What kind of Sales can you expect from PDF?

[Ghostwind]

The demo hardcopy idea is a great one, and yet another reason for such a product to ally itself with a larger print publisher - who might want to arrange in addition to single sales adding such a cd into a backsleeve of another product as an "enhanced limited edition" copy or something.

This is the very thing I have spoken to one of the bigger publishers about. What if you were to bundle a CD with every printed product? On this CD would be a complete pdf file of the same product along with a couple of freebies or intros to other products. Perhaps it would contain files to use the product with Campaign Suite or PCGen. Is this costly? Probably initially. Would the long term benefits in added sales outweigh the cost? That's anyone's guess. Yes, I know Auran does this, but it's not the same as I am proposing. Personally, I know I would be willing to pay more for such a product.

 

[Twin Rose]

This is the very thing I have spoken to one of the bigger publishers about. What if you were to bundle a CD with every printed product? On this CD would be a complete pdf file of the same product along with a couple of freebies or intros to other products. Perhaps it would contain files to use the product with Campaign Suite or PCGen. Is this costly? Probably initially. Would the long term benefits in added sales outweigh the cost? That's anyone's guess. Yes, I know Auran does this, but it's not the same as I am proposing. Personally, I know I would be willing to pay more for such a product.

I've been working on some deals to get free trials of CS on CDs with hardcover print products. Would include the needed information for CS as well. To pay for it, I'll be selling advertising space on the CDs.

 

[jmucchiello]

At no point was I saying that I would or wanted to host the PDF's locally, just to clear that up. That's your job.

As for contacting them, hopefully some can venture into this post and see what they think of the bundles. I'm just not sure how well they would go, and not sure I would want to keep CD's like that on the shelf.

I do like the BoD/PoD option, and would rather work with you on something like that. That way we both make our share of the money, and the publisher gets their share too.

I don't think any of these options are viable in the current model. Other than your own integrity, what forces you to delete the PDF after the BOD/POD? How do you know one of your employees isn't keeping them for himself? When I speculated on this a ways back I suggested someone would have to create a Point of Sales machine that connected to the internet, had a printer and/or cd burner. With secure transactions it would download the PDF, do the print or burn and delete it after a day. The operator would not be able to access the hard drive.

As for CDs on display in the store, why would we want these to look cheap? You can get CDs with 4 color booklets and screened CD in lots of 100s to 1000s for practically no money per copy. If this were going into more than one FLGS, I hope they would be real CDs, not CD-Rs. Make up some kind of display with an 8 page manual containing the advertising of the product. This way, the reason the store owner is honest is because he wants to move the CDs.

The other problem here is duplication: would Call of Duty and Forgotten Heroes: Paladin show up on the same CD?

 

[Joshua Randall]

The average consumer only looks at it in terms of his cost and his use. To him, a $5.00 pdf is a great deal until he has to print it out. Depending on the amount of color, borders, and excessive graphics present in the pdf, the customer may find that printing that pdf may very well drain a print cartridge. If this happens, suddenly the $5.00 pdf winds up costing $35.00 because he now has to buy a new printer cartridge.

Indeed, the distribution of PDFs instead of printed products (books) inverts the typical economics. Typically, a publishing house uses its economies of scale to drive printing costs down to a level at which it can make a profit selling books in the (say) $20 range.

Small publishers cannot afford to have products printed, nor can they generate economies of scale. So, they distribute electronically (PDFs) and pass the cost of printing along to their customers. Of course, the customer can just read the PDF on a screen, but that is not optimal for many products - especially gaming products that often have handouts or maps. Even a purely crunchy product will often need to be shown to the DM for approval, something that is expressly forbidden by the PDF's terms of sale! i.e., you're not supposed to be sharing PDFs electronically, just like other software.

PDFs are only a bargain until you try to use them, it seems.

Side note - I wonder how many people print PDFs at their place of work? We know a lot of people surf the web at work when they should be, um, working. Do people also abuse their workplace printers? (I picture the office manager saying, "Aargh! That's the third time this week the color printer has run out of toner.")

 

[Cergorach]

Pretty interesting thread!

Morrus, why not offer a service like RPGnow on your own site? You have the exposure, why not explore those possibilities? I'm sure a lot of PDF publishers would love to have their PDFs available through your site...

