The Forge Archives

Hey all,

A friend recently stated his belief that PDF sales of an RPG undercut Print sales of the selfsame product.  I'm not certain if this can be proved, but wanted to hear what others have to say on the subject.

Many thanks!

I think it's plainly true on the surface - there are people who wouldn't mind a PDF copy, and given a choice would take a PDF over a print copy based mainly in price. These are potential print sales that went for PDF. And, theoretically, some will take your product "less seriously" if its in PDF instead of print. However, I think this point of view is silly. (It's understandable to only want a print-run as a producer, but silly as a consumer to make a negative content judgement based on having more judgements.)

But, will you get more sales, on the whole, if you offer both formats? Common sense says yes, but that should be answered by experienced folks.

Hello,

All information so far, from myself as well as many publishers who are active at the Forge, suggests that PDF + print sales are substantially greater than either of the two alone.

Rather than either undercutting the other, it seems as if (a) many people prefer one form over the other, and therefore are happy that both are offered; and (b) many people actually like to own both and will buy both.

My policy has always been to discontinue the PDF versions when I move to a print version, for a given game or book. That policy is apparently badly mistaken, in comparison to the both-at-once tactics taken by Anvilwerks, Half Meme Press, Ronin Arts, and many others. I now consider myself to have lost a lot of money in the past four or five years due to the approach I took.

Best,
Ron

Some people offer upgrades from PDFs to whole book for a discount, as recently posted on these boards, and those seem to work great. To me as a customer, it's certainly a great advantage to get both and that approach motivates me to get the game.

I just bought Sorcerer (today), and that after struggling for quite a while. If you, Ron, were offering a PDF for half the price, I'd have bought it weeks ago, and your profit might have been the same. Many people are on my kind of budget, and for those, more affordable PDFs are the way to go. And once you're sucked into the game, you'll want a hard copy to bring to the gaming table, so ultimately, I think PDFs help much more than they can hurt.

I can't speak to the reality on a long term basis, but so far, in the 2 weeks my game has been out, I've found that PDF and Print (done on demand through Lulu) are selling almost identically.

Besides, heres one small, but fun fact: if you don't have a print version (print run in this instance, not Print on Demand), you don't have the additional cost. Thus, PDF is almost 100% profit by comparison- you (the publisher) don't have anything into it in cost of printing terms ^_^

And once you're sucked into the game, you'll want a hard copy to bring to the gaming table...

I've sold many hundreds of pdf copies of My Life with Master, and only had one customer come back, after reading it, to purchase the book. (Of course My Life with Master is only 64 pages long, so it's not a beast to print out yourself if you want a hardcopy. And I also treat the book and the pdf as separate products, not giving a discount on the purchase of the book to someone who has previously purchased the pdf. So I bet the Wicked-Dead guys report differently.)

I can't speak to the reality on a long term basis, but so far, in the 2 weeks my game has been out, I've found that PDF and Print (done on demand through Lulu) are selling almost identically.

Again, many hundreds of pdfs and books sold over the past year-and-a-half, and I've found that this pattern is consistent. Book sales barely barely edge out pdf sales. Maybe 53% of units sold are the hardcopy book.

Paul

That you can track, of course, Paul.  I bought the MLWM pdf from the website and then I bought the hardcopy at gencon. :- )  

Still easily worth the money both times

Trevis

Ah, right. Good point Trevis. In the past two years I've sold ~215 copies at conventions and to retailers, and have no way of knowing if any of those were actually purchased by previous customers of the pdf.

Paul

I don't really think it matters much if the PDF sales should undercut the print sales, so long as it's not undercutting profits.

Just set the pricing for each so that you make the same profit on the sale whichever one is purchased. The PDF can be sold cheaper because there's no print cost, with the net take for the publisher still being the same. Just keep the print runs low enough that you don't get bitten in the butt by having boxes of unsold books piled all over (or go POD), and it's all good.

In the end it won't matter which one is selling the most, as you make the same net profit regardless.

