So, for publishers, do you feel the appeal of PDFs is growing?

If so, do you think they are currently a viable component of an overall strategy to release?

To customers, are PDFs something you consider buying?

Do your friends buy them?

Are e-books appealing at all or is it in-print or die?

To everyone, with print prices growing and in-print sales shrinking some see it as the end of days for an organized RPG industry. Do you see PDFs as the future of the RPG industry or is it just a fad?

Bill (more curious than tired )

As a customer my personal preference has become PDF, unless I happen to really like the art. Then likely PDF and print. But the print part isn't really for playing, so that's not really gaming related.

The why is I like working in the electronic form. Searchable and copy-paste of specific entries rocks. Plus I have a decent colour laser printer, as part of the family small business, to knock off a printout that I feel comfortable banging around and that folds flat as I need it to. With a plastic coil binding it even folds right back on itself so I have an open book in a form that is the size of the book closed. Together these make it suitable for both the game table and a little 'throneroom' reading.

I've bought far much more on PDF than print recently.

Reasons

a) cost - PDF's are cheaper.
b) availability - no local game shop (all 3 have closed down), so I need to drive an hour or so to get to my nearest one, pay about £5+ for parking/tunnel fees, which adds to the cost. Then the shop often won't have what I'm after anyway.
c) I can browse titles on the internet, often PDF have demo's available, with my nearest games shop being so far and expensive to even visit, I just can't browse hardcopy anymore.
d) utility - I've recently bought PDF's of titles I already own in hardcopy just so I can copy and paste sections for player notes.

An example of a recent purchase I bought "Path of Tears sourcebook" for Traveller:TNE, I already own the hardcopy. But I've used the PDF to copy and paste to make a Traveller Wiki to use as a player resource, it cost me less than a £5 to buy it, it would cost me more than that to just visit my nearest game shop.

I'm far more willing to buy PDFs than I am to buy hardcopies of RPGs.

It takes something special to get me to buy a deadtree RPG but if I have money in my paypal account I can much more easily be convinced to part with it.

Actually, I think a case could possibly be made for all RPG publishers using paypal simply because there is a tendency to see paypal money as not being real or being reserved for fun stuff.

I like PDFs. They are cheap, don't use space unless you decide to print them, you can choose the binding you like (I prefer softcovers, with spiral bindings that aloww me to fully open the book without cracks), and even better, you can choose to print only the pages you need.

I like the searchability of pdfs, you can find everything associated with a keyword if you need info on it and go right to it. You can either print it, cut and paste it into a document or just read it. The only drawback is you're limited as to where you can read the material. You can't carry it with you and if you can it's a pain (laptops are heavier than books, get hot etc.).

As a publisher, my primary distribution is through pdfs, though that is changing with Cold Space being released to distro. I think that they are part of an overall publishing strategy which bypasses the troublesome distribution methods traditionally used, and which will be necessary when the whole thing falls apart like a chunk of rotted wood.

As a customer, I prefer them for game prepping, but I still print them out for full-on reading - then again I have a color laser printer, which most gamers don't. For actually running a game, I prefer books if they have a good index, but if they don't, searchable pdfs are better.

-clash

I know a lot of smaller publishers depend on pdf sales and couldn't survive in a print-only environment, but I don't like them, for the reasons most often heard, namely that I would rather be able to hold a book in my hands and curl up on the couch with it rather than have to sit at the computer staring at the screen (no, I don't have a laptop, too expensive). Plus staring at the screen for hours trying to read a book is hard on the eyes (although to be fair I don't seem to have any problem hanging out on message boards for hours).

One reason that I haven't heard mentioned much is that with a print book, if I buy it and hate it, I can throw it up on ebay and make some of my money back.  Can't do that with a pdf.

Quote from: TechnomancerI know a lot of smaller publishers depend on pdf sales and couldn't survive in a print-only environment, but I don't like them, for the reasons most often heard, namely that I would rather be able to hold a book in my hands and curl up on the couch with it rather than have to sit at the computer staring at the screen (no, I don't have a laptop, too expensive). Plus staring at the screen for hours trying to read a book is hard on the eyes (although to be fair I don't seem to have any problem hanging out on message boards for hours).

