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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Steve Conan Trustrum" data-source="post: 2632894" data-attributes="member: 1620">Yes, it's James' site so nobody can refute that the ultimate decision remains his to make. However, that doesn't mean that nobody should voice concerns or shouldn't have concerns to begin with. The PDF industry is still so new that the decisions made by its primary storefront can have either great or catastrophic results--no other storefront even comes close to the name recognition, options, and exposure that RPGnow offers.I don't have a problem with new publishers coming in having to show in some manner that they are going to make a serious go at a business and have the plan to do so rather than just being some guy or gal who wants to print his house rules with stick figure illos. Like any other industry, a business has to approach a retailer's buyers and sell their product and their company to get that product into the stores. And while it's great that James has left open movement from the Edge to RPGnow, my concern is that the branding seperation that accompanies the two sites will stall overall industry growth by leaving most of RPGnow's customer exposure to the people who already have the lion's share of it: the copmanies that are also selling in the FLGS. If this happens, it could easily result in a drop of PDF sales across the board because, frankly, sites that cater primarily to print publishers (such as DrivethruRPG does) aren't doing much to grow the industry. Such sites are simply feeding upon an existing market and sell to pepole who are already aware of the product through its print version--just look at the fact that Drivethru offers no purchasable marketing options (such as a banner ad) but rather assumes that if you're there you already know what you want.For the industry to grow, there has to be a clear message to the customer that the PDF industry is about more than offering electronic versions of the same books you can buy in the store--the message has to be that products developed to be PDFs rather than print are themselves viable products and gaming tools. I'm worried that this dividing at the #1 PDF storefront will send the opposite message even the seperation does have some other, more immediate advantages.</blockquote>

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