What if paper books stopped selling?

[Cergorach]

There will first need to be a good electronic book reader before you can even think about replacing deadtree books. There are some devices (mostly deployed in japan) that fulfill that role, there are some truley good concepts out there, but they are hindred by greed. The Sony LIBRIé e-book reader for example is a marvel of technology, it's only drawback is that you can only read a format sold by sony. That might not seem like a big disadvantage, but it is, especially when there are only a couple of thousand books available and to gain access to these books you'll have to first pay a monthly membership fee and then pay for renting books (you never own them it seems). After x many days the book stops being readible. It seems that Sony wanted to pull an 'ipod' (only better, read: make even more money) and failed miserably (even the japanese find the whole idea of renting books at buying prices laughable). There are some folks that are trying to 'hack' the LIBRIé, but that will only make the thing viable for technically savy people.

 

[Alan Shutko]

Think about it. You still have to pay for writing, art, development, layout, etc. What you're saving on is printing and distribution costs, and that is a massive savings, certainly.

If you cut out printing and distribution, I believe you could cut the price by half and still make bigger profits than print. The amount of money a publisher gets from the retail price is puny.

 

[Mouseferatu]

If you cut out printing and distribution, I believe you could cut the price by half and still make bigger profits than print. The amount of money a publisher gets from the retail price is puny.

Indeed, printing and distribution is a massive part of the cost. As I said, if that were it alone, it would be possible to sell the books more cheaply and make more profit. (Though I don't believe that half price is truly feasible, you could probably regularly get by on 2/3 or 3/4.)

But when you combine that with the fact that the PDF market is smaller, and will (I believe) always remain smaller, than the RPG market as a whole, you start losing out again. If you sell 500 books at a 10 dollar profit, that's still less profit than selling 2,000 books at a 4 dollar profit. PDFs simply aren't a big enough portion of the market to pay for themselves as a major company's sole source of income, no matter how much cheaper they may be.

 

[Blue_Kryptonite]

My personal feeling is that you can't crack open and smell a new PDF, and you can't fan its pages for that "Rifffff" sound. You can't slam it shut with a satisfying crack. And you can't even get a paper cut. I don't buy PDFs. They're no fun.

 

[Desdichado]

In response to the title: what if Great Cthulhu's steaming head fell out of the sky? That's about as likely.

In response to what someone else said: you can curl up in bed with a pdf, if you read it on a pda. As those get more and more common, ebooks and pdf and txt files will probably become much more common as well. Eventually.

 

[Ironclad]

Call me a luddite... but I think that would be the deathknell of the hobby.

Allow me a moment to explain....

In assuming something like this you need to be sure that
a. everyone knows about the "hobby".
b. everyone has access to the .pdf
c. it has some "shiny" appeal.

(Donning flame retardant suit)

About 10-15 years ago the Sydney conventions had attendences around 300-500 people. These are the days of paper entry forms where you would sit around with your friends and go through the games you wanted to play on the lounge room floor or in a coffee shop. (Australian conventions have preregistration and organised schedules as opposed to ticketed systems).

About 5 years ago something happened. A lot of entry forms went "electronic". Notifications of conventions were on newgroups.

Nowadays, Sydney conventions would be lucky to get 100 people at the most. Some still struggle on with reduced numbers... but those halycon days are behind us here.

To be fair there are some other factors involved. A lot of talented "old guard" writers and players moved out of the convention scene. They weren't "young turks" ready to replace them. The card game phenomenon was on the rise. There was a fair bit of politics and a certain amount of factionalism.

Moving to a .pdf format might have a similar effect. I suspect that your influx of players to the hobby would suffer and attrition would do the rest.

"Video killed the radio star"

 

[Philip]

It is not going to be a printed books vs. PDF competition. It is gonna be both.

It used to be that you had your photo's developed, now you can print them in the luxury of your own home. I am even seeing an upsurge in 'useless' household appliances like bread-making machines. Why should you do this when buying the bread is cheaper (time and money wise)? It's a luxury thing.

People will pay for the feel of books, but also like the convenience of the electronic format, so in the end they will try to get both. They will assemble the new RPG books from the latest (errata'ed) electronic format at home, even choosing what rules to include in their, and then print and bind it at home, using their deluxe print-and-bind-o-matic device. Your own custom PHB. When it tears, gets old, or enough new errata arrive, you will just print out a new one!

 

[Orius]

until i can curl up on my bed with a pdf, paper books arent gonna stop selling.

I hate reading books of a computer screen. That's all I have to say.

Hear, hear!

I too prefer hardcopies. Sure .pdfs are great in their own way (especially if you can copy and paste from them), but I prefer books to electronic documents. It's just easier to pull a book from the shelf and open it to the relevant page than it is to turn on a compute and access the file. And I don't like reading from computer screens either.

 

[nopantsyet]

In response to the title: what if Great Cthulhu's steaming head fell out of the sky? That's about as likely.

In response to what someone else said: you can curl up in bed with a pdf, if you read it on a pda. As those get more and more common, ebooks and pdf and txt files will probably become much more common as well. Eventually.

Eventually is the key. Once electronic media achieve parity with print media in terms of print quality, viewable page, and user interface, there will be a revolution in the way we consume the printed word.

Until then, PDAs are too small, too low-res, too hard on the eyes, and too expensive to take to the beach/on a boat/in the tub.

And besides, the book as we know it is the result of thousands of years of refinement of printed media. We're just not going to top it in only a few years (11 since Newton).

But I'm still holding out hope that someday soon we will.

 

[tarchon]

I hate reading books of a computer screen. That's all I have to say.

I'm the same way with discussion boards.