As for the technical aspects, you'll need someone that knows how to utilize php (i'm not it, i'm currently developing three sites at the same time) and more importantly, knows how to effectively use the free resources that sites such as Sourceforge offer. Php isn't difficult, i'm still a novice and certainly not a genius and i'm already seeing very intresting possibilities that could be incorporated into such a site...

As for Printing On Demand, you have A3 printers from HP for as low as $2000 retail, you add a duplex unit and buy a big stapler and your set for POD. Anything else you add is pure luxury. You could use a good inkjet for color covers, but a color laser is prefered for the covers, one is available for as low as $1000.

 

[Cergorach]

Side note - I wonder how many people print PDFs at their place of work? We know a lot of people surf the web at work when they should be, um, working. Do people also abuse their workplace printers? (I picture the office manager saying, "Aargh! That's the third time this week the color printer has run out of toner.")

*chuckles* That's why those printers are there, to print you know ;-)

I work at a bank at the ICT department, i don't really mind if people print some things for private use. I do mind people that print each and every email they get just to read it and throw it away, it's not called Electronic Mail for nothing! [/rant]

 

[Turjan]

As far as printed pdf's go, I'm very pleased with simple black&white prints off a laser printer. I've done this with Bastion's "Minions: Rebirth". I printed the version without borders in this way, and actually, I think it's looking better than the original .

 

[ced1106]

This is the very thing I have spoken to one of the bigger publishers about. What if you were to bundle a CD with every printed product? On this CD would be a complete pdf file of the same product along with a couple of freebies or intros to other products. Perhaps it would contain files to use the product with Campaign Suite or PCGen

Now, **that's** a smart idea. Hardcopy publishers already provide web support of their material, including material that couldn't make it (ie. were cost-prohibitive) into the book. This would go on the CD. And this would also prompt the purchaser to actually put the CD into his drive and open it. Then he'd also browse the freebies and intro product -- of not only your PDF material, but upcoming releases by the same publisher. Much cheaper to put a full-page color ad into a CD than in the hardcopy or a magazine. **And** the purchaser wouldn't mind see it, since said ad doesn't take up precious space in the hardcopy.


Okay, here's how everyone benefits

* Original PDF publishers & PDF sales site: Greater exposure of products.

* Hardcopy publisher: Customers do not need to go to site for a download. Publisher can put in material that would be cost-prohibitive for the hardcopy. Customers **know** websites are more current than CDs, so would still go to the publisher's site.

* Retailers & distributors: No shelving, no stocking, no orders, no risks. Taken out of the loop.

* Customers: Probably wouldn't notice any slight price change (to cover costs of cutting a CD), since game prices don't make sense, anyway!

Good luck,


Cedric.
aka. Washu! ^O^

 

[rpghost]

I will definately not want to do PoD in my store after seeing these threads, but will look at ordering from RPGnow. Of course, the only problem here is the wait (1-2 weeks) for delivery.

When we're up and running with our POD service, no product would be offered up for POD unless it's pre-paid for and thus probably on our shelf already. So in most cases delivery would be no worse then your namel distributor (2-4 days).

James

 

[rpghost]

What if you were to bundle a CD with every printed product? On this CD would be a complete pdf file of the same product along with a couple of freebies or intros to other products. Perhaps it would contain files to use the product with Campaign Suite or PCGen.

We have something like this already which is burned along with any CD order from RPGNow.com - a lot of good demo software plus copies of OPENRPG and such (I suppose I should talk with PCGen too)... anyway, RPGShop.com sends out over 100 packages a week and could use these CD's as stuffers if there was a way to get the publishers from RPGNow to contribute to the manufacturing costs of the CD. I think last I checked it was about $1 per cd to get a thousand together - Chris from Twin Rose might know more current numbers.

It would certainly help get the CD's into the hands of print book purchasers... but regretfully, most of MY customers are already on the internet. So ideally we should consider promotion on Aldo's Game Play CD ( http://www.impressionsadv.net/gameplay.html ), but that's costly and no guarentee that shop owners are even passing it out... humm.

I guess it comes down to the fact that we could use a sponsor to create the CD's. Like maybe WOTC doing a d20 Modern promo on them and the rest being used by PDF promotions for products at RPGNow.com and then either RPGShop.com absorbing the price of packing and shipping them or get a deal with distributors (like the Gaming Herald did. http://www.gamingherald.com ).

James