!!

Clark

 

[Orcus]

Just in case my point got lost in the rant, here it is again:

Make a product that could only have been done as a PDF.

THAT will sell just fine.

I know you all are creative enought to come up with what type of a product that is. But whatever it is, I can tell you it isnt small source books and "vanity press" setting sourcebooks.

I am not denegrating PDFs or the great creativity that is often found there. I am just saying, make the product fit the medium.

I magine taking a book and videotaping someone reading the book outloud. That is a medium shift (book reading to film of book reading) but it totally fails to take advantage of the unique medium of film. You guys have to take advantage of the unique medium of the PDF.

Do it and you will sell tons.

Clark

 

[jmucchiello]

Make a product that could only have been done as a PDF.

Such as? About the only PDFs I know of that push the boundaries of PDFs are Dire Kobold's Adventures that scale. But as we've seen in recent discussions about adventure publishing, even DK isn't making adventures that sell (according to your own formula, Clark).

If DK put the generator in the PDF, I still don't think that would improve sales.

The one problem with your assumption is that you assume people will want to use the PDF at the table. I don't think laptops have penetrated that deeply into gaming tables. Yet. Besides, running programs will always be better than PDFs at a table. PDF stands for Portable Document Format, not paradigm shift. The whole point of a PDF is that it's a book made solely of electrons.

Thanks for trying though. All you've really said though is "build a better mouse trap and the world with run to your door." We know that.

 

[rpghost]

If you can gather enough support from PDF publishers a 'sampler CD' in Dungeon or Dragon might help. (I would recommend having samples not complete products in the CD, whet their appetites, don't satisfy them.) And by support I mean helping pay for the CD, not just okaying product.

I have investigated this route several times and once was very close to getting it done, but the problem is that 50,000 cd's have to be made and paid for. That's about $15,000. I'd do it if I had enough support to help pay for it... but that's way too much money for RPGNow to burden itself.

One minor problem that I have had with your site I don't know if there is any solution for: Slow load times for the pages due to all the graphics. When I go to your site I often know exactly what I want, so the slow loads because of the graphics can be annoying, offering a low graphics page for dial up connections might help there.

You should click on the TEXT ONLY link on the header/main page. It'll remove all the thumbnails and exccess graphics. Then you can skim through the site quickly. When viewing a product specifically it'll still show the image. It's a toggle option that you can turn on and off at will.

And, silly as it sounds: bookmarks. Make some type of bookmarks that folks can slip into their Players Handbook or Dungeon Master's Guide and use for indexing. Give them away at conventions.

Though PDF's wouldn't ever use such bookmarks, the general promotional concept you present here is very cool. I like the idea

James

 

[rpghost]

One approach to fixing this problem that I though about was to partner with another publisher and maybe splittng the cost of a bundle. That way you can get a bulk discount without having to order a lot of numbers.
...
I do agree that the Kazaa issue really isn't that big. Very few of the people who pirate the pdf's would have bought them anyway.

One thing that would help that a lot of publishers don't think about or bother to do (esp if you're going to sell elsewhere) is to put in a little "Thank you RPGNow.com" or something like that into your books content. It may sound self serving for me to ask for that - but if you think about it, 95% of the PDF market is on RPGNow and if you think about all those people getting their hands on some products through piracy or amazon - they'd be interested in seeing and buying MORE. So if people would simply help point readers to where they CAN buy a LOT more products for cheap at RPGNow, that would help everyone involved. Hell even some pirates will pay for something if they find it hard to get illigally.

Same goes for print books. If you ever do use the money you earned from RPGNow to print your book- why not say thank you by telling your readers where to find more products but in PDF form?

Just a thought...
James

 

[rpghost]

Instead, make a product that takes advantage of the portable nature of the electronic document.
...
Maybe that means you have to scrap things like traditional print products like settings and sourcebooks. You need, perhaps, to desing products that fit the medium. That hasnt been done.

Actually, I was playing around with this concept a while ago - but as usual I too don't have the time. Anyway, here is a cool example of what could be done in a solo adventure module using Adobe 6.0 (actually only 5.0 is really required for what you'll see in the demo):

http://www.RPGNow.com/InteractiveSH_test.zip

It's very rough as it was just a prototype... Turn on your speakers

Since Javascript programming is allowed in PDF's the ability to create an interactive experience is vast.

