Quality, price, and the place for PDFs in the print industry

[Krug]

Ok you know who... your turn to rant.

 

[philreed]

Re: Quality, price, and the place for PDFs in the print industry.

Ok you know who... your turn to rant.

I suspect that, over time, there will become barriers to entry in the PDF market. The largest barrier to entry will be the e-mall that is selling the PDFs since, after enough complaints from customers, they'll find it is in their best interest to look over all PDFs before making them available for sale.

Think of it this way. How many people are lost forever when their first PDF is a poor-quality product? They spend the $5 on a PDF to see what the noise is about and then decide that if this PDF sucks then what are the chances that all PDFs suck.

As the creators of poor-quality material are weeded out new authors will become discouraged. Over time we'll see the e-malls acting like distributors which will then force talented amatuers to work with established PDF publishers.

Wait? Who's ranting here? Sorry.

 

[Krug]

Re: Quality, price, and the place for PDFs in the print industry.

Wait? Who's ranting here? Sorry.

Anyone, everyone. Abula (sp?) asked me to start a thread where he would give his 2 cents on the stated topic, but anybody can chime in!

 

[JoeGKushner]

I want to see more done with the PDF's. Sure, it's great that we can get some books from Malhavok that look exactly like they will in print but... where's the PDF material?

I enjoy the experiementation that some publishers are doing in some quarters. Philip and Ambient sprint to mind with trying the different layouts.

Still, I want to see further use of the medium itself.

None of this will however, overcome poor layout, grammar, editing, proofreading and unoriginality.

Beyond Monks and Joe's Book of Enchantment remain some of my favorite PDF files and neither are spectacular in terms of apperance and graphic use.

 

[Krug]

Re: Re: Quality, price, and the place for PDFs in the print industry.

I suspect that, over time, there will become barriers to entry in the PDF market. The largest barrier to entry will be the e-mall that is selling the PDFs since, after enough complaints from customers, they'll find it is in their best interest to look over all PDFs before making them available for sale.

Think of it this way. How many people are lost forever when their first PDF is a poor-quality product? They spend the $5 on a PDF to see what the noise is about and then decide that if this PDF sucks then what are the chances that all PDFs suck.

I don't really agree. Do RPG stores look through all the material that's coming in? I think they would just look at a blurb from the publisher. If that entices their attention and the product is otherwise legit, they'd carry it.

I think the consumers are the best persons to police the product. Look at Robert Jordan's latest book and the comments on Amazon.com. The readers have spoken, and anyone purchasing the book will be forewarned. Any publisher who comes out with a sucky product will know, and make a quick exit.

A bad PDF just won't create 'noise' except grumblings, and I think most new buyers would purchase what's on the top ten lists rather than what's new.

 

[Mark]

Print industry? Do you mean the industry that does printing? I worked in Printing for quite a few years on presses (four-color, over/under, sheet-fed, etc.) and as a representative for a Printing Company. I do not think you do mean that though because even print products from RPG or Gaming Companies have no "place" per se in the Print Industry except maybe as samples of the kind of work a Printing Company can do or may do...

Or do you actually mean the RPG or Gaming Industry? Because that's a question I can also answer to some degree.

OK. Just a bit of an object lesson because this is part of the problem, IMO. Even some folks such as our pre-eminent Newshound have a seemingly ingrained mindset to think of PDFs as "the other product" rather than just one more piece of the larger gaming product puzzle. I think most publishers that primarily delivery print products to the market are very happy with this mindset, but as this changes things will become easier for publishers who mainly deal in PDFs...and it begins with the media, my Newshound Brother, before it filters to the general public.

This post speaks to "place" and I'll try to return to discuss price and quality a little later.

 

[philreed]

Re: Re: Re: Quality, price, and the place for PDFs in the print industry.

I don't really agree. Do RPG stores look through all the material that's coming in? I think they would just look at a blurb from the publisher. If that entices their attention and the product is otherwise legit, they'd carry it.

Some of the better retaillers do. But the real line of defense is the distributors. It is next to impossible to have your material carried by a distributor if you're a new company. Even Mage Knight had a hard sell at first. And with WA gone one leak in the system has been fixed.

Money, of course, will open of of doors for you.

 

[Drawmack]

Here is my dream digital product, and I believe that all of this can be done in pdf.

1) Two pdfs in 1 zip, one for printing and one for online viewing.

