There are a lot of good things I could say (and have said) about Diaspora. I liked it enough that I offered to run the publication of it for VSCA, the current publisher, if they wanted to transition off of Lulu (which at least as of a couple weeks ago looks like it might have been a good idea), taking a modest percentage for Evil Hat & getting the title out to more sales venues. It’s Fate, and it excites me, so I’m happy to make that sort of offer.
That’s not to say the game is without its warts. The text does fall into self-congratulation here and there, and designers’ notes are swirled together with main text instead of offset in some way. That reads fine for me, but I know some readers encounter such things as turbulence. But the reason I decided to back off of the publication pursuit was that VSCA isn’t offering a PDF of Diaspora and won’t be for a while, while Evil Hat is strongly, even passionately, committed to offering PDF with its products. VSCA also had a few well-founded reasons of their own to decline, so this wasn’t the sole dealkiller; all amicably handled.
Some background here: Diaspora was a very deliberately designed artifact as books go. Brad has talked about this on his blog (see the prior link). It was designed to be a book, which means there’s a philosophical disconnect for VSCA to provide a PDF of the book’s interior as the PDF product. If they’re going to offer a PDF, they’re going to create a deliberately-designed-as-a-PDF PDF. I get that philosophy, and I respect it, even though I know that it puts a vast wedge between delivering the print product and delivering the PDF (if indeed the PDF would be delivered at all). But it really lives in a different headspace from where I do, whether we’re talking about the synergy between a print and a PDF product, a stand-alone PDF product, or the service relationship between publisher and customer. I’ll expand on this.
First off, I’m a huge fan of the Print+PDF bundle, and Evil Hat’s publication strategy has reflected this. It’s the sort of sum that I think is truly greater than the whole, and reflects how I interact with RPGs I buy. I am not someone with a lot of capacity for reading lengthy text on computer screens. I need a physical artifact in order to read the game, and I need a physical artifact at the table. Getting stuck with the PDF alone means that I won’t get all the features of a book that I want, even if my PDF reading solution can get me most of them.
But the PDF half of the bundle brings its own advantages to the party (assuming it’s done “right”). Blocks of text can be copied and pasted into reference sheets for my players; I can print subsections of the book if I need to hand a particular bit of rules or setting text around the table; and I can search through the text on a computer, which is often better and faster than any index, no matter how complete. While I might not want to read the result of a text search on the computer screen, I can get a page reference and do my reading with the physical artifact (assuming that the PDF hasn’t been designed with its own page numbering and text flows separate from the print product) — or shout out to my buddy in the other room which page number he should flip to. (This last part points to a reason why I believe PDF-as-book-interior is a good and correct way to go, at least as far as my own priorities are concerned. I dig why folks might want to design a PDF product separately from how the print product was designed, but I think that such a move undermines the partnership value that a bundle provides.)
This is a potent union, one that I think does a great service to the customer, letting each customer develop his or her own approach to how they want to experience and explore the content. Which brings up the last advantage: the PDF part can be delivered immediately, while the print part gets printed (if needed, as with true POD or a preorder) and shipped. This gives the customer immediate purchase satisfaction, something “tangible” (if digital) for their money that, if they want, they can start reading right away. I’ve been exploring this with Evil Hat for a few years now, including trying out an in-retail-store “instant content preorder”, and elsewhere when I encouraged Hero Games to do the same with a book launched but not physically present at GenCon. Indications are strong that a solid portion of the market wants and likes this approach.
So a few years into it, I feel obligated to provide products in a Print+PDF format whenever possible, and to insist on it whenever Evil Hat publishes a book on behalf of another creator. The customers want it, and it makes their use of the product and its content better and happier.
Sadly, places like Lulu (as far as I’m aware) still don’t offer the ability to bundle print and PDF products together, discounted or otherwise (most of my print+PDF bundles are at no extra cost above the book itself, with a few adding a handful of bucks to the bottom line at most). That means that for solely direct to customer print on demand operations, the Print+PDF bundle option can’t be done except as a manual, order by order process handled after the fact by the publisher. Which is why I’m glad I’m printing a stock of books in advance and selling them through the Evil Hat webstore and Indie Press Revolution. Print+PDF is here to stay — at least until the Kindle-esque device arises that truly provides every benefit that the print format does and then some.
