Quote from: S'mon;1064150I thought the designer- publisher keeps the net income on the work...

They do. But you need to know the pay rate of you're going to have any net income to speak of. If you assign the value of your writing at zero then you're giving away your work for free. I'm not a charity.

As to art, the bargain basement prices ($25 for half-page line art) I quoted were for non-exclusive use. Prices for exclusive use are significantly more depending on the artist. I'm fortunate that I'll be able to do a lot of the art myself, but I still had to spend more than I would have if I'd not been doing this project on art resources.

Quote from: sureshotAt the same time don't tell us your saving costs by using the PDF format then charge me like you would a print copy. To me a fair price for a 40$ print book would be at 30$. Anything more I have no reason to buy the PDF or just buy it when it's on sale.

I'm not sure some people really understand how small a part of the overall cost is in printing physical books. The last quote I had for my book was $4.35 each for a 1000 book print run of 360 pages with black & white interiors or $7.49 each for the same with color interiors.

That's why the PDFs are often only $5-10 cheaper than the physical books. It's because that's all the difference that print costs account for in the final product.

Quote from: Chris24601;1064144You cite a price there because the designer deserves to be compensated for their writing... or should they have devoted hundreds of hours towards the project for free?

I guess the designer should charge what the market will bear. In most cases that is not very much. Although independent designer-publishers seem to do better than people doing work-for-hire, they're bearing the risk also.

My impression is that the great majority of designer-publishers are hobbyists and use print-on-demand services like Lulu so they don't risk being stuck with a garage full of unsold books. I think in the POD environment it's reasonable that pdfs should be a fair bit cheaper, since the customer bears the printing costs and the publisher is not bearing the risk of unsold copies.

Quote from: Chris24601;1064175That's why the PDFs are often only $5-10 cheaper than the physical books. It's because that's all the difference that print costs account for in the final product.

While I understand the economics of production, ultimately what you are running up against is perceived value of customers and possible numbers of units given the standards and size of the market.

When the perceived value doesn't match the price asked, your sales aren't going to be good. For many, just being a PDF is a significant negative, before other considerations of usability and how that might be used to increase (or decrease) perceived value.

With PDFs, if the price is perceived as extremely high from the buyer perspective, it seems to me that a higher rate of piracy is very likely.

So let me toss this out as a question - has commitment of the market to brokering PDFs actually created its own limitations to profitability, and is there an alternative?

Quote from: Chris24601;1064175They do. But you need to know the pay rate of you're going to have any net income to speak of. If you assign the value of your writing at zero then you're giving away your work for free. I'm not a charity.

As to art, the bargain basement prices ($25 for half-page line art) I quoted were for non-exclusive use. Prices for exclusive use are significantly more depending on the artist. I'm fortunate that I'll be able to do a lot of the art myself, but I still had to spend more than I would have if I'd not been doing this project on art resources.



I'm not sure some people really understand how small a part of the overall cost is in printing physical books. The last quote I had for my book was $4.35 each for a 1000 book print run of 360 pages with black & white interiors or $7.49 each for the same with color interiors.

That's why the PDFs are often only $5-10 cheaper than the physical books. It's because that's all the difference that print costs account for in the final product.

Fair enough and thank you for sharing the information. At the same time I agree with S'mon PDfs should be a little cheaper in that the customer has to assume the printing costs. Their is no distribution, shipping, or printing costs. Yes everyone involved in the production needs to be paid yet the costs of doing it in PDF just can't be the same as print. Publishers at least rpg publishers want to have it both ways and eat their cake too.

Quote from: sureshot;1064189Fair enough and thank you for sharing the information. At the same time I agree with S'mon PDfs should be a little cheaper in that the customer has to assume the printing costs. Their is no distribution, shipping, or printing costs. Yes everyone involved in the production needs to be paid yet the costs of doing it in PDF just can't be the same as print. Publishers at least rpg publishers want to have it both ways and eat their cake too.

Maybe I'm an oddball when it comes to PDFs but "print costs?" I thought the whole point of the PDFs was that you could throw them on a tablet and not have to lug around all that paper. I own a lot of RPG pdfs and I don't think I've ever printed anything other than character sheets off any of them.

