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

[Kerrick]

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.

And along that same vein, I'd like to add: put up or shut up, Drawmack. Put out a product with all these bells and whistles and prove us all wrong. I for one think you're blowing smoke, that all these extras will do nothing but a) increase size of the pdf exponentially (and thus the DL time), and b) most likely increase the price. I'm a writer/editor, not a programmer - I write stuff. I have no interest or desire to do hyperlinks in Adobe; I've already got enough things to do as it is. If I'm going to spend the extra time to make look all pretty, I'm going to want to be recompensed for my time and effort. I do this for the love of the game, and because it's fun, and because I can make a little money off it. When it becomes so much work that it's no longer fun, then it's time to pack it in and move on to another line of work.

 

[The Sigil]

PDFs are NOT more expensive...

I couldn't let the comparison go without trying one of my own. I grabbed 5 "print" books and 5 PDF "books," trying to select some representative samples to find out which one really is "cheaper." FWIW, I selected PDF products that I considered among the best ones out there (quality-wise). Oddly enough, all were well over the $5 mark in price (a bit of a surprise to me, I must admit). Note that Forgotten Heroes: Paladin is currently on sale for half off (I used "sale" prices that default to "regular price" since the sales seem perpetual on all the other ones) , so that would improve its standing below considerably.

Anyway, I'll name names - here are the products I used...

Defenders of the Faith (WotC)
Masters of the Wild (WotC)
Encyclopedia Arcane: Demonology (Mongoose)
Dungeons (AEG)
Mithril: City of the Golem (SSS)

Librum Equitis Compiled (EN Publishing)
Forgotten Heroes: Paladin (Maladin's Gate Press)
The Book of Eldritch Might 3 (Malhavoc)
The Banewarrens (Malhavoc)
The Enchiridion of Treasures and Objects d'Art (S.T. Cooley Publishing)

We will rank them first by cost/page, going from lowest to highest.
1.) Librum Equitis Compiled - 6.8 cents per page (117 pages, $7.95 price)
2.) Enchiridion - 6.9 cents per page (144 pages, $10)
3.) Banewarrens - 7.8 cents per page (128 pages, $10)
4.) Book of Eldritch Might 3 - 9.4 cents per page (96 pages, $9)
5.) Forgotten Heroes: Paladins - 10.2 cents per page (64 pages, $6.50)
6.) Mithril - City of the Golem - 16.3 cents per page (110 pages, $17.95)
7.) Dungeons - 16.9 cents per page (118 pages, $19.95)
8t.) Defenders of the Faith - 20.7 cents per page (96 pages, $19.95)
8t.) Masters of the Wild - 20.7 cents per page (96 pages, $19.95)
10.) Demonology - 23.4 cents per page (64 pages, $14.95)

AVERAGE* PDF COST PER PAGE: 8.2 cents per page
AVERAGE* PRINT COST PER PAGE: 19.6 cents per page

*Computed by averaging the cost per page for each product, not by summing total pages and total product cost

Note that the average cost per page is more than double for print products - it is in fact 2.4 times as much! IMO, that tends to discredit the argument PDFs are "too expensive."

Similarly, we can compare cost per word.
1.) Librum Equitis Compiled - 0.0094 cents per word
2.) Banewarrens - 0.0105 cents per word
3.) Enchiridion - 0.0109 cents per word
4.) Forgotten Heroes: Paladin - 0.0122 cents per word
5.) Book of Eldritch Might 3 - 0.0129 cents per word
6.) Masters of the Wild - 0.0252 cents per word
7.) Mithril - City of the Golem - 0.0257 cents per word
8.) Defenders of the Faith - 0.0264 cents per word
9.) AEG Dungeons - 0.0282 cents per word
10.) Mongoose Demonology - 0.0388 cents per word

AVERAGE PDF COST PER WORD: 0.0112 cents per word
AVERAGE PRINT COST PER WORD: 0.0289 cents per word

No big surprise there, either - the ratio is 2.57 to 1 in favor of PDFs.

You can argue a lot of things, but please don't argue that PDFs are more expensive. They are clearly LESS expensive, on average, by a considerable margin. Even if it costs you 10 cents per page to print and bind a PDF (i.e., 20 cents per page for double-sided), that's STILL just 18.2 cents per page compared to 19.6 cents per page for print... and that's a fairly high printing cost estimate, if I'm not mistaken. YMMV.

Just trying to put everyone in possession of some incontrovertible facts here.

Some of the other points raised ARE interesting ones, and I'm trying to envision to myself how I might incorporate bells and whistles cheaply, but I think it's a point of fact that a PDF is, on average, cheaper than a print product, at least if you want to count "per page" or "per word." Obviously, they're empirically cheaper.

--The Sigil

 

[Mark]

Re: PDFs are NOT more expensive...

FWIW, I selected PDF products that I considered among the best ones out there (quality-wise).
...

