malladin
Explorer
Given Mongoose Matt's analysis and predictions column for the print industry, I thought it might be interesting to have a similar discussion on the PDF market place. I'm only kicking this off because I had the idea, as opposed tothinking that I'm any great luminary of the PDF world. Anyway, I thought the PDF market is characterised by having lots of small guys contributing in smaler doses than the relative few big guns of the print industry, so I thought I'd kick things off and see of other PDF publishers fancied chipping in as it goes along...
First lets have a look at the year for the PDF industry. I think the PDF industry has gone through some massive changes in the past year, so I'll start by highighting those. Firstly, there has been a good number of print publishers releasing PDFs, although this seems to have mainly involved out-of-print books. Whilst this is great of the consumer, I'm not sure it really helps the PDF industry much. I don't think this will particularly bring in new customers to the PDF industry, but will just fill up the front page of RPGNow, meaning that first-time release products slip off a lot quicker and this will probably impact on sales. However, there has been some great initiatives by the print publishers that us smaller PDF-only guys should applaud. Mongoose and Mystic Eye have both released products straight to PDF, and there were a number of big 'whole system' freebies, such as Ars Magica. Things like these can only bring more customers to the PDF market place, we just need, as an industry, to find a way to convert these customers into buying wider from the PDF marketplace.
The main change that has directly affected the collection of us small PDF-only publishers is the massive increase in the rate of product releases. To illustrate this, we had 2 products released in 2000, which were numbers 292 and 545. Our 2003 releases ranged from no 655 to no 2146. From day 1 to the end of 2002, RPGNow had approximately 600 products. In the whole of 2003 there was nearly another 2000 products added!!! I think this is a problem for us smaller PDF publishers, as it means that we have a lot less time on teh front page of RPGNow, and I think anyone who had products out before this year will tell you that the front page used to be the lions share of sales. Now I thin it comes from reviews. Maybe this is better for the consumer, but it means that we have to think about geting products to reviewers and finding ways to get people to come to those sites that have the reviews on them as well as to RPGNow. The RPGNow site, it should be said, has made some good efforts to cope with this problem, but the time a product gets on the front page is still much reduced from 2002.
In many ways the PDF industry has been a victim of its own success. There are now an awful lot more smal-time publishers with one or two products available. That said, I don't see this situation improving at all, so I suppose I'd just better get used to it. It might be an idea to consolidate our companies together, as Nat20 and Ambient did, but most of us now have too many conflicting products and too much of an opinion about our own product lines to be able to successfully consolidate. As such I think the PDF industry, at our level, is going to become more a case of 'gamers with products to sell' than any kind of proper company to rival SSS, WOTC, AEG or Mongoose.
Now lets have a look at some of the key products of the year, concentrating of PDF-only/mainly publishers.
Back at the start of the year, one product that comes to mind which caused a BIG stir was Daemoneye's Psionics Companion. This product seemed to have so many people arguing about it that peoplejust had to buy it to see for themsleves. Some people gave it 5 stars, others gave it 1. Why? I still don't know as I've never read it so I'm not going to comment on the product, just that it caused a commotion and stuck around in the top 10 whilst it was all going on.
Probably the next biggie was Expedious Retreat's Western Europe. This was an absolute phenomenon. I'd not seen anything else just stay at tehtop of the charts for so long. This just goes to show that if you have a really good product up there you will do very well from it.
in late spring/early summer there were three releases that came very close together from three well established PDF-only publishers. Our own Forgotten Heroes Sorcerer, ST Cooley Publishing's Enchiridion of Elided Enduements of the Expanse and Throwing Dice's Character Customisation were all well recieved both in sales and reviews and I for one felt a kind of kinship of publishers at the time.
We were also treated this year to the arrival of the Game Mechanics, and with them the Modern Players companion. This was the highlight of a number of D20 Modern supplements that seem to be very successful in PDF format. Blood and Fists is also worth mentioning here, another D20M product that showed that the PDF market place likes D20M. I can only hope that this trend comtinues, as we have our own D20 Moden book due out soon.
Later on in the year came Arcana Unearthed, a massive print release from SSS, and Monte backed it up with supporting PDFs, most noticably Diamond Throne. Never before had a campaign setting had anything like reasobnable sales, and this may prove to be an important PDF release. Our own DarkLore campaign setting has sold much better than we expected and probably owe Monte for letting the PDF buyer know that a campaign setting is worth buying on PDF.
So, now for some predictions. I think the expansion of new PDF publishers will continue, but will slow down (as has actually already become evident). I think we'll find reviews and reviewers becoming more important on sales, and therefore product quality will have to increase. I don't think we'll see any company mergers, although some would be welcome to help clear up the marketplace and try and create some bigger brand names by combining two or three smaller ones. I also doubt that we'll see any more PDF publishers make the leap into print, and if we do, it will only be with one particularly special product, as opposed to a whole line. As the market place grows, I also think that sales will decrease slightly, making teh amount of money available for art a massive consideration and a lot more clip art will be seen being used. Hopefully this demand can be matched by some other excellent clip art to add to whats already there.