My legit plan for pricing units is going to be totaling up all the expenses (including a fair rate for my writing and art which would be my profit) for the project and divide the cost for each item by whatever the print run ends being. PDFs will be less expensive by the cost of printing and shipping. I also plan to include a Book + PDF combo for a minimal extra charge (whatever the hosting costs for a secure online download site are when divided out as above) over the book alone since the customer is already covering their share of the expenses with their book purchase.

If that's not fair to both me and the customers I don't know what is.

Quote from: Chris24601;1064200Maybe I'm an oddball when it comes to PDFs but "print costs?" I thought the whole point of the PDFs was that you could throw them on a tablet and not have to lug around all that paper. I own a lot of RPG pdfs and I don't think I've ever printed anything other than character sheets off any of them.

If I'm going to use something, I print it. With an RPG product I need to be able to write on it, for one thing.

Really, even with stuff I'm not using, if I'm going to read it I tend to print it out first.  I don't like reading long pdfs.

Quote from: Chris24601;1064200Maybe I'm an oddball when it comes to PDFs but "print costs?" I thought the whole point of the PDFs was that you could throw them on a tablet and not have to lug around all that paper. I own a lot of RPG pdfs and I don't think I've ever printed anything other than character sheets off any of them.

My legit plan for pricing units is going to be totaling up all the expenses (including a fair rate for my writing and art which would be my profit) for the project and divide the cost for each item by whatever the print run ends being. PDFs will be less expensive by the cost of printing and shipping. I also plan to include a Book + PDF combo for a minimal extra charge (whatever the hosting costs for a secure online download site are when divided out as above) over the book alone since the customer is already covering their share of the expenses with their book purchase.

If that's not fair to both me and the customers I don't know what is.

Do what you need to do when it comes to your company. I ask that you also understand that the consumer needs to do what they as well. Too many companies just price gouge the consumer when it comes to PDfs imo. As for printing I only do it for short books. No way in hell would I print out say Hero System 6E. At the same time a PDf of both books is a pain to read because imoit's dense. I also found that once I switched to a flat screen monitor from a CRT monitor for my computer. It was easier on the eyes to read a PDF.

Well look at what we had back in the old days, people paying for a print run out of pocket and then having stacks of boxes of books around the house while trying to sell them bit by bit. This way we get a lot more stuff to choose from. If you want to be careful to not get burned its easy enough to:
1. Only back people with a proven track record.
2. Back stuff where you've gotten enough enjoyment out of the free contentthey given you (bloggers, webcomic artists, etc.) that they've given you that your backing is more of a reward for that than anything.
3. Just wait for the Kickstarter funded stuf to hit regular retail and be happy that Kickstarter allows for more stuff to get to that point so that you have more to choose from.

Thinking back to the kind of crap that I used to buy as a kid, so much 2ed splatbook crap (the crappy 2ed elf splatbook etc. etc.) that obviously wasn't a labor of love that was slapped together by some 20-something guy without much writing experience doing whatever kind of freelance work would pay the bills things are much better now that there's so much stuff that people really poured their hearts and souls into instead of a bunch of hastily written fluff written to kill out the page count. Don't see much of that anymoer even from the big names, just look at how 5ed has pretty much halted the splatbook treadmill compared to book after book in 3.5ed that were mostly just mined for feats an ignored otherwise.

Quote from: S'mon;1064201If I'm going to use something, I print it. With an RPG product I need to be able to write on it, for one thing. Really, even with stuff I'm not using, if I'm going to read it I tend to print it out first.  I don't like reading long pdfs.

But isn't that also the rub of the format?

A great many PDFs out there are not optimized for the format - for actual use of the capabilities of the format (linking, etc) - as well as the notion that if it is printed, you aren't going to use up your color ink cartridge printing stuff that doesn't need to be printed in order to use it. A friend of mine showed me some huge White Wolf PDFs, so full of large splashes of black and color which, ultimately, do not help you run or play the game. To me, that makes them a crap product AS PDFs.

Quote from: sureshot;1064189Fair enough and thank you for sharing the information. At the same time I agree with S'mon PDfs should be a little cheaper in that the customer has to assume the printing costs. Their is no distribution, shipping, or printing costs. Yes everyone involved in the production needs to be paid yet the costs of doing it in PDF just can't be the same as print. Publishers at least rpg publishers want to have it both ways and eat their cake too.

But there is a distribution cost.  DriveThruRPG charges a 30% fee.

