PDFs vs. Books - What's your preference?

[Jhaelen]

Outside the RPG environment I don't buy a book unless its an e-book any longer and have not since I bought my first Kindle years ago. However, for RPGs I don't find electronic books to be as convenient as having a hard-copy to flip through so I still enjoy having a printed book.

Yeah, that's me.
For novels, which I generally read only once, a Kindle is much better suited. But rpg books, or more generally, anything I tend to reference often is much easier to use as a hardcopy.

 

[valhallions]

PDFs are handy and a godsend when doing research but you just can't beat the feel of a physical book.

 

[oracular]

 

[Sword of Spirit]

Strongly prefer physical books; pdfs are great for reference and travel. Getting a free pdf with the physical copy is golden.

To add a little something that hasn't already been said, I think pdfs are usually too expensive. After the initial cost of production, the price per unit on a pdf (unless I'm completely wrong) is pennies. I think the price tag for pdfs should be no more than 25% the cost of the printed book. This isn't just theory either. I don't have much spending money, but when digital products are within my acceptable price range, I end up spending more overall than I would if they weren't. I don't know how much money I've thrown to gog.com because the price is right, but I know I wouldn't have spent half of that money if it were on a smaller number of more expensive products. Make digital products cheaper and you'll get twice as much money from me (or get money where you wouldn't have).

Because of that, I have purchased very, very few pdfs. On the other hand, I'd rather buy a pdf for 50% of original cover price than pay 10x the original price for a collectible copy on eBay.

Having a physical copy simply seems more "real" to me. It seems like I actually have the game, where a pdf seems like I'm just giving it a trial run or checking it out of some kind of digital library.

I will say though that pdfs I pay for, feel slightly more "real" than pdfs that were free. This is the case even if the free pdfs were formerly commercial games later released for free.

Not only do I prefer physical copies, but I prefer large, hardcover, visually appealing hard copies.

As a concrete example, I decided yesterday that now was a good time to finally shell out the $9.99 for Savage Worlds. When I saw that the Explorer's Edition softcover was the same price as the pdf, I was struck with a dilemma. It would have been the hardcover all the way, but it was out of my alotted budget. Hmmm...I can get either in pdf for the same price? Well, I'd get regular size if I went pdf. Looks like it's all the same content... Softcover isn't ideal, but it's an actual book in my hands. Let's check the shipping. Gadzooks that's expensive! Hmmm...but that softcover does sound nicer than a pdf. Let me see if there is a local game store that has it. *Hour later* Dang it, nothing but M:tG and comics now. Okay, let's check amazon.com. $8.99 plus shipping. Okay, let's bundle it with something else I've been needing to get so I can qualify for free shipping. Done!

 

[Morrus]

Different things for different situations. I can't say I prefer either for everything. I like them both for the strengths each has.

 

[tangleknot]

I don't like PDF's. I'll download a PDF to review a potential RPG, or if an out of print RPG is unattainable (in which case I'll probably print it). Otherwise I exclusively use printed material.

Much of it has to do with value. A book is physical object with weight, crafted and bound. While a PDF is just data. If I'm going to spend $20-$60 I want something to show for it.
I'm the same way with miniatures, I only buy metal. Plastic just feels light and cheap.

Now that I think about it more, another reason I like print is that PDF's are a pain to scroll through. Flipping through a book or looking at multiple books at once is much easier or only possible to do with printed material.

 

[Henry]

Two years ago, I still would have said I preferred book to PDF -- but now, several things have changed:

1) I have an iPad;
2) The older I get, the more painful it is to lift a collection of 60 pounds of books;
3) Pathfinder PDFs are 10 bucks, compared to 30 to 40 for the books, meaning I can buy 4 books for the price of 1.
4) With PDF, I get instant gratification and can download the book the same day it's released.

Having an iPad, and prepping my game notes on the same device, makes it a LOT easier to run games than lugging around a bunch of 250+ page books. Plus, the quality of the Retina display means I can view it full page and not have to zoom in to read it --I can page through as easily as with a paper book. Though I never would have thought it two years ago, rarely do I buy a paper book any more.

Now, Dice, I still roll actual dice, because I've tried a ton of dice roll apps, and nothing beats the feel of seeing an actual natural 20 come up when it's your turn.

 

[Olaf the Stout]

Given the option, I prefer to have both. I love a well bound hardcover RPG book. But there are advantages to digital formats, particularly for ease of reference and the ability to have an entire library with you. That said, few PDF books are actually very good at being digital references. Websites like d20pfsrd.com are far superior as a tool.

This is my general feeling on this as well.

If I'm reading something I generally prefer to read it in hard copy.

However PDF do have several advantages. Transportability for one. Being able to take a heap of books with you easily is great. Similarly, if you're only using a page or so of a book, it is often easier to print out the sepcific pages, rather than carrying the whole book around.

Another advantage of PDFs is ease of reference. Using Ctrl+F to find the specific bit you're looking for is normally better than using an index or madly flicking pages. Properly hyperlinked PDFs (an often underused feature by publishers) also save time when you have a spell, item, rule, etc. that references another spell, item, rule, etc.

Finally, PDFs are great for those of us running out of storage space at home. I've got a bookcase full of RPGs and still cop flack from my wife about the amount of space my hobbies (of which RPGs are one) take up. I can't imagine how much space my RPGs would take up if I had all my PDFs in hard copy format.

 

[pickin_grinnin]

"I think the price tag for pdfs should be no more than 25% the cost of the printed book."

I would say closer to 10-15%, at most.

I still have printed copies of RPGs from the early to mid 80s that are in good condition. Many are worth much more than I paid for them at the time. That's never going to be true for PDFs and ebooks.

 

[gamerprinter]

"I think the price tag for pdfs should be no more than 25% the cost of the printed book."

I would say closer to 10-15%, at most.

I still have printed copies of RPGs from the early to mid 80s that are in good condition. Many are worth much more than I paid for them at the time. That's never going to be true for PDFs and ebooks.

Honestly, while there is definitely a greater cost to create printed material versus PDF digital material, more than 50% of the cost is cover art, interior illustrations, cartography, writing, designing, editing and page layout. Why should a digital product that costs 50% the price of a print product to create be sold at 10 - 25% the print product price tag? If there are multiple print runs of a given product, the cost to create gets proportionally less, however, there is no cost savings in the first print run - which most print products only get a single print run.

In general publishers make less money with print products, than with digital only versions of the same products, so only very large print runs and subsequent large numbers of product purchases can produce viable levels of income. Most publishers cannot afford large print runs, only the largest companies - FGG, Paizo, WotC. So while smaller publishers would like to compete in the print market, its almost too costly, yet the market still often prefers print to digital at this time. So smaller publishers struggle to compete. If the expected digital product cover price was only 10% of the print product cost, smaller publishers cannot compete with anybody and is likely to fail as a business.

Is giving you an unrealistically low digital product cover price more important than the survival of small publishers? Is insuring that China gets even more of our money, a good thing for the west? I think not.

Consider that I do game design/development/publishing as my evening job, while I work in the print industry in my day job, so I know both sides of the cost equation for print/PDF product creation.