Burned by bad products and no chance to review before buying. You cant flip through a PDF. That is a huge draw back. People have had some sucky PDFs that were low quality and useless. You need to create a feature that lets people see the product before hand. I am no computer whiz, so I dont know how to fix that. But you need to make sure people can see the product.

Besides the usualy 2-3 page demos, one could actually create a full demo/preview with a very low resolution/small sized pages that won't print well and are bearly (or not at all) readable on screen. This would have the effect of letting people see the layout and letting them read the section headers and such.

James

 

[spacecrime.com]

Just in case my point got lost in the rant, here it is again:

Make a product that could only have been done as a PDF.

THAT will sell just fine.

Dagnabbit Clark, quit exposing my game plan!

Seriously, after examining the market for a while and doing a more conventional adventure to get the feel of the format, I've come to the same conclusions. Once I get my decks cleared of other projects (which is going to be a while ), I'm going to start playing around with this and seeing what the format can do.

cheers,

 

[Orcus]

Thanks for trying though. All you've really said though is "build a better mouse trap and the world with run to your door." We know that.

That's all I've said? OK.

If so, then I dont think you do know that. I am not seeing any products that are doing that.

I know there is resistance to that idea. Basically, PDF publishers see themselves as print publishers. They want to be just like the print publishers and taken just as seriously as print publishers. So they make the same products as the print publishers (I did). That is a mistake. I am trying to get you to move away from that.

Because until you do, PDFs will always just be a product that people dont want to pay for when they have the option of buying similar products in print that are durable and professionally done.

The cost margin isnt enough to warrant a PDF sale. Its the "under $20 bucks" rule. Basically, there is little difference to a $3 PDF and a $15.00 product. You have to break a 20 to buy either of them. You dont save enough to justify the annoyance of a PDF. That is, unless the PDF did something that a print product couldnt do.

I'm not saying build a better mousetrap. That is always a great idea, but poor advice. I am saying, dont make a video of somone reading a book. Take advantage of the medium.

Clark

 

[Master01]

I agree with your point of view, Clark, and what you said is exactly what Øone Games did.

Our product, Dangerous Dungeons, Goblin's Lairs, is a PDF with interactive gaming aids: basically wonderful maps with auto-numbering rooms, player's handout you can write onto and print, and monster stats that you can cut'n paste....

But, unfortunately, it didn't sell well... so, perhaps, we should find some other way....

 

[jmucchiello]

I'm not saying build a better mousetrap. That is always a great idea, but poor advice. I am saying, dont make a video of somone reading a book. Take advantage of the medium.

Oh, sorry, you are saying "Be innovative." Equally good yet useless advice. Innovative how? What can a PDF do that people want them to do besides look like a book?

As I said PDF is Portable Document Format. Not "Interactive Program". PDFs are by design pages in virtual books. Books have text and images. Books are read. PDFs can be highly indexed. You can create indexes across multiple PDFs if you know where those PDFs are located. You can use javascript to make the book interactive. But, again, I think an interactive program is a better medium for creating truly dynamic content.

You say people aren't buying PDFs of books that they can find in normal stores. That has some merit. Let's look at the top ten at RPGNow:

1. Tournaments, Fairs, and Taverns
2. Fractal Mapper 7.0
3. Book of Eldritch Might II: Songs and Souls of Power
4. The Elements of Magic
5. A Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe
6. Inns and Taverns Floorplans
7. Wild Spellcraft
8. Librum Equitis Compiled
9. The Book of Hallowed Might
10. Castles and Keeps Floorplans

An Interactive Program, 2 floorplan books and 7 supplements, most of which have already seen print since hitting that top ten.

Personally, I think PDF penetration in the RPG market is probably just as deep as e-book penetration in the traditional publishing market. What is needed is not innovation, but education. As today's children enter the gaming market, they will gravitate toward electronic media. Over time, gamers will learn that PDFs are as good as print products.

The real benefits to PDFs is that you can print out just sections of the books that you use and reduce the amount of weight (paper) that carry to and from game. I'm sure regulars at RPGNow do this already.