What's changed?

[Dannyalcatraz]

But the costs of physical product distribution are very high. You have to print the pages. You have to package the final product (binding, in most cases, but also box sets occasionally). You have to store the product. You have to ship the product. You have to maintain stock of the product.

The costs of digital distribution are very low. All you have to do is create the product and set up a secure digital shopfront (or subscription service).

While all of that is true, all you have to do as the publisher to make it worth your while is make sure the physical product has the proper- easily calculated- markup to ensure you cover your costs and make some kind of profit.

By not producing books, they are not capturing as much of the market as they could be.

 

[Istar]

Since they are not working on or changing anything in the core books, the love has gone and they are off having fun with essentials.
And they already have the "Fully" edited version online, a reprint - with an emphathis on editing and checking - and off you go rover.

Nice hard copies sitting on the table while you play, would be wonderful, I would then get the full set.

I know a lot of people who use the pirated versions on the web as they dont want to pay money for a book that is outdated and wrong, significantly wrong, in so many places.

 

[DracoSuave]

The only difference in terms of the customer base with them printing new updated versions of the old books and not printing new updated versions is this:

Forum discussions would change from people complaining about how their books are out-of-date to people complaining about 'having to buy books they already own.'

I'm fairly convinced the venn diagrams of those two groups intersect.

Look at all the pissing and moaning when essentials came out and people complaining 'It's 3.5 all over again baaaaawwwww!' It's not hard to see that reprinting old material with new rules text would be a poorly received move by the vocal masses.

I would like updated rules as well, but I wouldn't want to have to shell out a hundred dollars just to get updated crunch I can download for free. At least with essentials I get something with my updated crunch, and for cheaper. The intersect of 'people who would like updated versions of old books' and 'are willing to pay hundreds of dollars for copies of books they already own' is a very small market demographic compared to 'people who want new content.'