Reply to thread

Message

<blockquote data-quote="Jer" data-source="post: 6366071" data-attributes="member: 19857">Actually if you purchased a PHB that you're going to scan, then they haven't been deprived of revenue at all.&nbsp; They got their cut on the $50 or whatever-discounted-price-you-paid-for-the-book.&nbsp; Right now this is probably Wizard's best-case scenario since they got you to buy the book.They've lost out on some additional revenue that they could have had had they offered a PDF, but even there its an open question.&nbsp; You might have only purchased the PDF, in which case they would have lost the revenue from your book purchase.&nbsp; If the price on the PDF was discounted their cut might have been a smaller cut than they make on the books.&nbsp; Plus now you have to get into non-monetary judgements about the decision - do you piss off your distributors and retailers by offering a reduced cost digital version of your book?&nbsp; Or do you offer it at full price know that it will just outrage your customers that you're charging the same price for the PDF that you do for the book?&nbsp; It may be more than just &quot;pissing them off&quot; too - they have long-standing relationships with distributors, and those relationships have contractual obligations.&nbsp; We have no clue what they've agreed to to get favorable treatment from their distributors.&nbsp; And this is all before we get into whatever is in the contract that Wizards has with Trapdoor and how digital content is going to be distributed through them for their Dungeonscape app - which probably muddies up the waters even more.&nbsp; And make no mistake - if Wizards offered up a digital version of this book Amazon would force a discount on them - one unfavorable to Wizards and using hardball tactics on their novel line to get it as deep as they want it.It's not easy to tell what the gains and losses come with offering a digital version for these books.&nbsp; Overall I'd prefer to see digital versions offered, but I'm not going to pretend that it isn't a minefield for Wizards and I can understand how they might want to take it slow, especially for the first year of a rollout.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Jer, post: 6366071, member: 19857"] Actually if you purchased a PHB that you're going to scan, then they haven't been deprived of revenue at all. They got their cut on the $50 or whatever-discounted-price-you-paid-for-the-book. Right now this is probably Wizard's best-case scenario since they got you to buy the book. They've lost out on some additional revenue that they [I]could[/I] have had had they offered a PDF, but even there its an open question. You might have only purchased the PDF, in which case they would have lost the revenue from your book purchase. If the price on the PDF was discounted their cut might have been a smaller cut than they make on the books. Plus now you have to get into non-monetary judgements about the decision - do you piss off your distributors and retailers by offering a reduced cost digital version of your book? Or do you offer it at full price know that it will just outrage your customers that you're charging the same price for the PDF that you do for the book? It may be more than just "pissing them off" too - they have long-standing relationships with distributors, and those relationships have contractual obligations. We have no clue what they've agreed to to get favorable treatment from their distributors. And this is all before we get into whatever is in the contract that Wizards has with Trapdoor and how digital content is going to be distributed through them for their Dungeonscape app - which probably muddies up the waters even more. And make no mistake - if Wizards offered up a digital version of this book Amazon would force a discount on them - one unfavorable to Wizards and using hardball tactics on their novel line to get it as deep as they want it. It's not easy to tell what the gains and losses come with offering a digital version for these books. Overall I'd prefer to see digital versions offered, but I'm not going to pretend that it isn't a minefield for Wizards and I can understand how they might want to take it slow, especially for the first year of a rollout. [/QUOTE]

Verification