What kind of Sales can you expect from PDF?

[tensen]

Re: A4 vs. letter

One of my PDFs was released in both versions. I've heard no response on this.

Considering what the "official" stats of American buyers to European buys has been on print products, I imagine a similar stat would be on the PDF material... possibly even hampered more by paypal issues with overseas, and rpgnows credit card steps for overseas. I'm willing to guess that out of a any 200 sales, you probably saw less than 20 european buyers. With a usual vocal rate of less than 5% on any topic... you might hear from 1.... and that 1 is usually there to give negative feedback if any. So... not hearing anything is actually expected on postive things.

 

[philreed]

Re: Re: A4 vs. letter

Considering what the "official" stats of American buyers to European buys has been on print products, I imagine a similar stat would be on the PDF material... possibly even hampered more by paypal issues with overseas, and rpgnows credit card steps for overseas. I'm willing to guess that out of a any 200 sales, you probably saw less than 20 european buyers. With a usual vocal rate of less than 5% on any topic... you might hear from 1.... and that 1 is usually there to give negative feedback if any. So... not hearing anything is actually expected on postive things.

Good point. The next "pay" PDF I do I'll try this again. It wasn't a huge amount of work.

 

[Turjan]

Re: Re: A4 vs. letter

I'm willing to guess that out of a any 200 sales, you probably saw less than 20 european buyers. With a usual vocal rate of less than 5% on any topic... you might hear from 1.... and that 1 is usually there to give negative feedback if any. So... not hearing anything is actually expected on postive things.

I think that is just some sort of cultural difference between Europeans and Americans. We usually say what we think and don't hesitate to use harsh words. We'd never say something like "Oh, I really like that!" without really meaning it. I suppose, most Americans will perceive us as being unbelievably rude .

As far as letter vs. A4 format goes, I don't mind letter format myself. I usually use the "center" option while printing the stuff. This will be only a problem in case the illustrations have low resolution, because then you may see some glitches due to the slight change in image size. But most or the time it's okay as it is.

 

[rpghost]

Re: Re: A4 vs. letter

... and rpgnows credit card steps for overseas.

This is a misconception... RPGShop.com requires proof of card ownership, but RPGNow.com does not. Mainly cause if it's fraud we are only out processing charges and we can cancel the order and not pay the publisher. With RPGShop.com we sell physical product - with that comes an up front cost to us, a shipping cost, an the desire for fraud as you can re-sell physical products. No one is going to commit credit card fraud to buy an electronic product oversees - just no point in it. So we waive the requirements for overseas credit cards when just dealing with RPGNow.com

In fact, if you're a long time (6month+) customer of RPGNow.com we'll even waive these conditions for your EN World Shop orders.

James

 

[tensen]

Re: Re: Re: A4 vs. letter

This is a misconception... RPGShop.com requires proof of card ownership, but RPGNow.com does not. Mainly cause if it's fraud we are only out processing charges and we can cancel the order and not pay the publisher. With RPGShop.com we sell physical product - with that comes an up front cost to us, a shipping cost, an the desire for fraud as you can re-sell physical products. No one is going to commit credit card fraud to buy an electronic product oversees - just no point in it. So we waive the requirements for overseas credit cards when just dealing with RPGNow.com

James,

I'll apologize now. I am American so I don't see the effects.. I only had a few possible customers complain about it, which is why it got brought to my attention.

Aka... negative effects get heard more often then postive....

how often do you hear, "Wow, that was so easy..." other than followed with.. "not like such and such place.. they...."

 

[Joshua Randall]

I would use Malhavoc's products (specifically Monte's Books of Eldritch Might) as a guide, since they are consistently bestsellers and have a range of sizes and prices.

Book of Eldritch Might ($5.00 for 36 pages)
Book of Eldritch Might II ($7.00 for 64 pages)
Book of Eldritch Might III ($9.00 for 96 pages)

For lazy, curious people, this works out to be

BoEM 1: $0.14 per page
BoEM 2: $0.11 per page
BoEM 3: $0.09 per page

I think comparing page counts between printed books and PDFs is kind of goofy. The whole point of a PDF is that the electronic format makes per page printing costs irrelevant. But, if you must compare, here are the numbers, using the WotC suggested retail prices.

core
PH: 288 pages, $29.95, $0.10 per page
DMG: 224 pages, $29.95, $0.13 per page
MM: 224 pages, $29.95, $0.13 per page

hardcover
PsiH: 160 pages, $26.95, $0.17 per page
FRCS: 320 pages, $39.95, $0.12 per page
MotP: 224 pages, $29.95, $0.13 per page

paperbacks
Sword & Fist, etc.: 96 pages, $19.95, $0.21 per page

It looks like about $0.13 per page is the standard price for a WotC hardcover. I assume the PH is deliberately underpriced or is cheaper per page because it's larger. However, FRCS is not much cheaper despite greater length.

The PsiH is more expensive per page because it's much shorter. And the paperbacks are much more expensive per page; higher costs per page to produce the shorter books, or WotC making up money on the supplements, or a little of both.

 

[Turjan]

Well, the PH can be cheaper because of the vast sales figures, thereby making production cheap. A campaign setting is much more limited as far as expected sales go, and the splatbooks were considered to appeal to even less customers.

 

[Cergorach]

It depends on how things are done. True if it is just a single master template it is effecting it probably changes little. Although there are other cases, such as changes to artwork on the page and the like that can eat into time. Of course that only matters if the layout person is getting money based on time.

There are tools that let you edit whole pdfs at a time, you can decrease the dpi count for all images (a cool trick to remove all images is to set it at 0dpi). Or make color images into grey or even B&W images. One of the must have tools for Acrobat is Enfocus Pitstop Profesional 5.0, it has lots of useful features...

 

[MThibault]

"The whole point of a PDF is that the electronic format makes per page printing costs irrelevant."

True. But the trade off is the very small number of sales compared to a print product. What you gain on the hobby-horse (low capitol expenditure) you lose on the swings (low gross sales). Then there are artist and author fees (both based on volume) that splits a very small pie even more. Even before the vendor's commission gets taken off, most products are looking at gross profit numbers that make panhandling look attractive.

I might be mistaken, but I am under the impression that the vendor's fee for PDF products is static. It doesn't decrease with large runs. So even if you can't finesse the economies of scale if you think that you have a (relative) hit on your hands.

Also, there is an upper limit of what can be considered a reasonable download, so you can't decrease your price/page ratio by adding another 34 pages to a 100 page PDF without losing sales.

All in all I don't think that it is fair to compare the costs of print vs. pdf as if they were on a level playing field. Nor do I think that price/page is a fair comparison between the two products.

Mike


PS I think that Price per page is a scam in reviews as well. Value per page is more important, IMO. But that's a seperate issue.

Cheers.


I think that with the extremely small volume of sales for PDF products (Monte, as always excepted) author and artist fees become the bulk of the capitol expense and the rest of the investment is time. If

 

[Arnix]

I'm curious as to the costs of selling your pdf's through RPGnow. Is it a flat fee per pdf, a monthly fee, a data transfer fee, startup plus one of the previous items, etc? I went looking on the site and didn't see anything while I was there (may not have looked int he right place).