This is the beginning of a list of games for which a free PDF is provided to buyers of the print edition:

A Swarm of Stirges (Masters and Minions Horde Book 1)
Capes
Dogs in the Vineyard
Maze of the Minotaur (Masters and Minions Horde Book 2)

I'll update the list as I learn of others - post any you know of!

(Thanks to Andrew Morris for letting me know of Capes & DitV - did I meet you at Dreamation?)

Don't forget the Wicked Dead Games:

Cat
Enemy Gods
Run Robot Red
The Secret Life of Gingerbread Men

Not sure about Jared's Memento-mori stuff.

Yeah, I've been doing that for awhile.

Jared, could you throw down a list of Memento Mori games? I don't want to miss any, or get their orthography wrong - is that Squ3am, for example?

Squ3am isn't a book...it's just a crap PDF. :)

The PDF games that I've turned into physical books (and done the "buy one, get the other at some kind of deal" thing) are:

octaNe: premium uNleaded
InSpectres
Lacuna Part I. The Creation of the Mystery and the Girl from Blue City

I'm working on an "art book" version of the farm but that's not finished yet (and won't come with the PDF because it's special...and the PDF is like, $3).

How are people tracking purchases of hard copy books? Are the PDFs only for people who buy direct from the publishers?

Behemoth3 gives the PDF of a book to the buyer of the print edition via a unique registration code printed inside the cover (using variable printing; a common practice in software manuals, for example). Customers can then go to www.behemoth3.com/community to register their purchase using this code, which entitles them to download the PDF of their book as well as some extra PDF goodies like counters for the monsters in the book, etc.

How do you keep someone from walking into the game store and just copying down the code and registering it?

Could happen - but there are lots of ways to get a PDF dishonestly.

The Swing too.

Right now I am trying to clear out the inventory [3 copies left] at RPGMALL (http://www.rpgmall.com/product_info.php?products_id=32740) for only $3.99, with those I am throwing in the PDF bundle (the game and 3 supplements) for free. Normally it would be just the pdf version of the game.

OK, here's the latest list (alphabetized) - at some point I'll put the publisher next to each game and maybe make it a link to the game's page, unless some enterprising soul beats me to it:

A Swarm of Stirges (Masters and Minions Horde Book 1)
Capes
Cat
Dogs in the Vineyard
Enemy Gods
InSpectres
Lacuna Part I. The Creation of the Mystery and the Girl from Blue City
Maze of the Minotaur (Masters and Minions Horde Book 2)
octaNe: premium uNleaded
Run Robot Red
The Secret Life of Gingerbread Men
The Swing

RPG Objects also has a similar program - see here - I've asked them to drop into the thread and add a list, since they have quite a few titles.

Hi All

Here's RPGObjects books that are in print that we offer an upgrade or rebate program for.

Darwin's World (2nd Edition) Hardcover
The Foundationists/Metal Gods Print Edition
The Lost City
Death by Corium Light
Against The Wastelords (W1)

Blood and Fists: Modern Martial Arts
Blood and Guts: Modern Military
Blood and Relics (2nd Edition)
Modern Backdrops

Legends of Excalibur: Arthurian Adventures HC

Blood and Space (1st Edition)

NPC Essentials

In the Future:

Legends of the Samurai HC

-chris

Here's the latest list, alphabetical by title:

A Swarm of Stirges, Behemoth3
Against The Wastelords (W1), RPG Objects
Blood and Fists: Modern Martial Arts, RPG Objects
Blood and Guts: Modern Military, RPG Objects
Blood and Relics (2nd Edition), RPG Objects
Blood and Space (1st Edition), RPG Objects
Capes, Muse of Fire Games
Cat, Wicked Dead Brewing Company
Darwin's World (2nd Edition) Hardcover, RPG Objects
Death by Corium Light, RPG Objects
Dogs in the Vineyard, lumpley games
Enemy Gods, Wicked Dead Brewing Company
InSpectres, Wicked Dead Brewing Company
Lacuna Part I. The Creation of the Mystery and the Girl from Blue City, Wicked Dead Brewing Company
Legends of Excalibur: Arthurian Adventures HC, RPG Objects
Legends of the Samurai HC, RPG Objects
Maze of the Minotaur (Masters and Minions Horde Book 2), Behemoth3
Modern Backdrops, RPG Objects
NPC Essentials , RPG Objects
octaNe: premium uNleaded, Wicked Dead Brewing Company
Run Robot Red, Wicked Dead Brewing Company
The Foundationists/Metal Gods Print Edition, RPG Objects
The Lost City, RPG Objects
The Secret Life of Gingerbread Men, Wicked Dead Brewing Company
The Swing , 93 Studio

That's pretty impressive!

