WotC Official PDF versions - would you buy them?

[jeffhartsell]

At what price would you buy PDFs if WotC offered official watermarked versions? Would you also buy the hardcopy of the book? Did you buy all of the WotC books to which you had access?

In our group not everyone had hardcopies of books, we would loan them around for people to read.

I'd think that WotC would make more money, not less, if they offered digital version of the books at a reasonable price. Look at what Amazon is doing with the Kindle... $9.99 for new release best sellers. I'd buy a PDF for $10.

 

[AZRogue]

$10 would be the ceiling for me. I'm not a big fan of pdf books, preferring the real thing, but they can be useful. $10 would be reasonable, though $5.99 would be better.

 

[Staffan]

Yeah, definitely not above $10 if it's a book I intend to also get in hardcopy. In that case, I would mostly be getting the PDF as a convenience - if it's a rarely-used book (a la Explorer's Guide to Eberron) I could just bring the PDF to a game session instead of the whole book, and I could reference it while sitting at the computer instead of running off across the room.

If it's not something I intend to get in hardcover, but only in PDF, I could go higher. Maybe $15.

 

[Bugleyman]

Well, it depends on the quality of the PDF. A water-marked (but non-DRM'ed), well indexed, efficiently authored PDF? I'd pay up to 1/2 of the hardcopy price.

My decision to purchase the PDF would have no bearing on my hardcopy purchase decision. The two are in *no* way a substitute for one another; rather, they are complimentary. I still hold out hope that WOTC will figure this out someday...

 

[Yaezakura]

I'd be more than willing to shell out $10 for well-done PDFs. I might could even go $15 if they were exceptionally well made. But they definitely don't replace the hardcopies--I treat my D&D sourcebooks like novels, and read them laying in bed when bored. ^_^ But having the PDFs on hand for easy reference when discussing or playing D&D online would be a very, very helpful thing.

 

[Harr]

I'd bet money that PDFs will cost the same as the books.

I have no real foundation to say this except simply from watching how everything's been handled so far with Classes & Races, Worlds & Monsers, DDI, and KotS... it's not "What's a widely accessible and attractive pricepoint?", it's "What's the highest we figure we can get away with?". Every product has had people in general moaning about the price, I really doubt it's gonna be different with this.

Edit-> To be clear, I'm not saying this as a condemnation or anything, I'm totally fine with it, WotC is free to price its stuff however they like. It's just the way it is, as I've seen it.

 

[Aristotle]

$10 would probably be low enough. I don't know that my digital bookshelf would match my physical one, but I'm going to be doing a lot of campaign work at the computer. It would also be a lot easier for me to read books at work if I could throw them on a thumb drive.

 

[AZRogue]

If WotC priced pdfs the same as the printed books I would most definitely never buy one. Which would be too bad. They're a nice tool but not a substitute for the real thing and I wouldn't be willing to pay the amount for a pdf. They would go from being a nice tool to an unnecessary expense.

 

[Korgoth]

Not enough to make it worth their while... a few bucks. I want a printed book. If I bought a PDF, it would only be because I cannot obtain a printed book, or just as a throwaway convenience because I already have the book but am too lazy to walk ten feet to where it is located (and I'm not that lazy!).

 

[tombowings]

I would not buy a PDF copy of a book. I know how to script Java and C, but I am not a fan of digital replacements for the physical.