Obligation.PDF

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.