Will WOTC's Ending PDF Sales Because of Pirating Increase Pirating of their Stuff?

[Voadam]

Prior to the PDF shutdown, 4E books were being widely pirated on the day of release. In the frontlist-driven world of RPG sales, two days could actually be significant. So if this data point means anything (and it might not), it's that the action did, in fact, have some sort of impact on piracy.

Just as much of an impact as if they had decided to delay releasing new pdfs two days later instead of scrapping the entire pdf catalogue?

 

[Asmor]

Just as much of an impact as if they had decided to delay releasing new pdfs two days later instead of scrapping the entire pdf catalogue?

If we're working on the assumption that a short delay was the desired effect, and thus that WotC's strategy was successful, they could have been more successful by releasing the PDFs a week later, as was mentioned by someone else above.

Scanning and OCRing a book is a lot of work. That's why it takes two days for the books to hit the net.

If the books were releasing a week later on PDF, that would kill a lot of the motivation for the original pirates to scan them in the first place, since it would be a lot easier to just rip the official books and the results would be much higher quality.

Thus, instead of a two-day lag, we have a week lag. And WotC still publishes their PDFs, so it's a win-win (though I'm sure there'd still be much gnashing of teeth over the delay).

 

[CapnZapp]

Even a two-week delay would probably mean pirates would stay away. Pirates are people. People are lazy.

And how much of a problem is piracy if you factor in a piracy-free one or two week period of book-selling?

 

[mach1.9pants]

Well I am a big 4E fan but the lack of 'depth', admittedly balanced by the excess of balance, and the lack of PDFs has seen my purchasing change. Getting a PDF copy of my Paizo subscription the moment it posts has made me ditch the majority of my pre-orders on Amazon of 4E stuff (DMG 2 left and that is it) and spend my money at Paizo. I will still play 4E to the end of the current campaign but they lost a lot of money.

 

[Nifft]

If we're working on the assumption that a short delay was the desired effect, and thus that WotC's strategy was successful, they could have been more successful by releasing the PDFs a week later, as was mentioned by someone else above.

Even a two-week delay would probably mean pirates would stay away. Pirates are people. People are lazy.

And how much of a problem is piracy if you factor in a piracy-free one or two week period of book-selling?

I'd really like to see per-day sales numbers before and after the PDF policy change. I'll bet some clever fellow could use those numbers to figure out the optimal release schedule which allows PDFs to be sold (and therefore pirated) with minimal negative impact -- or to even have a positive effect -- on book sales.

Cheers, -- N