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

[HellHound]

First, by making your product a cut or ten above the rest you will increase sales. If you create a product that makes the reviewers go wow, people will buy it.
[/B]

No.

We already promote ourselves like whores (pardon the language) to get this far.

Guess how many sales you get from winning an award or picking up those 'wow' reviews. Damn close to squat. A five star review will bring in a surge of sales for a PDF product, but that "surge" is 5 to 7 extra sales.

What gets sales is NOT bells and whistles, hyperlinking, animations, sound files and huge downloads. What gets the sales is people using your material in a game and their friends going 'cool'. And then them telling their friends. Useable , well written, well thought-out material will produce 95% of your sales.

A product that gets a few "passing" reviews in the 3/5 zone will often sell better than the one that has wowed the reviewers, as long as the material in the first product is outright useable and EASILY used. That is the market for PDFs. The more specialized your product, the less it sells, no matter how cool it is. The reviews that have come in for Three Arrows have been far from glowing, but it has been a steady hot seller because people are using it in their games and telling other people about it. Meanwhile, products with a batch of HOT reviews have been having lukewarm sales.

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And in regards to the "leaking bucket" you handed Dextra...

In the ONE product I have layed out with an Index, the Index is done in word (by the authors of the book, not by myself), then redone in the layout software (Quark). Then I go through and add bookmarks in Adobe Acrobat - this can take a while. Also adding hyperlinks to EVERY entry in the Index is beyond my level of patience. Adding hyperlinks inside Acrobat is a slow and painful process in my experience.

And as I said, I have only had ONE product that I've done layout on with an Index, so that leaky pucket of yours holds water a lot less than Dextra's argument about hours in the day. I don't do indexes, I don't hyperlink them either.

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I've also priced getting a good character sheet made.

$50 a page

Now, mind you, this is NOT an auto-calculating character sheet. Those are 99% useless since they can never handle every piece of optional rules that gaming group X uses. For example, I won't be able to inlcude anything from any of the WotC splatbooks in this character sheet, thus making it useless for most users as those are the most common supplements for most gaming groups.

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Sure, maybe if we added all these bells and whistles we could increase the price as you say, but honestly, we are dealing with people who feel that PDFs are grossly overpriced already. A standard conversation with a gamer on-line asking how big a $5 PDF should be will get you a result in the 200 to 400 page range. The more we charge, the less we will sell.

Therefore, if we make our downloads a multimedia experience that will appeal to those people who are not currently appealed to by the current PDFs we produce, we may well be alienating many of our current buyers... and I honestly don't believe that the new customers will outnumber the old ones.

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Regarding Open Calls - I agree in most ways with this. Only very specific products can handle an open call and still come out well. Our only truly "open" call was the Librum Equitis contest, and I am re-writing all the flavor text for the classes... in fact, unless you know which classes were prize-winners, I doubt you will distinguish between the prize-winners and my own creations in the book.

 

[jmucchiello]

This is a misquote I never said that underpaying writters is a reason I won't submit to some companies. What I said is that I do not submit to companies that pay different amounts for pdf vs. print publishing. To be more clear - I will not submit my work to a company who intends to vary what they pay me based on the means of publication. I am the same person submitting the same work, my pay should not vary.

Another nuance I missed. I need to get out more.

How about a 3d rendered movie that walks me through a city while an announcer takes me on a tour for a citybook?

While the other examples seem interesting this one would probably cause the most headaches. I don't know too many people who use even city books as is[/ii]. This walkthru only works if it stays away from areas that the individual DM is going to change. The longer the video, the more likely it will contain material the user doesn't want. Ultimately, the buyer should be showing the AVI to his players. But if he wants to change stuff around, the avi can become a hinderance.

Point well taken, that was a bonus points thing. But a seperate pdf that is a character sheet I can fill out on the puter and have it do the math isn't that hard to do and it would increase sales.

But you still haven't told me why, when you do not use PCGen or Twin Rose, you would find my character sheet program any better than theirs? We wouldn't be satisfied by anyone's character sheet program.

Then why would you make the remark about using those other programs in the first place?

Just because I don't use them doesn't mean no one uses them. Heck, there are threads where the poster says he isn't interest in 3.5E because he's afraid his tools will not be updated for some time after the books' release.

Hmmm, I'm proficient with word but generally only use it for draft material so I was not aware of that feature - it's neat though. However, you use word for your layout???? Wouldn't ms publish be better?

I've used Word since version 3.0 for DOS (a 1986 release), I've used 4.0, 5.0, 5.5, 6.0, 1.0 for OS/2, 1.1 for Windows, 2.0 for Windows, 6.0 for Windows and Word 97. All of them. I know my way around Word. I've never used Publisher. And getting word to do border art and images and stuff is simple. You just have to know what you're doing. All of my PDFs are produced with Word. When the customization book comes out I'm sure some people will not believe the title page came out of word: A full page image with a generated Table of Contents around it. Most of the artwork has text flowing around it. Of course my dislike for border art kept me from including such but I know how to do it should I ever decide to.