But Print+PDF bundles aren’t the only way that I feel obliged to deliver PDF content. Stand-alone PDFs are an important component of the obligation to customers, particularly global customers. The recent years have shown us how an increase in shipping costs can affect all corners of the hobby industry, and customers’ wallets are not excepted from the impact. PDF provides a way for publishers to deliver products to their customers with no or very minimal overhead and zero shipping costs. This might still be seen as a relatively minor concern for domestic shipping, but it is absolutely vital when looking at an international customer base. No amount of Print+PDF philosophy and support will help the fact that it could cost someone in Australia an extra $30 in shipping to get my $30 game book in print form (I’m pulling those numbers out of thin air, but I think they’re close enough to make the point). Some folks will still make that order, but more will look for a PDF-only option, and if it’s not there that purchase and potential new fan vanishes.
Also? This:
Customers want the PDF along with the book (already discussed). They want to be able to choose not to get the book. And they want the ability to choose where to shop — and once you have a PDF product, it becomes really easy to make that version of the product available at several locations, whether we’re talking IPR (where the cut on PDF is no deeper than the cut Lulu takes) or RPGNow/DriveThruRPG (where the cut is greater, but where 80-ish% of online RPG-related PDF sales occur, based on my own experience).
So again, I feel obligated to my international customers to make sure that stand-alone PDF options exist for my products, and furthermore that the PDF option persists even if the print version stops (as was the case with Spirit of the Season).
All of this was the ultimate disconnect on my end of things with my urge to help VSCA with the publication of Diaspora. I’m happy for them to pursue publication on their own terms, in accordance with their own philosophy — but I do find myself wishing it would be a little less “platonic ideal of books” and a little more “this is what customers should get”, what I think of as a practical ideal. Which isn’t to say they don’t have the customer in mind! I think they do, but they also have less practical ideals they’re pursuing, making them more firmly “artists” rather than “publishers” (though that is frankly a continuum). I like that they’ve got their eye on the future ball when it comes to electronic books, but the current marketplace’s tech level is set firmly at PDF.
For me and for Evil Hat, I feel like offering anything less than a PDF available at the same approximate time as the print product does my customers a disservice, and that’s not likely to change.
33 Comments
The rub to all of this is that as I spend more time with my kindle and I watch the e-reader market start to mature, I find myself thinking about how we’re going to get ahead of that as well. It may be that reader tech will get good enough to catch up to pdfs, and the pressure to move off that format to something more flexible will never reach critical mass, but if it doesn’t then it’s curious what that will mean.
Big topic, of course. Just thinking about designing games so they can be read equally well on a kindle, a nook or an iphone is…daunting.
-Rob D.
Rob, no argument — in the long term.
But here, I’m talking more about my perspective on the current state of things — thus the contrast between pragmatic ideals (how do I deal with the current options of today?) vs. platonic ideals (how do I deal with the better options of tomorrow?).
I am curious of your thoughts on the creation of a true multimedia pdf that would be released after the bundle? By this I mean that if the release occurs with a pdf+print option and that initial pdf is an exact copy of the printed material would you think that a more interactive pdf (with or without layout changes) would have a viable market? I know that I often edit the pdfs that I buy with new bookmarks and internal links (when the pdf allows, but that is because I know that certain materials will come up more often in my games and I am too cheap to print off the material for my players). My thought is of a more interactive experience in the pdf that would include music and possible animations for examples.
I’m all for sexy, multimedia-active e-product versions of things at the end of the day. I think that’s enough additional work that it’s a whole new product at that point, though — akin to the electronic version of the leather-bound special edition in print, or whatever.
But I don’t like the idea of making customers wait for the full range of basic pdf/pdf upsell options on the core product. It’s too easy to produce that much for them, and for the reasons I already got into above, I think the customers are done a disservice when it’s not there.
