Do PDF sales undercut Print sales? If so, to what extent?

[Yokiboy]

I think it all depends on what you mean by undercutting print sales. For instance, I have bought tons of indie PDFs recently, but would not have bought them in print format. So in that sense it's a sale gained, as the publisher wouldn't have sold me anything without offering PDFs. I just get so much more use out of PDFs and am almost annoyed with print games nowadays - except that they're easier to take with me to the bathroom.  ;)

However, I must agree that PDF to Print Upgrades are terrific! I would love to be able to show my gaming group a printed book (I don't pass along the PDFs to the cheap bastards, let them buy their own I say). If more publishers took this route I'd certainly upgrade several of my purchases. Having said that, I'd still love a Primetime Adventures PDF...

TTFN,

Yokiboy

[efindel]

And yet another individual data point...

If I buy a PDF, I generally print it out and put it in a binder.  Thus, for me, the decision of which to buy has a few factors:

- The price difference.  Is printing it out and using a cheap binder going to be cheaper than buying a print copy?

- Size.  Partly this plays into price, but it also applies in a couple of other ways.  I like to print double-sided, both to save paper and to make for a more attractive "final product".  The longer a book is, the more trouble this is for me, since the more likely it becomes that the printer will pull two sheets somewhere in the printing of one side or the other, and get the pages out of sync... which results in having to reprint part of the book.

Secondly, I can only easily print on letter-sized paper to do double-sided printing.  Thus, something that's formatted for smaller-sized pages I'm actually more likely to buy pre-printed, because printing it myself, I'm going to wind up "wasting" a lot of paper.

- "Features".  My laser printer is black-and-white.  I have a color inkjet, but it's a lot slower, and the output just doesn't look as good as professionally-printed color.  And lastly, the only paper I have on hand is white.

So, if the printed version has color on the interior, or an attractive, colorful cover, or is printed on special paper, I'm more likely to buy it.

- Binding.  My binding method is to hole-punch and put the pages in a 3-ring binder or notebook.  

A "saddle-stitched" book I'm less likely to buy.  I've just had too much trouble in the past with those coming apart.

A perfect binding or comb binding makes me more likely to buy the book, since both hold up well for me, and will take less space than a binder, while lying flat better than a notebook.


So, for example, I bought Dust Devils in print rather than as a PDF primarily because it had a color cover, a smaller page size, and used parchment-look paper, with a comb binding.

My Life With Master, though, I bought as PDF, because the print version is saddle-stitched.  It supposedly has "eye-catching" cover art, but to actually look at that cover art, I'd have to log into the Forge Bookshelf and look at it there.  With Dust Devils, I was shown the small version of the Dust Devils cover pretty much everywhere on the game's site, and it was cool enough that I wanted it.  With MLWM, I have to enter a username and password, download a ZIP file, then go through four or so directories inside the ZIP to get to the PDF with the covers.

As it turns out, the MLWM cover is pretty neat... but I'd actually never bothered to go through all that trouble before now.  Is there a good reason not to have a "tiny" version of that cover on the web pages, the way Dust Devils does for its?

So basically... the more a game's printed version has to differentiate itself from me printing it out on the paper I have and sticking it in a binder, the more likely I am to buy a printed version.

[Space Cowboy]

Hello,

Make sure to exchange some ideas with Tav Allison of Behemoth3. He posts here a lot and is sure to join the thread soon.

Best,
Ron

Hey Ron,

I was reading the history of "Sorcerer" here

http://www.sorcerer-rpg.com/brochure.php/history.html

First off, I'd like to say "Wow!"  Congrats on all your success.

Second, some points really interested me:

* You weren't worried about piracy by just giving the ASCII version away?

* A bunch of folks actually donated $5?

* You were able to sell various versions of Sorceror? (e.g., spiral-bound)

If you could shed some light about your experiences, it would be greatly appreciated.

Many thanks in advance!

Cheers

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

I'll take these one by one, because to do otherwise isn't really possible.

* You weren't worried about piracy by just giving the ASCII version away?

No. I consider nearly all concerns about piracy to be absolutely irrelevant to successful and profitable publishing.

* A bunch of folks actually donated $5?

As stated at my website, yes. I'm not sure why you're asking this, unless you are wondering if I indulged in falsehoods there. People did, indeed, send me money.

* You were able to sell various versions of Sorceror? (e.g., spiral-bound)

People use the term "sell" way too loosely. Sorcerer has been sold in the following forms:

a) the shareware-style ASCII form that you mention above (1996-1998)
b) PDF for credit-card or Paypal order (1998-2001)
c) book form, both on-line as (b) and in stores (2001 - present)

The spiral-bound stage was merely a convenient format to use for demonstrations at local conventions, and to scribble on as the game continued to develop. Although I did sell them, it was only at the request of people who participated in the demonstrations. I printed up maybe twenty of them and selling out of them was more or less an accident.

If you could shed some light about your experiences, it would be greatly appreciated.

This comment floors me. What do you think this entire site is?

Best,
Ron

[Paul Czege]

Hey Ron,

b) PDF for credit-card or Paypal order (1998-2001)

You never actually had a PDF version did you? I remember the Sorcerer rulebook as a zip file of Microsoft Word documents back in late 2000. Am I misremembering?

Paul

[Ron Edwards]

Hi Paul,

I forgot a stage and you mis-remembered.

The zip file with the Word documents was the very first step of the direct-sale version. It got shifted to a PDF version in late 1998 or very early 1999.

Best,
Ron

[Paul Czege]

I stand corrected.

The Internet Archive of www.sorcerer-rpg.com can be found here:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.sorcerer-rpg.com

The archived ordering pages reference Adobe Acrobat as far back as October 3rd of 1999. (The one earlier archive of the site, from May of 1999, does not include the ordering page.)

Paul

[rpghost]

We did some surveys and case studies last year and found that in almost all cases co-release or late releasing of PDF versions of the product had either no effect or postitive effects on print versions of these books.

There is some more info and the case studies links on the top of this page:

http://www.rpgnow.com/oop.php

James