Print On Demand solving the issue of errata

[Kzach]

As much as I love having the physical books for 4e, I find myself at a complete loss as to why I should ever buy any, ever again. The sheer volume of errata and mechanics changes that come out, whilst I'm in favour of them, make the books redundant before they've even hit the shelves.

Wouldn't it be great, however, if for a much lower price, you could print updated versions of the books through a POD service? Imagine having a fully updated version of PHB 1?

If the price was, say, a quarter of the price of a normal book, I could see a lot of people going for this concept as they could repurchase a copy every six months or so to always have a fully updated, nice, shiny, dead-tree at their fingertips.

So what do you think of this idea? Should WotC attempt something like this? Would you buy a couple or three copies a year, as errata comes out and is included in the POD versions?

 

[DaveMage]

A couple of issues:

1. As soon as you print, more errata will be found
2. POD color is expensive!!!!

 

[El Mahdi]

Also, incorporating errata into a book for printing isn't always a simple exercise. It can require significant editing and reordering of the material in the book, so that it still fits the document. That would require WotC to dedicate resources (read as employees) for recurring editing of the books.

 

[Morrus]

If the price was, say, a quarter of the price of a normal book,

If POD was a quarter of the price of a normal book, nobody on the planet would use anything but POD.

Unfortunately, POD is over twice the price of a normal book - and even more if you're talking colour. POD has no economy of scale, by definition.

 

[cdrcjsn]

You know what would be useful though is for someone to provide a printout of the specific pages where text has changed, so it can just be pasted on to the existing book.

I recall there was someone around this forum that used to do that for all the errata.

Would be neat if WotC could do this.

 

[malraux]

The character creator fills most of this need. All the errata is updated in the end use form.

That said, I reject the idea that errata has so voluminous.

 

[Dausuul]

Yeah, POD is more expensive than the regular thing, not less.

However, they might be able to bring the price down using a bare-bones approach, since these would be aimed at existing customers--no need to entice new buyers with glitzy production values. Eliminate the pictures and shrink the font size to reduce page count. Black and white only. Simplify the layout as much as possible, to reduce the amount of editing involved in making changes. Paperback binding.

You could also take out everything that's available through DDI, since we get errata to that in real time. Let the Character Builder handle errata to class features, powers, and items. Let the Encounter Builder handle errata to monsters. By stripping out that stuff and making the changes above, you could pack the Player's Handbook and the DMG into a single volume.

And instead of using print-on-demand, just put out updates every so often. Maybe set it up as a subscription model; pay $X per year, and we will ship you a revised version of the core books every Y months. Companies luuuurve them subscription models... it's all about the steady revenue stream.

On the other hand, I'm not sure the core rules get enough updates to justify such a project.

 

[El Mahdi]

You know what would be useful though is for someone to provide a printout of the specific pages where text has changed, so it can just be pasted on to the existing book.

I recall there was someone around this forum that used to do that for all the errata.

Would be neat if WotC could do this.

Morrus already did that. Check it out: Morrus attempts to update his PHB

 

[Alan Shutko]

That said, I reject the idea that errata has so voluminous.

There are currently 50 pages of errata for DMG1, and 43 pages for PHB1. The newer books fare better: there are only 135pg of errata for everything in the 4e line total. Still, that's pretty voluminous.

You're right, with character builder, you don't need the errata docs as much. But as Kzach said, the value of the original books is also reduced. Is it worth it for someone to buy PHB1 right now, since so much of it has been replaced? Or is it worth buying a newer book knowing that it too will be erratad? Or should one just buy DDI and forget about hardcopy?

 

[Kzach]

The thing is, I *want* a hard-copy.

As for POD being more expensive, I swear I remember reading (on here in fact) about a new POD device that was going to make it far cheaper than regular print publishing. The device also was very quick and was designed to fit in a book-store environment.

In other words, you'd run down to Barnes & Noble, not Kinkos, and walk out of the store with a shiny new book for a fraction of the regular retail price.

Now I'm going to have to go and find that news article :/