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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ferghis" data-source="post: 5189979" data-attributes="member: 40483">Other companies are doing it, so, by that measuring stick, it must be viable. Further, much as I respect WotC, I do think they have made mistakes sometimes, so I'm more hesitant to rely on their conclusions, if any was really drawn in this matter.However, I must make my ignorance clear. I don't know much about their history of pdf sales. I know they used to selll 1e pdfs, and they no longer do. The reason behind this is a complete mystery to me, since I beleive firmly that it in no way competes with 4e. I know that Steve Jackson Games sells pdfs and has a very transparent business model (relatively speaking) that has addressed the issue plainly in one of the yearly reports. I don't remember the details now, but they said that it had no detrimental impact to sell pdfs.The lost sale is made up by the made sale. It seems to be a wash in that particular scenario. Further, the costs for producing pdfs is lower than the costs of producing printed books. So, in the net, there is more of a gain, assuming that pdfs would be sold at the same price. If the pdfs REALLY took off, which I doubt, they would be forced to make smaller runs of the printed stuff, raising the cost of the printed stuff. But I beleive this would be more than offset by the sales of the pdfs, in that scenario (wherein the pdfs sell a lot).I don't think pdf sales would seriously impact pirated copies either, at least not in any real sense. I do believe that some folks (probably not many) who don't buy books would buy them. As an aside, I think it would be a smart move in terms of removing the fig leaf of pirates who say they want a pdf so are forced to download illegal content. I think the cost of producing a pdf is worth that alone.I certainly do enjoy my fair slice of naivete'. Tastes delicious, and keeps me in a good mood. However, I do not think that pdfs can exclusively sustain WotC, at least not currently. I simply think that if they sold pdfs, releasing them a bit after the books came out, and the pdfs were good, they would make more money than they do now, simply because I'm guessing the number of overall sales would grow.</blockquote>

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