Thats all for now,
Ben Redmond, Malladin's Gate Press
First lets have a look at the year for the PDF industry. I think the PDF industry has gone through some massive changes in the past year, so I'll start by highighting those. Firstly, there has been a good number of print publishers releasing PDFs, although this seems to have mainly involved out-of-print books. Whilst this is great of the consumer, I'm not sure it really helps the PDF industry much. I don't think this will particularly bring in new customers to the PDF industry, but will just fill up the front page of RPGNow, meaning that first-time release products slip off a lot quicker and this will probably impact on sales. However, there has been some great initiatives by the print publishers that us smaller PDF-only guys should applaud. Mongoose and Mystic Eye have both released products straight to PDF, and there were a number of big 'whole system' freebies, such as Ars Magica. Things like these can only bring more customers to the PDF market place, we just need, as an industry, to find a way to convert these customers into buying wider from the PDF marketplace.
The main change that has directly affected the collection of us small PDF-only publishers is the massive increase in the rate of product releases. To illustrate this, we had 2 products released in 2000, which were numbers 292 and 545. Our 2003 releases ranged from no 655 to no 2146. From day 1 to the end of 2002, RPGNow had approximately 600 products. In the whole of 2003 there was nearly another 2000 products added!!! I think this is a problem for us smaller PDF publishers, as it means that we have a lot less time on teh front page of RPGNow, and I think anyone who had products out before this year will tell you that the front page used to be the lions share of sales. Now I thin it comes from reviews. Maybe this is better for the consumer, but it means that we have to think about geting products to reviewers and finding ways to get people to come to those sites that have the reviews on them as well as to RPGNow. The RPGNow site, it should be said, has made some good efforts to cope with this problem, but the time a product gets on the front page is still much reduced from 2002.
In many ways the PDF industry has been a victim of its own success. There are now an awful lot more smal-time publishers with one or two products available. That said, I don't see this situation improving at all, so I suppose I'd just better get used to it. It might be an idea to consolidate our companies together, as Nat20 and Ambient did, but most of us now have too many conflicting products and too much of an opinion about our own product lines to be able to successfully consolidate. As such I think the PDF industry, at our level, is going to become more a case of 'gamers with products to sell' than any kind of proper company to rival SSS, WOTC, AEG or Mongoose.
Now lets have a look at some of the key products of the year, concentrating of PDF-only/mainly publishers.
Back at the start of the year, one product that comes to mind which caused a BIG stir was Daemoneye's Psionics Companion. This product seemed to have so many people arguing about it that peoplejust had to buy it to see for themsleves. Some people gave it 5 stars, others gave it 1. Why? I still don't know as I've never read it so I'm not going to comment on the product, just that it caused a commotion and stuck around in the top 10 whilst it was all going on.
Probably the next biggie was Expedious Retreat's Western Europe. This was an absolute phenomenon. I'd not seen anything else just stay at tehtop of the charts for so long. This just goes to show that if you have a really good product up there you will do very well from it.
in late spring/early summer there were three releases that came very close together from three well established PDF-only publishers. Our own Forgotten Heroes Sorcerer, ST Cooley Publishing's Enchiridion of Elided Enduements of the Expanse and Throwing Dice's Character Customisation were all well recieved both in sales and reviews and I for one felt a kind of kinship of publishers at the time.
We were also treated this year to the arrival of the Game Mechanics, and with them the Modern Players companion. This was the highlight of a number of D20 Modern supplements that seem to be very successful in PDF format. Blood and Fists is also worth mentioning here, another D20M product that showed that the PDF market place likes D20M. I can only hope that this trend comtinues, as we have our own D20 Moden book due out soon.
Later on in the year came Arcana Unearthed, a massive print release from SSS, and Monte backed it up with supporting PDFs, most noticably Diamond Throne. Never before had a campaign setting had anything like reasobnable sales, and this may prove to be an important PDF release. Our own DarkLore campaign setting has sold much better than we expected and probably owe Monte for letting the PDF buyer know that a campaign setting is worth buying on PDF.
So, now for some predictions. I think the expansion of new PDF publishers will continue, but will slow down (as has actually already become evident). I think we'll find reviews and reviewers becoming more important on sales, and therefore product quality will have to increase. I don't think we'll see any company mergers, although some would be welcome to help clear up the marketplace and try and create some bigger brand names by combining two or three smaller ones. I also doubt that we'll see any more PDF publishers make the leap into print, and if we do, it will only be with one particularly special product, as opposed to a whole line. As the market place grows, I also think that sales will decrease slightly, making teh amount of money available for art a massive consideration and a lot more clip art will be seen being used. Hopefully this demand can be matched by some other excellent clip art to add to whats already there.
Thats all for now,
Ben Redmond, Malladin's Gate Press
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