The Enchiridion of Treasures and Objects d'Art (S.T. Cooley Publishing)
...

Just trying to put everyone in possession of some incontrovertible facts here.
...

--The Sigil

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[Drawmack]

And along that same vein, I'd like to add: put up or shut up, Drawmack. Put out a product with all these bells and whistles and prove us all wrong. I for one think you're blowing smoke, that all these extras will do nothing but a) increase size of the pdf exponentially (and thus the DL time), and b) most likely increase the price. I'm a writer/editor, not a programmer - I write stuff. I have no interest or desire to do hyperlinks in Adobe; I've already got enough things to do as it is. If I'm going to spend the extra time to make look all pretty, I'm going to want to be recompensed for my time and effort. I do this for the love of the game, and because it's fun, and because I can make a little money off it. When it becomes so much work that it's no longer fun, then it's time to pack it in and move on to another line of work.

Cept the fact that I'm not a publisher and have no desire to be a publisher. I was speaking as a fan explaining what I would like to see and continuing to discuss the issue. I did not intend to offend. I feel that saying, put up or shut up to a fan and customer is extremely bad business sense, would you ever do that in your day job?

First it would take a full on moron to even attempt to claim that adding bells and whistles doesn't add to file size.

Secondly it would take the same full on moron to say that it won't increase price.

Thirdly it will increase the time to market.

Most of the things I suggested were not that far out there. Take linking indexes and cross references for example. In other facets of the pdf industry not doing this is considered amaturish, however in the rpg pdf market it is the standard - I simply ask why?

Why can't an electronic publisher even properly link their document?

Why are electronic publishers so against using technology in their products?

Why doesn't someone, anyone, try it and see what happens instead of saying it is impossible because.....?

Why doesn't someone find creative ways around the cost prohibitions?

Why doesn't someone get creative with delivery methods so that large files aren't a problem anymore?

It is these whys that I usually do not get sufficient answers to. Just so everyone knows it takes to long to link a pdf is not an acceptable answer from a professional publisher. You'd be pretty upset if I told you that your website is buggey because error checking takes too long wouldn't you?

 

[jgbrowning]

I think the main issue here Drawmack is every hour I spend working on a product decreases my per hour wage. Unless that hour of work increases sales enough to at least cover that hour or *cross fingers* in fact increases sales, that was an hour I shouldn't have worked. If it doesn't maintain or increase my per hour salary, I'm forced to ask myself, "Why did you work that extra hour?" It is because of these things that I do think that "It takes to long." is a very professional answer to some of your questions.

I am a fan. I love the game. But I can't let that change the basic fact that I'm publishing for profit. Not for any other reason. Not ego, not desire for community, not because I can do better. Although I appreciate people listening to my opinions, I like talking/joking with the guys here, and I do think I can do better (at least in some things), the reason I'm publishing is only for profit.

The majority of what your asking for wouldn't take very much time if you have the right software and design the document from the ground up to utilize those advantages. I wouldn't be surprised if the software can do a hell of a lot more than I know how to use it to do. I also wouldn't be surprised if I'm not the only publisher in that boat.

I agree with you that bookmarking/hyperlinked table of contents/hyperlinked indexes should be common in every PDF as they shouldn't take more than an hour to do, if you have the right software and plan ahead accordingly. The other things you speak of may be as easy, but I have no experience in that realm, so I cannot do them for my products.

I understand your wants as a customer. But, IMHO, those wants are not feasible yet in the PDF industry. It simply doesn't make enough money yet. An analogy, albeit poor, is to compare what you want from PDFs to a person who only wants hard cover/full color books. I just don't think its possible yet.

But, even with all that, I'm going to be the first to try out the massively hyperlinked angle. Internet Arcana may do very well, or it may just do ok. It pretty much has to do very well for me to ever think about doing it again because I can do many other things that I know will make me more money on a per hour basis.

joe b.

 

[Storminator]

Re: PDFs are NOT more expensive...

PDFs are NOT more expensive...

<SNIP>

--The Sigil

Actually that comparison rather astounded me from the beginning:

Picking some random PDFs, some from the leaders of the PDF industry, we have page counts of 35, 48, and 69. These respectively sell for $5, $5.75, and $6.95. <SNIP>

Now, take some books from the print industry, some D20, some not. These three products (randomly chosen) are $19.95, $27.95, and $29.95. They're 144, 160, and 224 pages in length.

My first thought when he got this far was, "do I want the $20 book...OR ... all three pdfs!" The 3 pdfs works out to 152 pages for $17.70

Is it just me, or does that price comparison blow the doors off the $27.95 for 160 pages?

I'll also throw in that if I'm bored at work I can pop off a $5 pdf, and if I read the book instead of going to the cafeteria for lunch, I break even. Not many print rpg products I can get for the price of lunch.

PS

 

[JoeGKushner]

The price breaks you're seeing on the PDF assume that you're not printing them. Ink and Paper add a substantial cost to the PDFs ranging from .02 cents to .14 cents per page. This is even more true if you're like me and use heavy stock paper.