I now understand their decision. My money awaits the PDF’s arrival, but now it will have to sit in my wish list, instead of getting the priority of an impulse buy.
I have an interesting relationship with PDF’s one that you as a publisher might not appreciate some aspects of but I feel compelled to share anyways.
One of my first points is that I’m unwilling to run a game without a Dead Tree copy of the core rules at the very least. Running a game requires referencing and passing books around so I need an actual book for that. Yes I realize that printing out a PDF is an option and one I entertained in my younger less-financially capable days, but not one I like now.
Now, having said that, I generally don’t want the Dead Tree version of a game that I don’t intend to run or play heavily, however I like to look through books and there are no game stores around here that stock anything more than the core D&D 4e books on-shelf. PDF versions help immensely with that. They also allow me to show my friends what’s out there. I regularly share various PDF’s with friends via memory stick or Skype file transfer because I believe that if 1-in-10 of those PDF’s shared inspires that person to run a game or purchase the book, then I’ve done the company a service. I also share PDF’s with the players of the games I run. When I’m the only one with a copy of a book, I’m not leaving my book with players who want to read up on the setting on their own time. But them reading up on things is a good thing, so giving them a PDF to read is a great compromise.
I especially love unprotected PDF’s that I can pull text and pictures from as needed. Part of my process as a GM is to build booklets and maps with legends as preperation, and being able to pull information out of books is invaluable. Protected PDF’s don’t provide that much of a barrier for me. I just end up taking the extra time to pull the information I need from screenshots and optical text recognition if need be.
So the short of that is, that I really agree with your opinion on PDF’s, even though some of the things I do may not be ideal for you, I honestly don’t think they’re harming companies that much, especially when physical distribution just can’t penetrate in my area. Like you, I’d have dropped money on Diaspora had there been a PDF offering available… as it is I’m thinking I might try to get a friend to bring one up from Vancouver when he comes home for Christmas.
Customers like you are definitely part of what I’m thinking about when I talk about the obligation.
I’m totally down with their concern about layouts and presentation. It may be a minority opinion, but I think I would rather pay for a screen-formatted pdf than get a quickie indesign export of the book layout for free.
I thought you might share their perspective to that extent, given the presentation of the Prime Time Adventures PDF.
Then again, if you had held up on producing that PDF, gotten the print version of PTA out there, and then let PTA go out of print (as it has) never having gotten around to putting the PDF out there — you’d be going on a year or two of PTA being unavailable to new customers in *any* form. And I know from running the IPR customer service queue that “when will PTA be back in print” is in the top 5 questions we field on a regular basis.
Which is why my “compromise” position on all of this amounts to: keep to your ideals for how to construct a PDF if you must, but don’t fail to produce one quickly — and by quickly I mean within weeks to a couple months at most of your print product release.
This is completely on a different logic wave than mine and yours. I get the whole wanna-do-it-my-way thing, but I’m very much of the mindset that once you produce something which you sell to customers, they are as much partners in that product as you are, and if there is something they want, are downright claiming for, and you don’t give it, you’re just being dictatorial. It’s a case best exemplified by George This-is-my-movie-my-universe-and-I-don’t-care-how-much-you-have-invested-in-it-Greedo-shoots-first Lucas.
The thing is, if the ultimate goal is to have a PDF-designed-as-a-PDF product, I don’t see how releasing the PDF-as-e-book-PDF undercuts that. Offer options, let customers choose what *they* want, not what *you* want them to have. And if this isn’t at all about what customers want but about what you as creator want, then don’t sell it; give it out and let people come along for the ride. When you make me pay for something, I’m part owner, not someone to be told what I am allowed to buy or not.
I don’t think I’d word it quite that way, but I definitely get where you’re coming from!
Invoking Lucas is what did it, right?
I agree 110%.
Weird thought. You mentioned that delivering the PDFs has minimal overhead and zero shipping. What are the actual costs with providing PDFs? Is there any additional layout or software cost (e.g., can QuarkExpress just generate a PDF)? Any cost involved in creating the watermarks, etc.?