Hi folks,

I think the traditional concern regarding pdfs was a worry about piracy.  Of course, people who are very serious about pirating something, will always find a way.  The general idea is to make it more convenient for the average person to buy the product than to download it.

The fear that "lost profits" would hit small press folks really bad seem to be more or less unfounded.  The audience for these things is too small to really produce the electronic piracy ring that everyone fears and the prices are usually low enough that only the real cheapskates refuse to pay for it.  And despite the proliferation of p2p options, even the big companies haven't seen the sales plummet due to piracy.

If anything at this point, the concern is probably that you'd be selling one pdf to a given game group instead of "a few".  But, aside from groups that hardcore specialize in a given game, you don't see everyone in the group clamoring for their own copies anyway.  Usually there is one or two people who go out and buy the new weird stuff, and show it to everyone else.  Even if they play the new game, there's usually only one copy for everyone.

But, I would think the increased profit and the lack of initial funds to sink into the printing would make up for this.  Plus the fact that you don't have to fight for marketing or shelf space, or handle shipping, and all the other stuff that you have to deal with when selling a physical product.

Chris

Hey all,

Thanks heaps for your posts!  Lots of interesting stuff posted.  The reason for my original post is that I am developing a gamebook to be distributed for free on the Wild Sphere website set in the WS universe that uses the WS RPG game mechanic for gamebook resolutions.  To play the gamebook, users will obviously need at least part of the RPG book.

Having spoken with my Business & Legal Counsel, I think the best way to deal with the situation is to use the shareware model (ala "Doom")

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shareware

and release the WS game mechanics as a free PDF on the WS website.  The point of using the shareware approach is to minimize piracy but still allow folks to play the gamebook.

We'll get around releasing the char gen by instead providing several pre-generated characters for the gamebook.  This makes a lot of sense to me b/c 1) people can see how cool characters can be, 2) casual users will be able to pick a pre gen and play the gamebook, and 3) if someone wants to create their own characters, they'll have to purchase a print copy and if they don't, so be it.  And all background material in the RPG will also not be released, except for the bits in the gamebook text that are relevant to the particular story.  

Anyways, does this sound like a reasonable approach?

Many thanks in advance!

ps-please continue the original discussion too!

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

Just visited this thread so I could copy its URL to point people from the Game Publishers Association here, as a concurrent discussion of this issue is happening on the GPA-L. Or at least that's what I thought I was doing; it appears, in fact, that I was actually summoned by Ron's sorcerous powers.

Be that as it may, I'm happy to do my thing. Here's a distillate of my post to the GPA plus some subsequent thinking.

Behemoth3 has adopted a PDF-to-print upgrade model, following in the footsteps of a number of other companies that look successful to me, like RPGObjects. Masters and Minions PDFs cost 50% of the printed edition, but if you're a registered owner of the PDF, you can go to our website store and apply the price you paid for it towards the cost of the edition we killed trees and spent money to produce.

From our point of view, this is a good thing because we profit as much or more from the sale of the PDF as we do from selling the print edition through retail. If we can use the upgrade model to sell the same product to the same customer again, via the direct channel that's most profitable to us, that's 100% gravy.

I don't believe, BTW, that this is hurting the retailer in any way; the percentage of people who would ever buy a PDF is insignificant compared to the volume of retail sales, and the few people who are willing to buy a PDF from one online store and then a book from our online store aren't likely to be brick and mortar customers anyhow. If the upgrade model cuts into anyone's sales, it's our own - the money we might have made by selling to a truly tiny percentage of people who would pay for both electronic and dead-tree editions of the same thing - and the sales of online discounters.

We're also doing a print-with-PDF package that I don't know of anyone else adopting. The print edition of our books have a variable-printed registration code inside the cover that buyers can use to download the PDF edition for free. We're doing this because it adds value to the print book; it shows off the unique extra functionality of the PDF, like bookmarks to our online rules reference, which we're proud of; and because it helps us make a connection with the retail buyer, letting us keep them informed of new releases and helping make them into repeat customers. We also hope that this will introduce some people to PDFs who wouldn't have been aware of them otherwise, helping to grow the more-profitable, tree-saving market.

