PDF prices [split from older thread]

[semprebon]

People naturally tend to believe something with a higher price is "better" than something with a lower price. "Cheap price" translates to "poor quality" in our societal subconscious, and we -- as buyers -- tend to act on that whether we realize it or not.

While this is basically correct, what the consumer is generally comparing is your price vs. their own expectations of what the price should be. Thus, if they expect to pay (say), $30 for a hard cover RPG, then a given hard cover RPG might seem outrageously expensive at $50, a better game worth the extra cost at $35, a bargain for what you get at $25, and a dubious purchase at $10.

[Ron Edwards]

The above post was split from how small a .pdf can be sold?

Carry on,
Ron

[Ben O'Neal]

Ok, so what is the expected price difference between printed books and .pdfs? I ask mainly because after the free play-test of Eclipse I plan on selling it as a .pdf and then using any money from that for a print-run.

I was originally thinking about $20 for the full rulebook .pdf, given that it will be fully illustrated by me and probably be around 250-300 pages.

So what is the norm in this area of publishing? What is the typical price for a "good" .pdf and an "average" ,pdf?

[edit] Yes Ron, I noticed that "PDF Pricing" thread just now, but it was empty of anything useful, and I have read the original links, which basically just say "charge what you think it's worth", which really, isn't particularly helpful unless you know how much similar things are worth, and most discussion concerns printed books. [/edit]

[Lxndr]

How much "profit" do you expect to make on a print run?  You print it, paying ($X) and then you sell it for ($20) a copy... how much per book are you expecting net ($Y)?  If nothing else, that's a good starting point for deciding on your price for pdf sales.  

Heck, that's pretty much the official position on lulu.com - you tell them how much you want to earn per copy, and it determines the pdf and print costs to equate.

Besides that... poking around places like rpgnow.com (well, mostly rpgnow.com, plus some publisher's website), I'm of the impression a "good" PDF non-adventure can go anywhere from $4 to $11 (some go up to $15, but personally I'm VERY leery of paying more than $10 for a pdf product).  Adventures are a little cheaper (goin down to $1, 2.50, $3.50)

Just a single person's unofficial random sampling, anyway.  I'm still trying to decide how much I'm going to sell the PDF of Fastlane, but for reference I'm waffling between $5 and $6.

[Jack Aidley]

There was a thread somewhere in which Valamir layed out a logical looking method of pricing print books - if anyone can find it, it is probably worth a look.

Like Alexander, I'd be pretty leery of paying out more than about $10 for a .pdf and, to be honest, I probably flat wouldn't buy a 250-300 page .pdf - it's beyond my limits for printing out, and I don't like reading on-screen. Obviously, I cannot say how representative of the .pdf buying market I am.

For reference, I intend to sell Great Ork Gods at £5 (~$9, I think) and I'm currently expecting it to be about 25-40 pages long.

[Valamir]

For print books, the minimum price you should concider is the price that will allow you to break even on the print costs after selling 1/2 of your print run through distribution (whether you plan on using distribution or not*)

So if you book costs 2$ to print, than you need to pocket 4$ a book in order to break even after selling half of your copies.  If you only receive 40% of cover after the distributor discount than 4 / .04 is $10.  

$10 is your rock bottom minimum.  This assumes that you expect to be able to sell 1/2 of your print run fairly quickly (within the first year).  If you feel you can only sell 1/4 of your print run quickly, than you'll need to pocket 8$ a book in order to break even after selling that 1/4.

This means that 1/2 of your sales just go to paying for the printing.  The other half will have to pay for the art, layout, GenCon booth, marketing expenses...if and only if you actually sell through the whole run.  Otherwise those things become unrecovered costs.  The only thing you actually break even in 1/2 way is the actual printing cost.  Since printing is generally the highest cost for indie publishers not hiring big name freelancers and artists, you can (if you want...I don't) get away with pricing the book this low.

A safer pricing point is to build those costs into your per unit book cost above.  So if the art and layout, etc. cost you an extra $1 a book, then base the price off of having $3 to recover instead of $2 and price the book at $15 in this example.

Also, if you're going to do the job right, you will need to pay sales tax according to the terms and rates of your state.  Some states let you pay annually if the amount is small.  In Illiinois if you get a DBA license they'll start sending you tax forms which you have to sign and return.  I expect other states work similiarly.  Rates vary, but in IL sales tax comes to roughly $1 a book for a $15 book.  Unless you're planning to go through the rigamorole of quoting a price and then slapping sales tax on it, I recommend just building the tax into the cover price of the book and be done with it.  Also, state law varies about collecting sales tax for on line orders shipped out of state.  Some states require paying the tax on that too.

I also generally recommend rounding off to the nearest $.  That $14.95 stuff is just silly and rather pointless.

Now all of this assumes that you actually have a product worth paying that much for, which means it needs to be well layed out, organized and proof read, with art/graphic design that doesn't look like something doodled in a composition book by a 10 year old (unless such a look is particularly appropriate for the game, of course).  



*price it for distribution even if you don't intend to use distribution.  That way, if the opportunity arises to sell to a local retailer or even get into distribution you aren't losing money on every copy you sell.

Plus, all of the mainstream books are priced for distribution, so you can take advantage of the elevation in price that causes.  If it turns out that the bulk of your sales wind up being direct, you can pocket the full cover price, and you'll be breaking even a heck of alot faster than you expected.

[cognizantchance]

So what is the norm in this area of publishing? What is the typical price for a "good" .pdf and an "average" ,pdf?

The short answer is "go look at RPGnow" The long answer is that the market is still developing. I think there's a rough ceiling of $10 for a PDF, and most titles seem to spend most of their selling time in between $6-8. One of the advantages of PDF's is the ability to discount your work to try to maintain level cash flow.

I don't see much discrimination between "good" and "average" PDF's, in terms of price. Some people are competing via price, others still haven't woken up to the PDF market yet.

Joe Preston
http://www.cognizantchance.com