I know that there is a nominal cost in terms of web hosting and bandwith usage. But, oddly enough, I’d actually say that was a shipping cost, rather than an overhead cost.
I don’t know that the distinction means anything. It was just something that occurred to me while reading that paragraph.
In all likelihood, if you’re publishing a book these days, you had to create a PDF (print-focused as opposed to consumer-focused, mind) in order to provide the interior content of your book to the service that is printing it for you. I take maybe an extra 10-15 minutes to make minor tweaks in order to provide a PDF version of something I’ve done in print, using exactly the same software as I used to produce the print one. PDF selling through the various venues that one might do it (Lulu, IPR, One Bookshelf, etc) already covers any bandwidth or hosting concerns in the percentage cut they’re taking anyway (and a cut’s already being taken for the print version as well in that case), which left me with my statement concluding that the additional cost incurred is nearly zero.
Totally agree that PDF is a must-have option right now, and the value of PDF+print bundles for both publishers and customers. It’s been fascinating to see how forward-thinking publishers have moved through various phases of enlightenment. I’m thinking especially of Steve Jackson Games, who moved rather cautiously into PDFs, and were good enough to tell the world what they discovered. But I’m also thinking of technical publishers like Pragmatic Bookshelf and Manning, who have wholeheartedly adopted the PDF+print bundle approach.
However, my gut feel is that PDF is ultimately going to be a dead end for digital publication (unless it gets a serious rethink). It tries too hard to be like paper, and the big downside of that is that it can’t adjust itself to the available display. I want to be able to read my digital book on any size display from my smartphone, my eBook reader, my netbook and my desktop computer. Oh, and I want to swap between landscape and portrait orientation on the fly. On the other hand, I’m not sure we have anything close to a suitable PDF replacement yet.
When such a thing comes along, I think that the production process will change. The digital media version will get produced first, and then that will be enhanced for printed book production.
I’m certainly not making predictions one way or the other as to the lifespan of PDF (at least not outside of this comment, so far). But it’s here, now, and all of the other options are inferior to what it offers. When other options move out of its shadow, it’ll be time to focus there.
If I were to make predictions, I’d say it’ll happen when we get the combination of an e-reader that offers every option that the printed form does and then some (all e-readers currently fail this test); at that point there will be consumer-driven market pressure for easy point-and-click conversion of the print layout process into content generated for this hypothetical future e-reader.
We’re way not there yet.
I’m a definite fan of getting the PDF along with the physical rules. In a number of instances I’ve gone back and bought a copy of the PDF for games which I already have the physical copy for, mainly because it’s very useful to hack apart to provide a hyperlinked quick reference at the tabletop for me.* Especially when you are as apt as I am to mod the game rules anyway, or the game has numerous expansions and supplements or web extensions. [Besides, it's a good way to make sure you've read all the rules yourself.]
And even absent this, PDFs are useful if I’m curious about a game. Not everyone can get easy access to a physical copy to look it over, but I can immediately follow up a good review with grabbing a copy as an impulse buy. [Wait, did I say this was "a good thing?"] And yes, PDF are a lot cheaper, especially when you start figuring in the aforementioned freight costs (as a rough guide, in Australia, either direct or through a distributor, double the US cover price usually is quite accurate). And if I like it I can still buy a physical copy of the book, anyway.
Oh, and the OBS PDF preview is extremely useful to see if I want to grab a book if I’m vacillating. It’s surprising how few companies will provide a sample of their actual work on their web site (as opposed to advertising it). It can be a very powerful tool to convince someone to buy the product. Especially now with FLGS tending to go the way of the dodo.
