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Message: <blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 5190526" data-attributes="member: 82106">Yeah, there are a few interesting points to be made here. First there is NO cost of producing PDFs. All modern printing houses print from PDF. At worst you would want to add some indexing and whatnot. It could hardly cost a couple grand to do this work (I've actually done a couple of these projects, its not expensive). There is SOME minor cost of sales, you have to run the online sales system, so its not perfectly free, but when you consider that the markup on books is probably 50% (at least) and the cost to print is not low either its quite easy to believe that the profit on a PDF is equivalent or higher than on a printed copy.Cannibalism of print sales by PDFs IS a legitimate concern, but given the existence of PDFs regardless its probably not that big a deal.In any case WotC can't sit around in the situation they are in now. They obviously desire a lower price point for their product as the Essentials line amply proves. Beyond that the ultimate cheap price point is PDFs (or similar) on an ebook reader. Dead tree format is well, DEAD. That business model will linger on for a few more years, but they have to figure something out, and training their customer base to accept and want digital products is the most sensible course.Basically the whole problem is you have a big old-school company that just doesn't get it. At best they're hoping to hang on with the status quo until the bitter end. Its hard to say its stupid, but they are basing their business on a dying business model. Sooner or later (and probably fairly sooner) they'll HAVE to transition.</blockquote>

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