 

[jmucchiello]

Then I go through and add bookmarks in Adobe Acrobat - this can take a while. Also adding hyperlinks to EVERY entry in the Index is beyond my level of patience. Adding hyperlinks inside Acrobat is a slow and painful process in my experience.

Maybe I won't buy acrobat. Generating the list of bookmarks in word and then pasting them into the postscript isn't hard. I just don't like doing it.

Tell me, if you generate the PDF and then change stuff in Quark and regenerate the PDF. Does acrobat have some way to load the bookmarks from the old file and set them up in the new copy of the file?

 

[Drawmack]

We already promote ourselves like whores (pardon the language) to get this far.

Guess how many sales you get from winning an award or picking up those 'wow' reviews. Damn close to squat. A five star review will bring in a surge of sales for a PDF product, but that "surge" is 5 to 7 extra sales.

Okay bad example. Let me say this. Look at sales of the firsts. The first pdf to include a print version for example. The sales of firsts are always very high, but everytime I mention this stuff everyone just argues instead of trying to find a ways to do it.

What gets sales is NOT bells and whistles, hyperlinking, animations, sound files and huge downloads. What gets the sales is people using your material in a game and their friends going 'cool'. And then them telling their friends. Useable , well written, well thought-out material will produce 95% of your sales.

To a point you are correct but those bells ans whistles might make the product more usable. For example we saw above someone contemplating a pronounciarion guide because names included clicks and whistles. Since I can't whistle if you want to appeal to me with this product that pronounciation guide would do it. As I stated above you would have to choose which bells and whistles to include wisely, but if done right it could really make the product something else.

And in regards to the "leaking bucket" you handed Dextra...

In the ONE product I have layed out with an Index, the Index is done in word (by the authors of the book, not by myself), then redone in the layout software (Quark). Then I go through and add bookmarks in Adobe Acrobat - this can take a while. Also adding hyperlinks to EVERY entry in the Index is beyond my level of patience. Adding hyperlinks inside Acrobat is a slow and painful process in my experience.

The largest pdf I've ever created was an 84 page user's manual for a high end game server I wrote for a client. Here is a breakdown of the time I spent on it.

Writting: 40 hours
Verifying accuracy: 40 hours
Page Layout: 20 hours
PDF Creation (with linked TOC and Bookmarks): 10 minutes
Linking the (3 page) index: 2 hours

/me hands hellhound the leaky bucket and says read your user's manual there are easier ways.

Also if you use headers properly the bookmarks generated make a linked TOC useless anyway.

[qoute]
And as I said, I have only had ONE product that I've done layout on with an Index, so that leaky pucket of yours holds water a lot less than Dextra's argument about hours in the day. I don't do indexes, I don't hyperlink them either.
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As I said above if you don't include an index that's a different story.

I've also priced getting a good character sheet made.

$50 a page

Now, mind you, this is NOT an auto-calculating character sheet. Those are 99% useless since they can never handle every piece of optional rules that gaming group X uses. For example, I won't be able to inlcude anything from any of the WotC splatbooks in this character sheet, thus making it useless for most users as those are the most common supplements for most gaming groups.

Okay that price is a bit prohibitive, did you check with your local college on getting students to do it?

Sure, maybe if we added all these bells and whistles we could increase the price as you say, but honestly, we are dealing with people who feel that PDFs are grossly overpriced already. A standard conversation with a gamer on-line asking how big a $5 PDF should be will get you a result in the 200 to 400 page range. The more we charge, the less we will sell.

Have you read why people feel they are being ripped off with pdfs? It's mainly because you don't include these bells and whistles.

Therefore, if we make our downloads a multimedia experience that will appeal to those people who are not currently appealed to by the current PDFs we produce, we may well be alienating many of our current buyers... and I honestly don't believe that the new customers will outnumber the old ones.

Noone can really say what will happen to sales until someone tries it. The closest you can come is by looking at products that have done something similar but those products were done by big name companies which will be the arguement used against those figures. I believe that sales would increase enough to pay for it especially if you offered a standard pdf for $5.00, download the multimedia experience for $15.00 (including the printable pdf), or get it all on cd for $20.00

 

[Drawmack]

I don't know too many people who use even city books as is. This walkthru only works if it stays away from areas that the individual DM is going to change. The longer the video, the more likely it will contain material the user doesn't want. Ultimately, the buyer should be showing the AVI to his players. But if he wants to change stuff around, the avi can become a hinderance.

Let me use, a non pdf product, freeport as an example. You could have one avi for each section of town. This would show the arcitectural style of that section of town. Maybe hit on a, very, few POIs but mostly would be an overview of the type of people who live here, the types of buildings you'll find and stuff like that.

But you still haven't told me why, when you do not use PCGen or Twin Rose, you would find my character sheet program any better than theirs? We wouldn't be satisfied by anyone's character sheet program.

