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Message: <blockquote data-quote="kenmarable" data-source="post: 4982489" data-attributes="member: 40359">While I can see jim's point and can generally agree (although I have problems with labels, but they are just labels), I really think he's missing the point in that the "Post-Modern" age of RPGs is already on it's way out.Yes, distributors aren't picking up the small publishers like they used to (although I think the height of that was in the 3.0 era earlier this decade), but the talented amateurs and even talented professionals are on their way to bypassing the distributors. I don't know what trendy term to call that age, but unless they can key into the digital arena, eventually the distributors will be long gone. Between Paizo's direct subscriptions and WotC's DDI, already many "talented professionals" are finding bypassing distributors to be profitable. Of course, they can't get rid of the distributors yet, but the writing is on the wall and distribution has to change or die in the near future. Direct internet sales and digital products can benefit RPG publishers greatly.And it's not just in RPGs. Newspapers are going under because blogs, Twitter, and other social media are becoming more popular sources of news. Newspapers need to either provide something the others can't, or die. (For one thing, I hope that pushes TV news away from chasing the latest breaking story and back into slow, more in-depth, thoughtful news and ceding the breaking news to social media. Hey, I can hope.) In the music arena, record labels are doing terrible but independent musicians are thriving - because they are going direct to consumers. It's a painful transition and many old business won't survive it.Plus, when I talk about digital RPG products, I'm not necessarily referring to PDFs. Personally, I think that years down the road, PDFs will be the 8-tracks/audio casettes of RPG publishing. Very popular for a while, but soon replaced by better media.</blockquote>

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