2) In the view on-line I want massive hyperlinking. Give me a world map that has the different sections linked to their entries in the gazzeteer. Give be an index that's hyperlinked. Hyperlink every cross reference in the book.

3) Take advantge of the digital medium. Embed movies into the document. Give me some animation.

4) Include a character sheet that I can fill out right on the computer. For bonus points make is a litle database app.

Basically for me it boils down to this. Right now the pdf producers are producing a pdf version of the print product. I think that this is the wrong way to go, why not embrace the new medium for all that it is worth.

I mean imagine opening your pdf of Rise of Evil and the guy on the front cover is talking to you and everytime you come to a new chapter the journal entry is changed from a printed page to this guy talking to you some more. I would pay for that, but then again I'm a techno weenie so bells and whistles make me drool.

 

[jmucchiello]

Right now the pdf producers are producing a pdf version of the print product. I think that this is the wrong way to go, why not embrace the new medium for all that it is worth.

Um, expense? You want the PDF to talk to you. Do you know how much it costs to get studio time, hire an actor, make decent recordings? A 4-hour block of studio time (which may yield 20 minutes of useful audio) can cost as much as I've made gross on Joe's Book of Enchantment. PDFs earn at the low end of the industry. And you also want movies? Animation? Until PDFs start selling in the 100,000 range, this just is not going to happen unless the producer is a graphic artist with access to a render farm for free. PC Games with cut-scenes and full animation have $2-3 million budgets and are considered flops if they only sell 100,000. Reality check: WotC probably has not sold 100,000 3E DMGs.

Ask the PCGen folk how "easy" it is to release a programmed product. WotC basically forbids it so interactive character sheets with databases are not going to happen.

Highly interactive indexes and deep referencing take time. Time is money. Which is more important to you: the information or the bells and whistles? Me, I'd rather be spending time writing and producing quality material than spending time worrying if I've found every reference and cross-reference in the work.

Yes, all of the things you want would be nice. But I know that I cannot make them a priority. And the reason I publish in book format is because once all the kinks are worked out of my books, I take them down to a printer and get a copy made for myself so that at least my book sits on my shelf with the other RPG books.

P.S. Joe, thanks for the plug.

 

[Drawmack]

Um, expense? You want the PDF to talk to you. Do you know how much it costs to get studio time, hire an actor, make decent recordings? A 4-hour block of studio time (which may yield 20 minutes of useful audio) can cost as much as I've made gross on Joe's Book of Enchantment.

Considering that I've done professional recording for the better part of the last decade as a musician - another hoby of mine. I think I might have a clue. However, do you have any idea how cheap a four track, basement and a digital converter are. For the cost of about 1 hour in a digital studio you can set up a home studio. As far as the actor goes, you can get voice changing software for about $20.00 which allows a single person to do all the voices, no need of an actor use a couple of friends. If you're reluctant for that then go to the local college you can probably get some theatre majors to do it for pizza, heck you might be able to get them to record and produce the entire thing very cheaply if you wanted. Everyone forgets about their local college students.

PDFs earn at the low end of the industry. And you also want movies? Animation?

Yeah I know this one is a pipe dream, but that doesn't mean I don't want it.

Ask the PCGen folk how "easy" it is to release a programmed product. WotC basically forbids it so interactive character sheets with databases are not going to happen.

What you cannot do is random number generation - there is nothing about storing a character sheet as long as it does not include IP or random number generation. I suggest that you talk to the PCGen folks, since their program does well exactly this and it's perfectly legal. Besides - the program could be offered off of the website with a password in the pdf and then the program only needs to be ogl not d20 which is where pcgen ran into the problems. Creative solutions are what makes money, not hiding behind a we can't do that attitude.

Highly interactive indexes and deep referencing take time. Time is money. Which is more important to you: the information or the bells and whistles? Me, I'd rather be spending time writing and producing quality material than spending time worrying if I've found every reference and cross-reference in the work.

I do not consider hyperlinking a bell or a whistle. I consider it something that you should do in a digital product. Would you be happy with a web-site that gave non-linked internal references. A pdf product is much closer to a web-site then a printed book. This is the main problem, publishers are not looking at pdfs in the right light. BTW: if you use headers properly in you orgininal document pdf creator will make links to them and stick them in the menu making a linked TOC much, much, much less useful then a linked index.

and just so we're all clear on this one. In the last year I have spent $300.00 on print products and about $600.00 on pdf products.