Simplicity. I haven't tried Twin Rose's product out because I'm affraid I won't use it and therefor am scared to invest the money. However let me focus on e-Tools. What I don't like about e-Tools is that adding my homebrew and custom stuff to the system is very difficult and they included no help on making my own templates for printing stuff out. I use canned character sheets all the time though - maybe adding autocalc was a bad idea but if kept generic enough they work. The only reason I use homebrew character sheets is because I have a player who likes making them. If not for that I'd probably use Bastion's

Just because I don't use them doesn't mean no one uses them. Heck, there are threads where the poster says he isn't interest in 3.5E because he's afraid his tools will not be updated for some time after the books' release.

I tend away from the 3.5e worth it threads as they are the same thing ad nausium so I wasn't aware of this.

 

[jmucchiello]

Let me use, a non pdf product, freeport as an example. You could have one avi for each section of town. This would show the arcitectural style of that section of town. Maybe hit on a, very, few POIs but mostly would be an overview of the type of people who live here, the types of buildings you'll find and stuff like that.

But this sounds so expensive. Now you need a team of animation artists who can come up with subtle architectural differences throughout a city which seem believable based on its history. Some of the changes can be obvious and some must be subtle. But I still feel an AVI would be prohibitively expensive. If you pay $100 for a full page piece of artwork, shouldn't an AVI (which contains far more information) cost more? Even if I was using college students workin for credit, I'd feel bad if I wasn't paying them appropriately for their work.

Simplicity. What I don't like about e-Tools is that adding my homebrew and custom stuff to the system is very difficult and they included no help on making my own templates for printing stuff out.

Ah, the final piece of the puzzle. You want a Rides of Western Mountains character sheet to go with the RoWM PrC? A custom sheet for the game mechanics introduced in the PDF. That I've considered doing. But not the autocalc stuff.

I tend away from the 3.5e worth it threads as they are the same thing ad nausium so I wasn't aware of this.

I read this in those thread's infancy. There was an ENWorld notable who had this opinion of 3.5. I can't remember if it was Morrus or Eric. I'm guessing Eric but I'm not sure.

 

[Drawmack]

But this sounds so expensive. Now you need a team of animation artists who can come up with subtle architectural differences throughout a city which seem believable based on its history. Some of the changes can be obvious and some must be subtle. But I still feel an AVI would be prohibitively expensive. If you pay $100 for a full page piece of artwork, shouldn't an AVI (which contains far more information) cost more? Even if I was using college students workin for credit, I'd feel bad if I wasn't paying them appropriately for their work.

See now this I can sympathize with. However I would say you're in business now it's time to start acting like it. When using anyone a college student, a professional, a top of the ladder legend you pay them appropriatly when they are happy with their payment. Yeah I know this might sound like convoluted logic but really it's not. I wrote some of my best programs for $5.50 an hour cause I was working for the college but what I made doesn't go on my resumee the name of the robot I help design for our military does.

Ah, the final piece of the puzzle. You want a Rides of Western Mountains character sheet to go with the RoWM PrC? A custom sheet for the game mechanics introduced in the PDF. That I've considered doing. But not the autocalc stuff.

Exactly.

I read this in those thread's infancy. There was an ENWorld notable who had this opinion of 3.5. I can't remember if it was Morrus or Eric. I'm guessing Eric but I'm not sure.

I know that Morrus & Eric both hold a lot of weight on these boards however they are not the be all end all of gamers. IMHO I don't think that many, if any, people just follow them around blindly and I don't think they would want people too; that would make the boards a pretty boring place.

 

[jmucchiello]

I know that Morrus & Eric both hold a lot of weight on these boards however they are not the be all end all of gamers. IMHO I don't think that many, if any, people just follow them around blindly and I don't think they would want people too; that would make the boards a pretty boring place.

I wasn't appealing to authority, I was pointing out that you missed it even though it was said by at least one notable. IOW, perhaps you gave up on those threads too fast. I thought it was common knowledge on ENWorld that some people aren't switching to 3.5 until the computer tools are upgraded. This was news to you. I merely pointed out a famous name with that view.

Well, this conversation is drawing to a close. At least it got my post count up.

 

[JoeGKushner]

With the bells and whistles, not a lot of people are actually buying into it when it comes with the print media in the Auran modules so I really can't belief that people would put their money where their mouth is.

I say that some augmentation, like pop up boxes and perhaps forms, would make things more usable, but don't know if they'd incresae sales.

It's a difficult boat to sail because as we all know, ideas are cheap and the internet lets everysay say what they want without ever having to follow up on it.

I mean imagine if someone did put together this multi-media pacakage and charged $30 bones for it. I'd bet within the hour it'd be downloaded illegaly somewhere with pepole screaming about the insane price.

 

[Mark]

It's a difficult boat to sail because as we all know, ideas are cheap and the internet lets everysay say what they want without ever having to follow up on it.

Someday I will, as Archbishop of Gamedesignerbury, place the crown of EN-gland on thine head and the truth of what you say shall lead us all to...

No, really. I will...

Promise...