One reason that I haven't heard mentioned much is that with a print book, if I buy it and hate it, I can throw it up on ebay and make some of my money back.  Can't do that with a pdf.

That's why I - and most other Small Press publishers - offer Print On Demand books for anything large enough to be viable.

-clash

I can't say whether PDFs are the "way of the future" in the sense that they'll always be around.  My suspicion is that they'll only become more and more important as society continues to become more and more electronic (well, either PDFs will or whatever happens to be their successor format).

But they certainly are the "way of the present".

And like I said elsewhere, if you are anyone other than one of the really big publishers, you'd be a fool NOT to have pdfs.

RPGPundit

Quote from: TechnomancerI know a lot of smaller publishers depend on pdf sales and couldn't survive in a print-only environment, but I don't like them, for the reasons most often heard, namely that I would rather be able to hold a book in my hands and curl up on the couch with it rather than have to sit at the computer staring at the screen (no, I don't have a laptop, too expensive). Plus staring at the screen for hours trying to read a book is hard on the eyes (although to be fair I don't seem to have any problem hanging out on message boards for hours).

I hear you. I like small PDFs because you can look them over on-screen and it doesn't take a toll on your eyes. But larger ones MUST be printed for me to enjoy them. That's why we offer our PDFinPrint service - we print, bind, and ship most of our PDFs (except for the titles also in print or the ones that don't make sense as a printed item), and we try to do it as cheaply as possible with several options. Plus it helps to have the equipment needed to do this, so I can enjoy PDFs more when I print them with such quality.

As to the original question, yes, the PDF demand is growing, and we do more business with PDFs than print.

I'll tell you one area in which I find my consumption of gaming pdfs going up--sourcebooks.  Rather than buy a print copy of a sourcebook I'm going to use maybe 16 pages out of, I'd rather have a pdf and print out the applicable new classes/equipment/spells for my players.  I still want that main rulebook in print, if it turns out to be something I'll get heavy use out of, though.

I buy PDFs and find them very practical, ESPECIALLY if the product in question exists in both PDF and print format. I collect enough books but only end up using a fraction of them. So, PDF gives me a cheaper route to try books.

I do think that print format has added value, so anything that I use a lot I like to get in print format. I also am reluctant to purchase any PDF for more than half the print value.

What I'd REALLY like to see is more publishers bundling PDF and print for cheaper or (like RPG objects) offering a print upgrade price. Having PDF is beneficial even if I have print, because it gives me portability and allows me to prepare games using the electronic verison.

Quote from: TechnomancerOne reason that I haven't heard mentioned much is that with a print book, if I buy it and hate it, I can throw it up on ebay and make some of my money back.  Can't do that with a pdf.

Unless it happens to have become some rare print that I don't want but a bunch of other people do, I've already got back a sizable portion of the money I'm likely to recover from resale.  See I live in Canada, and it's some kind of expensive pain to have books sent to me direct across the border.  If I'm buying print it's from the FLGS. Otherwise I'd be tacking on another 30% on the print book price rather than the roughly 30% discount you get on PDF.

So I might have already gotten it at half price. Although I do have a kick ass FLGS that's quite local. So the extra costs are more related to gas to drive there, which isn't that far.


P.S. *climbs up on soapbox* I will add that I avoid places that use watermarks and DRM. Watermarks I find a bit irksome and even freaky to have my name there, but the real issue is that with them normally comes the inability to have a marked up electronic format of the document. The worst is straight on DRM as the very nature of that bit of software tends towards it blocking from reading the document, even when I should be allowed.

There are 3 or 4 places to buy SR PDFs from. I buy exclusively from Battlecorps for the sole reason that they sell virgin PDFs. Want my PDF business? Then trust me with that $15 document. DRM and watermarks cost you sales on top of costing overhead to implement. Just like software copyprotection costs software publishers sales. And that extra 'protection' is barely going to slow down the haxxorz if they are so inclined to theft.

I like having a print book for reading, but I also like PDFs for searchability and selective printing.

If I really like the core book I will buy both print adn PDF versions. For supplements I like short PDFs like Flying Mice publishes so I can buy the bits and pieces that I like or will get use out of. I will not by large supplements in PDF form.