But I can quite appreciate wanting your book to be a work of art. I mean, that’s the reason I bought Trail of Cthulhu and [multiple copies of] the white book of Nobilis (one to play and one to keep). So I can quite understand that the authors of Diaspora were producing a work of art, not just a game. Although it does mean I shall probably wait until they do, or a friend gets a copy that I might peruse, before I do get a copy of my own.**
[* Whilst PDFs are helpful (for one thing they can be a lot more convenient to locate in your library, especially when you need to look something up in a hurry), they are still really just a book on a screen (and thus not really as versatile or as satisfying as a physical book). But converting them into an indexed and hyperlinked document is immensely useful at the tabletop for fast reference can be quite useful if you have the ability to do so. Because of their nature, many game books do benefit from the non-linear information architecture that becomes possible via computer support. At least, after the initial reading.]
[** I already have more games than I could possibly play/run for the rest of my life. So most of my purchases these days are just for interest – to see if people have developed something innovative and intriguingly new. Or unless I am already a fan of their work.]
Yeah, I need to get better about providing interior views other places than OBS. Then again, OBS is the big boss in PDF for a reason: they make it stupid easy to get that interior preview.
An undercurrent I’m seeing here is something that I think all the entertainment industries need to catch up on very quickly…
The consumer sees that physical and temporal barriers can be removed… they *know* you can deliver the book in electronic format, they *know* a song can be delivered DRM-free, they *know* a movie can be delivered in a portable file, viewable on a non-networked playback device. And when the publisher/label/studio chooses not to do so, or does so at a premium cost (ebooks that cost more than the paper book), the consumer *knows*… it wasn’t because of technical limitations, it was because the publisher *chose* to refuse to sell to the customer in the time, place and format that the customer desires to buy.
That is, the publisher has said, “We don’t want to do business with you unless you do it our way.” And that’s a recipe for failure in any business… expecting the customer to meet the business’s needs instead of the business meeting the customer’s needs.
The piracy issue is exacerbated by this refusal… if I want an ebook and the publisher refuses to publish in that format, I can often find it electronically by other means. There have been several instances where I purchased a paper book, set it aside, and then downloaded the same book from a torrent in a well-produced ebook format. The right or wrong aside, publishers avoiding digital formats doesn’t keep their works from being pirated, and it can really frustrated legitimate customers who *want* to give the publisher money. (And it’s very frustrating, because I want to support the ebook market to show publishers that there *is* a market. But the publishers are trying to price the market out of existence.)
What publisher/label/studio in their right mind says, “No, sorry. We don’t want your money. Maybe you can find it on bittorrent.”? But that’s effectively what they are saying when they refuse to sell digital formats because they’re afraid of piracy… they make piracy the *only* option to obtain that format.
The number of products I would have bought if I could have had them electronically, right *now*, is growing quickly. I skipped Extreme Dungeon Mastery because I don’t want more paper on my shelf. Ditto Open Game Table (now in PDF, but not when they had grabbed my interest). Quite a bit more music would be in my library if “order a physical CD” weren’t the only option. I’d buy TV shows from Amazon if they’d deliver DRM-free “watch later” to Linux at a reasonable price ($35 for a TV season streamed in low-quality is a bit much).
And game publishers are not getting my money because I already have too much paper, I don’t want to pay a shipping “surcharge”, I don’t want to wait, and I want the convenience of the digital format. I see something like Diaspora when it’s “hot” and think, “that sounds cool”… and as soon as I find out that I have to pay for bulky paper and shipping, I walk away. If it’s really “hot”, I’ll look for an opportunity to preview it… getting a chance to preview (the whole work, not 20 pages) has made some paper sales, but those are rare compared to the ones I just walk away from.
I’m a fan of the “try before you buy” principle. With pdf products, it’s “buy before you by”: I buy a pdf product if it’s considerable cheaper than the physical book. If I like it, I’ll by the book on top. Often enough, I don’t even care to argue with anyone if I could’ve done a PDF+Book bundle.
Or, to turn it around: If I’m in the market for the book, I’m *also* in the market for the PDF/electronic version. Not going with PDF is an interesting move, but as eReaders continue to grow into everyday life, other formats may, too.
On some games, I did the bundle, and that never was a mistake. But, living in Europe, it made the sometimes weeks-long waits (on preorders, where cheap shipping options often add a week or three to delivery across the pond) bearable.