Quote from: Chris24601;1064200Maybe I'm an oddball when it comes to PDFs but "print costs?" I thought the whole point of the PDFs was that you could throw them on a tablet and not have to lug around all that paper. I own a lot of RPG pdfs and I don't think I've ever printed anything other than character sheets off any of them.

My legit plan for pricing units is going to be totaling up all the expenses (including a fair rate for my writing and art which would be my profit) for the project and divide the cost for each item by whatever the print run ends being. PDFs will be less expensive by the cost of printing and shipping. I also plan to include a Book + PDF combo for a minimal extra charge (whatever the hosting costs for a secure online download site are when divided out as above) over the book alone since the customer is already covering their share of the expenses with their book purchase.

If that's not fair to both me and the customers I don't know what is.

You have to realize that you're talking with some luddite grognards who still think of books as entirely in the paper realm and want to ban electronic devices from the gaming table.  That will change as the younger generations who are used to electronic devices feel no need to use paper or printed books.  Me?  I hardly ever print anything, just character sheets if that.

Quote from: Lynn;1064257But isn't that also the rub of the format?

A great many PDFs out there are not optimized for the format - for actual use of the capabilities of the format (linking, etc) - as well as the notion that if it is printed, you aren't going to use up your color ink cartridge printing stuff that doesn't need to be printed in order to use it. A friend of mine showed me some huge White Wolf PDFs, so full of large splashes of black and color which, ultimately, do not help you run or play the game. To me, that makes them a crap product AS PDFs.

That's one of the reasons I'm going with a tablet friendly single column 6x9 format instead of the typical 8.5x11 two column format (the other being to keep the price on the Player's Guide half of the rules down to about $25-30 for a physical book and $19.95 for the PDF for a very low cost of entry).

I also plan on including a tablet version and a print-friendly version (i.e. only rule critical art and laid out with two book pages laid out on a single landscaped 8.5" x 11" page) in the PDF package since 6x9 would be rather wasteful on paper if you were to print the tablet version on normal paper.

Quote from: Apparition;1064279You have to realize that you're talking with some luddite grognards who still think of books as entirely in the paper realm and want to ban electronic devices from the gaming table.  That will change as the younger generations who are used to electronic devices feel no need to use paper or printed books.  Me?  I hardly ever print anything, just character sheets if that.

I was teaching some pretty nasty Contract Law in a tutorial today and the students relying on their phones & Ipads were completey lost. The students with paper notes & case printouts did much better. I see the same with RPGs.

Quote from: S'mon;1064286I was teaching some pretty nasty Contract Law in a tutorial today and the students relying on their phones & Ipads were completey lost. The students with paper notes & case printouts did much better. I see the same with RPGs.

Different devices and displays have their own user interface designs and conventions, and those very UIs that are highly functional for one type of task can be entirely horrible for something else. And sometimes, that is by design.

Did you ever wonder why it took so long to have supporting keyboards for the iPhone? Apple used its market lock to keep makers from getting their existing keyboards working with them. There was a healthy portable / foldable keyboard market in existence from the "PDA" days and makers wanting to get them working with the iPhone. Nope, Apple wanted to control that experience. Now we have a generation of people very deft with their thumbs but cannot really 'type'.

Quote from: Chris24601;1064284I also plan on including a tablet version and a print-friendly version (i.e. only rule critical art and laid out with two book pages laid out on a single landscaped 8.5" x 11" page) in the PDF package since 6x9 would be rather wasteful on paper if you were to print the tablet version on normal paper.

The more you optimize, the more desirable it becomes.

Quote from: S'mon;1064286I was teaching some pretty nasty Contract Law in a tutorial today and the students relying on their phones & Ipads were completey lost. The students with paper notes & case printouts did much better. I see the same with RPGs.

It depends on the person, although it's largely along generational lines.  I became an auditor for the United States federal government in 2005.  I had to take a ten month training course after getting the job.  We were all given over a dozen large textbooks and numerous printed examples.  I never used them.  Why?  Because all of the printed materials were also available in the government Intranet.  I used a second monitor to look up everything I needed, and maintain several hundred bookmarks in my web browser to this day.  Not to toot my own horn, but I've received numerous awards over the past ten years, and even a commendation from the government agency's commissioner five years ago.  I must be doing something right.

Over the past few years, I've been training new government auditors.  Starting four years ago, they aren't given any printed materials.  Everything is on the government Intranet, and as PDFs.  Trainee auditors can mark up the PDFs with annotations as they see fit.