I think that "piracy" of the PDF also helps retailer sales. People who obtain our books through file-sharing don't get the 50% discount on the print edition from us, because they're not registered owners. So if they like what they see in the PDF and decide they want a print copy for their gaming table - and there's no denying this does happen, just argument about how often - they're likely to get it from their favorite retail store, having no incentive to pay 100% SRP at our online store.

I see the PDF and the print edition as equal halves of a single product (although since we perceived the demand for PDFs to be much lower, and since the incremental cost of the print edition is infintely greater, we don't offer the option of buying just the print book without the PDF for half price).

The way the registration code for owners of the print to download the PDF is that there's a checksum for the code, so there's a layer of automatic verification, and we also keep a log of the codes we've issued. The variable printing of the registration code costs extra, although we got it free on the print run of our first two books as recompense for an endless string of screw-ups on the printer's part.

Some cheaper and almost-as-good solutions would be to have people send in the store receipt, or email us a scan of the receipt; to have a signature box inside the cover (This book belongs to ______) and to give the PDF to people who send us a picture or scan of their signed copy; or just tell them to send an email saying where they bought their copy and that they'd like the PDF.

With the latter option, there's the risk that folks would lie about owning the print in order to obtain the PDF for free. But my thinking when we decided to create PDFs was that there were going to be many ways for people to get them without paying us, and no way to stop them from doing so. Printing the registration codes adds an extra cost, and I'm not sure the extra degree of control is worth it. Trusting people to do the right thing has its own rewards in customer loyalty.

Basically, if someone wants to get our PDF dishonestly, I'd much rather they do it by giving me some useful info in return -- like their name for our mailing list, and the name of a retailer in their area who I can contact and say "hey, have you ordered our books yet, I know there are people in your town who are interested in them? -- than by copying it from a friend or getting it off a file-sharing network. (Not that I don't believe we benefit from that too, just that the benefit is less direct).

My plan, once I get things established (I've been slow getting going as I have had many things I've had to deal with) is to produce and distribute by a true shareware model.

Products/material will be available for free, without obligation to send anything in the form of payment.  I do encourage those who do like the product, or find it of use to send in a form of payment.  The amount that I request is exactly how much the reader feels the value that they get out of it.  If you think my 100pg pdf is only worth $.50, send $.50.  If you feel it's worth $5, send $5.  The form of payment isn't limited solely to cash.  If you can ship it, I will accept it (unless customs charges end up being too much ;)

There are a number of reasons for myself going the shareware route.  Of those, is my own personal philosophy of try before you buy.  If you like something enough, buy a copy.  Also, I prefer to "set" my own price.  When it comes to computer games, I simply wait until prices drop to the level where I feel it's appropriate for the game (usually that is in the $10-15 range (for single games), $20-30 range (for game bundles).  In the meantime I will play "borrowed" copies until the price drops to the acceptable range.  Some game though I've grabbed at higher price points (GTAII/VC: $50, NFSHot Pursuit 2: $30 are some examples).

When it comes to gaming products, it all depends on what I am playing at the present time.  I have a wide variety of pdfs, but I don't think I've even looked at any of them in the last 6-12 months.  Of course, it's been about 9 months since I last played.

I also go the shareware route because it's simple to produce and distribute an errata'd version.  Just post it, and let people download and spread it around.  Don't have to worry about who has purchased a copy, and how to distribute to previous purchasers.  If and when I can expand into a print role, I expect to have some grassroots fanbase established.  Any print products would be distributed and sold in the traditional model.

My final reason for going shareware is that I don't have to worry about developing an maintaining a regular release schedule to build and retain momentum that is necessary from a commercial standpoint.  If I release 3 products next month, and then suddenly nothing for 6 months, I haven't lost anything as I'm not concerned with Sales levels.