When you buy CoS thru Lulu you get the PDF for free and if anyone who bought the hard copy elsewhere wants the PDF they can email me for it since they are on two different setups.

Keith

Hey Tav,

You're a futurist. I've seen your article. So something implemented this year by the company I work for may be of interest. The company is a large reference publisher with a growing and profitable business in the selling of pdf titles. Until this year, the company offered a discount on the price of the pdf version of a title to someone purchasing the print version. Now, the company offers a discount on the purcase of the print version to someone purchasing the pdf.

A free pdf as a purchasing incentive may make sense from a manufacturing standpoint, in that it doesn't cost you anything to offer it. And maybe it closes the deal for some of the immediate gratification types and true fence-sitters. (Though a discount scheme would almost certainly have a bigger impact on your bottom line.) If you're sitting on the inventory of a traditional print run, and the debt from producing it, maybe every little purchase incentive counts. But if your book is small-run/print-on-demand, consider that by throwing in the pdf for free you're validating customer valuing of hard goods over content. Does that match how you personally value your products? (I like my objects as much as the next guy. And I created the print version of My Life with Master to be an object that very much appeals to my own subjective tastes. But my thinking is that a great deal of the industry's problems stem from sales strategies based on over appealing to the fetishist inclinations of customers, at the expense of content excellence. And since My Life with Master is print-on-demand, and I'm not sitting on any debt, I'm choosing to endorse the valuation of content.)

Paul

It's interesting to see viewpoints from other industries. What kind of titles does the company you work for produce? It's hard to know what the best analog to RPG materials is; Baen Books, frex, credits David Weber's place on the bestseller lists to the fact that as each new novel in his series is released in print, they allow free electronic downloads of the previous installments. Whether the significant differences between novels and RPG books make this a viable strategy for game publishers is an open question.

We - and, I believe, many/all of the companies on this list - are doing both of the strategies you suggest. Buying the PDF gives you a discount on the print book equal to the price of the PDF. Buying the print gives you the PDF for free.

My reasoning is this:

1) The print edition costs more to produce, so it costs more. But the content is largely identical (each format has its advantages, like the portability of print and the hyperlinking of the PDF). I feel like requiring the customer to purchase the content twice to have it in both formats is validating a false dichotomy between print and electrons, when the content is what counts.

2) Since we're in hobby distribution, there are potentially people who will buy the book off the shelves without ever having been aware that PDFs existed. If we can get them to download the PDF and expose them to the virtues of that format, we can help grow the audience for PDFs (and create customers for things we release only electronically).

3) I'd like to have a sales strategy that appeals to all kinds of gamers: a PDF edition for the internet-savvy types who can learn about, seek out, and download excellent content; a mass market print edition for the types who need to see a tangible book in stores; and a deluxe edition with a correspondingly high price point for fetishists. It remains to be seen whether all of these can be done successfully by a company of our scale in the current environment, of course!

Hey Tav,

I feel like requiring the customer to purchase the content twice to have it in both formats is validating a false dichotomy between print and electrons, when the content is what counts.

Nice rebuttal. If you're selling content, then deliver it so the user receives functionality and usability, and don't arbitrarily withold functionality or usability just so you can charge more. So, what matches that vision best, customer buys the print version and gets the pdf for free, or customer buys the pdf and gets the print version for the cost of production plus shipping/handling? If you can't swallow the latter, are you really committed to "the content is what counts"?

(And hey, I consider this a friendly conversation. Just so you know. Not an attack. I'm not personally doing the latter either. No business decision is 100% pure principle. I like the sensibilities I worked into my book object too much to not value it beyond the cost of production plus shipping/handling. I personally buy way more print RPG books than pdfs. And so Half Meme Press requires the customer to choose and purchase the format they most want. And almost exactly 50% of them choose the pdf. I would not have ever guessed the number would be so high, based on my own purchasing preferences, and how great I think my book object is. But anyway, that's how I know the company I work for has it right. The future is content delivery. Normal people, and younger people aren't as grandly object fetishist as I am, or as my friends. And so my advice is to come up with a way of not sending the message that your target customer is someone for whom the object is the important part, and not the content.)

I work for a reference publishing company. So directories, encyclopedias, biographical encyclopedias, that kind of thing, products more closely analogous to RPGs, I think, than science fiction novels. Guys who buy science fiction novels are fetishists.

Paul

Paul Czege wrote: So, what matches that vision best, customer buys the print version and gets the pdf for free, or customer buys the pdf and gets the print version for the cost of production plus shipping/handling? If you can't swallow the latter, are you really committed to "the content is what counts"?

Paul Czege wrote: (And hey, I consider this a friendly conversation. Just so you know. Not an attack.

Paul Czege wrote: And so Half Meme Press requires the customer to choose and purchase the format they most want.