Often enough, PDFs suck for reading, but that is not inherent to the medium. If you have multicolumn layouts which are a boon on paper, you’ll be going to zoom and pan around and almost always only get parts of what you want to read on the screen.
In a way, I blame PDF readers for this, because they usually don’t allow fluid “select this and put in another window” with multiple selections, so I could collect info scattered all over a book volume of text.
Also, if there’s a screen optimized PDF version of a book, I’d still like a “verbatim copy” for easy reference to the physical volume as pointed out by readers before.
I don’t have a copy of the Sacred Artifact of Science-Text-Evocative Bookgasmically Tactile High Art, nor have I seen or touched one as yet. I am torn because on the one hand I respect VSCA’s right to enact their philosophy, but on the other hand, something seems a bit off to me that they would think that they CAN successfully enact it via Lulu POD. None of the books people are purchasing ever pass through VSCA’s hands – they go straight from the press to the purchaser. How can Brad and the gang be sure that the end result is consistently meeting their standards and thus appropriately reflecting their philosophy?
Overall, I have to echo the sentiments in this thread that express confusion and frustration about the lack of a PDF. I don’t get it.
But then again, I don’t need to get it. VSCA can go ahead do whatever they want with their artifact-only approach. I would like to support them and I would, if I felt they had any interest in supporting my preferences. But that’s not the case, so I’ll just go ahead and do the next best thing: Read and use the Diaspora SRD. No doubt the True Artifact holds many interesting and awe-inspiring things that the SRD lacks, but in the end, all I really need is the open content anyhow. My imagination and the ingenuity of my friends and peers can supply the rest.
Viva la SRD!
This.
And without invoking Lucas.
I try to avoid invoking Lucas whenever possible. Besides, you already knocked that one outta the park, D.
As one of the authors of Diaspora I know that my view has been set out in part by what Brad has said in his blog (though only in part).
What’s interesting to me as this discussion develops (here and in other places) is the line that people walk on both sides of the issue between principle and practicality. Though there isn’t a pdf available of the typeset book, there is a lot out there: from the Diaspora website, one can download the entire space combat chapter and all the reference tables from the back of the book, whether or not you’ve bought the book; the SRD is available, as a website and as a pdf, also available whether or not you’ve bought the book.
As a result some of the comments that I read, particularly concerning issues of practicality, seem to me to be less persuasive than others. One can get a clear sense of what one will get if one buys by looking at the space combat chapter. One does have access to the ruleset, for look up during play. AP reports offer examples, and in some ways better examples than ones we’ve come up with. We’ve posted pdfs of the tables and the skills available, because these are the things we’ve found one needs during play. Granted, our examples aren’t there, but an awful lot is, and what we’ve put out we’ve tried to put out with the guy on the street in mind.
So one question I have is what is missing from what is freely available? What don’t you have electronically that is preventing you from playing?
Falling on the other side of the line, then, are those arguing from principle (as indeed Fred does). In this respect, we are agreed: once practical needs are met (as I believe they are by a pdf, or by what is out there fore Diaspora already), the issue becomes one of principle, and it just happens that Fred feels differently than we do. This principle can be expressed on an artist/business continuum, but it need not.
If we do an electronic release of Diaspora, we want to do it right. At the moment, we aren’t agreed on the form that might take.
The biggest obstacle to the current system delivery is, as Mick notes, that we don’t physically handle every book before its shipped. That too is a choice we’ve made: since we are in Canada, to do so jacks up the price for everyone on the planet except Canadians, and so (in our general self-effacing patriotic spirit) that isn’t what we chose. Instead, you get a book cheaper from the closest Lulu printer rather than from Vancouver. But be sure that if there are problems with the result, we’ll want to make it right. That may not satisfy everyone, but it is completely within our mandate to ensure that our customers have a product that we are proud of.
Toph
I think the practicality argument still holds water. The SRD isn’t by itself the same experience nor identical content (I believe it’s a subset, correct?) to the innards of the book, which makes it nice for the “try before you buy” set, but does absolutely nothing for folks who want the full content of the product but live somewhere that Lulu wants to charge $30 to ship to.
