What if paper books stopped selling?

[was]

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

Ditto...

 

[Turanil]

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!

I like this!!!

 

[Tetsubo]

I'm the same way with discussion boards.

I disagree. I spend, max, about 15 minutes each day checking out EN World. I can spend hours and hours reading a book. The physical book is also part of the experience for me. The touch of the paper, the smell, the sound of a turning page. Not to mention that the only technology I need to read a book is light. And that is free for half the day on average. I have never purchased a PDF. I don't plan on doing so. If a book doesn't see actual print, it doesn't get added to my collection.

Though I have to admit that storage space with PDF's is nice. I live in a two bedroom apartment and we have 21 bookshelves...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

We'll be in a nigh-paperless society before this hobby goes pure electronic.

While you can always print a pdf, it still doesn't have the charm of a book.

Plus, if you haven't printed the pdf, it makes it hard to have a bunch of people huddled around a computer screen saying things like "Go to page 111, I need to check a spell!" and "Where is that grappling rule?" With only one computer to go around, that space at the desk would get pretty small...

 

[TheAuldGrump]

And possibility 3 - bookstores able to print on demand. The cost of the equipment to do so has been dropping steadily, and already there are publishers who print to order, Ligtning Press being the one that I can think of off hand.

A great deal of what drives up the price for a good many books is the cost of returns, heck, that is part of what killed TSR.

The Auld Grump

 

[Rasyr]

WotC would sell the D&D license to another company and get out of the biz altogether rather than go PDF-only.

What makes you think that they haven't been trying to sell it already? Then again, not many companies are going to be willing to pay approximately 30 million for something that WotC has effectively given away for free. Or for something that they don't own the movie rights to (and possibly the electronic game right - although they may have gotten those back now).

To me, WotC's tentative steps into the pdf market via DTRPG, and pricing identical to MSRP seems more like that they are trying to prove to themselves that the PDF market won't work more than anything else.

Besides, when you tally up all the different factors, PDFs aren't more cost-effective than print books.

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.

Correct! All those costs still have to be met, but also remember that companies do not sell products to distributors and stores at full price either, but rather at approximately 40%-60% of cover price. Those companies that sell their physical books online do so at cover price because of the retailers for the most part. If they did not, the retailers would stop carrying their products (Amazon and other deep discounters are another thorn in the retailer's side and one that they have been complaining about for years).

I know that the company I work for sells PDFs for 50%-60% of cover price, and that we sell them like hotcakes. This still gives us approximately the same profit margin as selling a physical book, thus we make about the same (more actually, since there is no printing figured into the expenses for it). So PDFs can be a viable source of revenue, but it has to be done correctly.

When we first released HARP as a PDF, I asked a couple of PDF publishers what sort of numbers would constitute a PDF being a success. The number I was given for sales in the first 3 months is less than the number of copies we sold in that first week (we almost broke those numbers over that first weekend, but were shy by about 10%)

Since then, all of our PDFs have sold very well.....

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

I think that you are correct here, that it will be both. The final form for this has yet to be determined though. I know that we are looking at (once our new shopping cart is online) at bundling print and PDF copies of books together as a value pack type of deal, along with several other ideas we have cooking.

The next 5 - 10 years is going to be a time of change and growth for the rpg industry, and companies will have to change if they want to be able to compete effectively.

And possibility 3 - bookstores able to print on demand. The cost of the equipment to do so has been dropping steadily, and already there are publishers who print to order, Ligtning Press being the one that I can think of off hand.

And in just a few months there will be at least one publisher who prints his own books in-house, ICE. The technology is there already for the printing of books (soft covers at least). ICE will be getting that technology (boss making a final inspection at a book store that does print books in-store later this week, and then about 6-8 weeks for it to be installed in our offices).

The possibilities of this technology are astounding.

A great deal of what drives up the price for a good many books is the cost of returns, heck, that is part of what killed TSR.

I am not sure about that, although returns only happen through distributors who deal with the bookstore chains, and not the regular hobby distributors. Returns are a pain in the rear though and create all sorts of accounting headaches and so forth. It is possibly a factor, but I am just not sure of how much of one.

On the other hand, a greater cause for the increase in the prices of books is the fact that while printing technologies have gotten better and less expensive, printing costs (for publishers) do not. This, I think, is a greater cause of increased prices over the years.

 

[Buttercup]

In this way, RPG publishing is like mainstream publishing. Paper books aren't going away any time soon. Why? Because a book is more than the ideas it contains. It's a convenient, portable package. It smells good, feels good and looks good. Many people love having collections of them, because we consider them beautiful and comforting.

When e-paper is finally perfected, we can talk about the impending demise of books. But the death-knell has not yet sounded. Looking into my crystal ball, I'd say that books will continue to be produced for our lifetimes, even the youngest here, because...well because we like them and will buy them.

 

[Zappo]

Electronic paper is becoming rather good, you know. I think that in a few years, devices that are just as readable as paper should become quite cheap and versatile.

 

[Buttercup]

Zappo, I've seen demos of e-paper, and "rather good" is overstating the case.

I don't deny that viable e-paper will eventually exist. I don't deny that some folks will embrace it. But books will still be beloved (and more to the point, purchased) by many people, either exclusively or in addition to e-books.

I think that where electronic publishing *will* replace print completely is in the academic arena. Indeed this is already happening. The days of the paper college textbook are numbered.

But books that people actually *want* to buy? As I said in my post above, there are reasons people like physical books, and I don't anticipate that those reasons will vanish.

 

[Vertaxis]

There is nothing like the sound of smacking a PC upside the head with a hardcover PHB when they do something stupid.

If the sourcebooks were to move to an wholy electronic format, 2 things will have to happen to make it work successfully.

1. I hate reading books on a computer screen, and I bet most of you do as well. Unless there is a cheap and effect hi-res paper replacement that is easily portable, light weight, and makes it easy to read electronic books, then printed books are here to stay. I'm not impressed with todays tablets and laptops for this task.

2. Print on demand will have to be more common. Xerox has a complete system that can print, bind, and cover a book from a data file. When this type of print on demand system is cheap and readily available, then we can download the PDFs and print them out. That is assuming the publisher grants permission for the printing of the work.