price of pdf's compared to price of printed books

[Lonely Tylenol]

I prefer PDFs for most books. All my Malhavoc stuff is PDF only except the AE sourcebook and Ruins of Intrigue. But I also have an AE PDF for quick reference, since the bookmarks are so useful, and I DM out of my laptop. I let my players use the hardcover, and I use the electronic version, which also allows me to do things like print out the lists of Combat Rituals or spell lists, to reduce book-flipping during play.

I think that for stuff that's available hard copy, no more than 50% should be charged for the PDF. Cheap enough to make me consider buying the PDF instead of the book.

 

[philreed]

Hm, if anyone (publisher and/or buyer) feels up to opining on price per page for either or both, that'd be helpful too.

I don't think there's any one, best method for determining price per page. A lot of the factors that apply to the final cost of a PDF -- especially art -- has little impact on the number of pages.

As an example, we produced Mutants & Masterminds Archetype Archive 1 for Green Ronin earlier this month. It's a 14-page PDF priced at $4.95, which is actually higher than I usually price a PDF of that size. But, this PDF included 10 character illustrations so its art costs were much higher than most 14-page PDFs that we produce.

If you compare that to the latest release in the A Dozen . . . series, A Dozen Distinctive Articles of Clothing, which is 6-pages and $1.30, you see a massive difference in cost per page. The primary reason is because A Dozen Distinctive Articles of Clothing required no artwork.

Does that make any sense?

 

[philreed]

Huh. I always wondered why so many RPG books were 128, 224, 256 pages etc.

I rarely think about this any more. It's always interesting to see things from the perspective of someone that doesn't have to deal with printing.

An interesting development with POD is that signatures are no longer required. Even so, I usually think in terms of signatures when preparing a POD product.

 

[Turjan]

If I understood that correctly, the MSRP of a printed book breaks roughly down to one third for the retailer, one third for the distributor, and one third for the publisher, where the publisher's third also includes the costs for printing, paying for art, paying the author and, finally, hopefully something to live on (the latter is calculated based on the expected number of sold copies).

This means that a pdf would have a base price of about one third of a print book of similar production values; this third does not contain any printing costs, which means that the base price of small pdf's should be considerably cheaper than this third, but higher margins for authors per copy, because the number of sold copies is usually lower than with print books. Adding the costs for retail to this number (roughly a third of the third), we end up with prices of 40% to 50% of comparable print products, which seems about right.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Anything over $10 is too much for a pdf, imo. By the time I print it and bind it, I'm out close to what the print product would get me. Plus, convincing a print shop your not pirating the damn thing can be loads of fun. Searching capability is nice, but it doesn't beat a book in hand.

 

[philreed]

If I understood that correctly, the MSRP of a printed book breaks roughly down to one third for the retailer, one third for the distributor, and one third for the publisher, where the publisher's third also includes the costs for printing, paying for art, paying the author and, finally, hopefully something to live on (the latter is calculated based on the expected number of sold copies).

You're pretty close. It was once higher for pretty much all publishers (many still get 40% but the smallest are closer to 30-35%) but these days small publishers require consolidators. And distributors take less than 33%.

 

[philreed]

Anything over $10 is too much for a pdf, imo. By the time I print it and bind it, I'm out close to what the print product would get me. Plus, convincing a print shop your not pirating the damn thing can be loads of fun. Searching capability is nice, but it doesn't beat a book in hand.

This is why I recommend buying a laser printer and binding system. (My laser printer and thermal binder cost less than $250 total -- and it has been a great investment.)

 

[PosterBoy]

I don't think you can really compare print vs pdf prices much anymore. The pdf products have evolved to the point that they don't follow the same format. PDFs can be smaller for one, which make them in seem more expensive. There’s not many 4-10 page print products out there but lots of pdf products of that length. There's other format variants that differ from print.

As a publisher, I price stuff so it will make a reasonable and fair profit with what I expect sales to be. I don’t consider what the print price would be until I print it. PDFs don’t have all the same costs and pricing factors as print products.

 

[Pinotage]

I don't think there's any one, best method for determining price per page. A lot of the factors that apply to the final cost of a PDF -- especially art -- has little impact on the number of pages.

If you compare that to the latest release in the A Dozen . . . series, A Dozen Distinctive Articles of Clothing, which is 6-pages and $1.30, you see a massive difference in cost per page. The primary reason is because A Dozen Distinctive Articles of Clothing required no artwork.

And even prices for page count vary quite a lot. For the product above you get 6 pages for $1.30, whereas if you look at something from another publisher, you get much more for the same price (Clockwork Golem Workshop is a good example) and sometimes less. The general trend seems to be more expensive per page as it gets cheaper, but that varies wildly with publisher.

Pinotage

 

[philreed]

And even prices for page count vary quite a lot. For the product above you get 6 pages for $1.30, whereas if you look at something from another publisher, you get much more for the same price (Clockwork Golem Workshop is a good example) and sometimes less. The general trend seems to be more expensive per page as it gets cheaper, but that varies wildly with publisher.

Agreed. Just this week I released a 5-page PDF priced at $1. Another 5-page PDF released this week is almost $2.

I doubt there will ever be an industry standard for PDF prices.