And while the SRD is nice for searching for the occasional thing, if I don’t have a PDF for ride-along with a print book, I’m actually less likely to run the thing, as its absence means my job running the game is more difficult. With Print+PDF purchases I make, I make use of the product in what Brad might call a “highly correlated” fashion. I’ll search the PDF to find the page number — but I’ll then read the content in the print book, as that’s my preference.
While I do believe there’s a strong set of principles in operation on either side of the perspectives here, I’ve grounded my opinions in the real-world practicals of how I make use of RPG products. It may not be how you make use of such products, but I think that matters less to the whole question of whether or not the practical application holds up as valid.
You’re right that the SRD is only about 50-60% of the total book. I don’t see the SRD being the best tool for those who want to “try before you buy”; there is the sample chapter, though (and that’s what I see the main function of it being). I do agree that the cost of shipping is a real obstacle for some people: if you want an actual book, there is always going to be somewhere on the planet with above-average costs; some of that might be offset with a softcover; all of it would be for a pdf.
Certainly, this is a question all the Diaspora authors are thinking about.
Of this, I have no doubt.
Forget about PDFs, future is in epub format, to be read on ebook readers.
No one in industry is looking in this field, and think about kindle and sony pocket, and how this is getting inmense grow this winter.
Really, no one in rpg is filling that void. And is a huge void.
I don’t think I agree that no one in the industry is looking into that field. I’d bet that several folks (myself included) are looking/have looked, and believe that currently the technology is too new and the readers available too immature to deliver on what we’d need ‘em to. The market for ebooks and ebook readers still needs to mature for it to represent a significant enough market share to make it worth the additional effort, I believe.
Fred, You’ve missed one of the key reasons why people purchase PDFs – to evaluate print products. I purchase far more pdfs than print products but I would never run a game without either printing or purchasing a hard copy of the game, and when a professional printed version is available this is usually my chosen option. There are exceptions – for example its not unusual to face a $33 shipping fee on a $12 book. In cases like this I will probably print myself.
The Print+PDF bundles are great but some day I’d like to see a method of getting some refund on a pdf purchase when you purchase the book. I know this may be difficult to arrange, but I’m sure you’ll see improved sales as a result.
Also, when it comes to online games and virtual tabletops the combination of print and pdf is unbeatable.
All very good points, Declan. Thanks!
I have access to printing at my job, where we have piles of already printed-upon paper that I can put back into the printer and print on the blank side. I make notebooks for employees here and most of the stuff we print out that is for internal use gets printed on the already used paper. There is still so much left over that I can also print out personal pdf’s from time to time. So for me, because shipping costs are so expensive to Canada and because games arrive in stores here months after they are released, and because of limited shelf space, I’ll buy only the pdf of a game, print it out, stick it in a duo-tang and read it. If it’s a great game and going to get playing time, I’ll often then seek out the hardcopy version to put on my shelf.
I’ll probably end up buying Diaspora in hardcopy because I’m going to be in Vancouver after xmas and it is supposed to be on sale at a couple of stores there. But if I could have a pdf, I probably would have bought it and read it weeks ago, possibly even gotten excited enough to run a one-shot with my crew here.
I can’t help but feeling that there is a certain design-y control freakiness concerning the Diaspora designers not wanting a pdf that mimics the print version. It’s like they can’t stand it that the “artifact” will be out of their control and printed in weird sizes, or multiple sheets per page or on already-printed on paper. If they were truly forward-thinking, why not just release it as a pure text file that individuals could format to their own personal specifications à la Cory Doctorow? Just sell the text itself.
I’m a big PDF user. I bring my laptop to all my games, and it’s so much easier than bringing a stack of books. I have shelves of gamebooks already and I don’t see myself stopping. PDF’s aren’t quite as easy to read, but I’m willing to live with that for the other advantages they have. I’ve downloaded pirate copies of books I own in hard copy, but I’d much rather just pay the publisher to send me the bits.