 

[mythusmage]

I'm an overweight 49 year old college drop-out with Clinical Depression, Panic Disorder, Anxiety Disorder, and a 50 milligram a day Paxil habit. Beat that. (The time I got Groucho Mark royally ticked at me is another story, so we'll skip it.)

Now that we've gotten the chest beating out of the way...

I ran across a PDF distiller that'll do PDFs three ways; screen, ink-jet printer, professional press. (The last about 6500 dots per inch) And all for $100.00 U. S. a license for the Mac version. Makes it easier to go from PDF to hardcopy publishing.

My preferences are: Good layout, text dense, skinny outer margins, well placed appropriate art, good writing on an interesting subject.

Right now I'm using AppleWorks for laying down and laying out the text, charts, and tables. When I can get the manual printed out (503 page PDF) I'll start working with an app known as Nisus writer. Let's me do stuff I can't with AW.

Once the dang book gets done I hope to have it out in PDF both in the 8.5 by 11 format, and as a series of booklets using a Post Script driver I got from Adobe. Figure $20.00 U. S. for the standard, and $3.00 U. S. each for the booklets (11 total). (It's a long book, I'm figuring around 400 pages for the full length PDF). With the booklets hitting the market first.

BTW, I do have a publisher showing an interest (he's posted on this thread), and he's forgotten to answer I question I asked, and I reiterate, "Can you handle an AppleWorks file? AW6 that is."

Well, enough of the crass self promotion.

I don't buy much in gaming material these days because I don't have the money. So I look for stuff that has good content, well presented, that I can rip o... ...adapt to my own purposes. If you don't have enough material to fill a 48 page book without large type and huge margins, then publish a smaller book. If you end up with enough white space to fit in another 500 words in 14 point Helvetica, then publish a smaller book.

Have I ever mentioned I hate excess white space?

Good writing can make up for a dull subject, an interesting subject can make up for dull writing, but nothing makes up for a bad layout.

My goals are to produce a good product, and make enough to get a new iMac. In that order. Everything else will be gravy. Do what you like, do it well, and make sure it stands out in a field filled with mediocrity of one sort or another.

One thing before I end this, and you know who you are. Would you start rejecting artists? So he's an old time gaming buddy and you still have the first character portrait he ever did of your first paladin/sorcerer/druid/bard. He aint that dang good, and he aint getting any better. You need art, and you can't find anybody who can do professional grade work, use clip art. There's tons of it out there, and some of it is real good. You don't need to publish anybody who can scribble a vaguely human form. You want to publish a professional item, use a professional artist. Even if it is his first paying gig.

And with that rant out of the way, I'm off to find a place to hide until folks are merely irate.

 

[Dextra]

You know, Drawmack, your posts in this thread have been awfully irritating and inflammatory. Just because you put a smiley beside an incendiary comment doesn't make it unoffensive.

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.

Are you saying that Ambient Inc. and E.N.Publishing products are NOT a cut above the rest? Or that we don't have good sales? Even with exceptional sales of 500 copies, your pipedreams would break the budget for a book, or push the price so high that JoeAverage PDF consumer wouldn't bite. I believe that the author should never receive less than the artists/cartographers/layout/publisher, but what you have in mind would dramatically decrease the author's cut. And make for huge file sizes, which is a deterrent to consumers. And make for prices above $10/PDF, which would be yet another deterrent.

I've never liked the "put your money where your mouth is" argument. But I'll buy a beer for the first publisher to put out a product with all of your bells and whistles that manages to do a decent payout. Heck, I'll buy them a lap dance.

 

[tensen]

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.

Done for the most part. Although only real difference in the amount of ink used. Because we intend our customers to be using cut and paste to grab the particulars they need for their own campaign, or print the pages they need.

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.

We hyperlinked to follow the storyline of journals through a product.... it wasn't used. Why would it be used in the majority of sourcebooks?

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

We are game designers... we provide written material to enhance your imagination. If we were computer game designers.. that medium might make more sense. But I for one am desiging d20 products, not Neverwinter Nights. Sound might be fun.. in fact some of our designers have played with such... but it isn't intended as professional work.

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

You are talking about things software companies can and have done. Why not leave it to them?

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.

Well for one.. I'm designing for print. I just happen to be using PDF as a medium at this moment. PDFs are catching on now for their ease of use, low cost, and compatability. Once we start addiing animation, sounds, and other bells and whistles.. we'll also have to start adding staff to support the software we are now selling. I for one personally use Acrobat 4... there are normal documents that don't come out right... whereas if you use animation and I don't upgrade.. likely I'll be paying for something that doesn't work. No thanks.

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.

I'm a network administrator and new tech is great.
However I'm also a game designer... and I want to provide functional game mechanics and work that a gamer can use. Bells and whistles are only neat the first time.... if that.