How many years will it be before PDFs become the release priority?

[Mok]

Just musing... but how many years will it be before PDFs become the release priority?

This just struck me today when I learned that Ultimate Magic has been delayed till May. However, it was noted that the book is at the printer right now.

Because the book is at the printer... which means the pdf is at the printer, that technically means that the book is done and it could simply be sold today as a pdf in the Paizo store.

It is of course a business decision on Paizo's part to withhold the pdf from the public until the release of the hard copy books. They have built up a fan base, have a large distribution network in place, and a subscriber system. So I get that to just start selling the pdf today could have potential downsides to their business plan.

What I'm just speculating on is just how many years out will it take for this business plan to change? The entire publishing industry is undergoing convulsions right now as we shift from an analog world to a digital world. While it might cost $400 right now to buy an iPad 1 new, in not too many years the price is going to crawl down below $100.

Even though there will always be die hard analog fans eventually the market is going to shift to primarily consuming content digitally. Are we going to have to wait for the 50% mark to be eclipsed in analog vs digital? I guess I'm just wondering at what point does the business plan change?

The thing is, I'm sitting here with my iPad right by me. Meanwhile the Ultimate Magic file is just sitting on some computer at the Paizo offices. But, rather than being able to buy it right now and have it zipped to me nearly instantly, instead the road ahead involved a printer making thousands of hard copies, having them trucked to some chinese port. Have them get loaded into a cargo container, have the cargo container loaded onto a ship. Have that ship slowly float across the Pacific, and then finally reach North America. Then the books need to be unloaded, trucked here, there and everywhere. Finally when they are all spread all over the place, and vast amounts of gas and oil have been burned in the process, then finally the pdf will become a viable purchase. Then I can finally load it onto my iPad and kick back and read it.

Two months for the pdf to just sit there on the computer!

So how long before this antiquated system gives way? When will digital be triumphant at Paizo?

[James Jacobs]

As soon as print books go away, I suspect.

And since Paizo thinks of itself as a producer of print material first and PDF second... it's gonna be a while before we scuttle print books and shift to a PDF release. It might not EVER happen.

Anyway... patience is a virtue!

[Twin Agate Dragons]

So long as Paizo doesn't go the way of DDI and doesn't abandon print products I'll be a happy camper.

[Chris Self]

We rely very heavily on our printed product distribution network.

While digital content is an ever-increasing part of our business, it has a very, very long way to go before it so overshadows the print part of our business that we would be willing to allow it to possibly damage our print business.

We believe very firmly that releasing the pdf product before the print product would damage sales of the print product, and that is something we don't want to happen.

[DMingNicholas]

My iPad is a multipurpose tool at my gaming table. It is my character sheet, initiative tracker and quick reference device.

Even so, when I'm reading new information from an RPG book I would rather have a physical copy without question. For one thing, while novels tend to have their text sized blow up by going to digital (or even better, changeable size and font) the large format of RPG books actually gets squished down on the screen. I also find it much more intiutive to be able to read a class, flip to a referenced feat while keeping my finger in the class and then easily return to where I was.

Tactile sensations and the whole of literary history are hard forces to overcome. As much as I love my iPad, it would take serious changes in how the PDF are done to get me to switch.

[Chris Self]

DMingNicholas wrote:

As much as I love my iPad, it would take serious changes in how the PDF are done to get me to switch.

And before people start jumping on and saying, "Paizo should lay the pdf out for pdf readers!", realize that would take at least one additional graphic designer on staff, which creates that much larger a barrier to pdf first/only/primary releases.

[Xaaon of Korvosa]

Twin Agate Dragons wrote:

So long as Paizo doesn't go the way of DDI and doesn't abandon print products I'll be a happy camper.

By the gods YES!

That was one of the kickers for me leaving WotC behind, and never looking back, haven't bought a single product since.

[Mok]

Chris Self wrote:

We believe very firmly that releasing the pdf product before the print product would damage sales of the print product, and that is something we don't want to happen.

I completely get that and can easily see why it wouldn't make sense right now. I guess I'm just wondering about demographic shifts.

James gave a time frame, "It might not EVER happen." I'm clueless about the publishing business, but from my comfy iPad armchair perspective, it seems like at some point digital sales will eclipse analog sales.

I'm not saying that Paizo would simply stop publishing actual hard copy books, but that it'll get to a point where it's the niche demographic... something for the old timers who are willing to spend the bucks on to get.

The thing is, in five years how many teenagers are going to be reading hard copy books to any large degree? DmingNicholas might find aesthetic, tactile and kinesthetic pleasure in flipping through a book, but is someone who's eight years old right now going to grow up in a world that cultivates that kind of appreciation? It's difficult to imagine so.

It seems a bit implausible that 20 years from now there is going to be major analog publishing from anyone. It'll be like the vinyl record "industry" of today. A product that will be purchased for nostalgia, aesthetics, or to be fashionably different.

I am a patient man and can suck it up and wait... I don't have any choice! But it does make me wish the creative destruction that is going on would accelerate more quickly.

Anyway, it is interesting to hear from insiders. This kind of discussion has to be happening in publisher's offices. Their business forecasting compels everyone to look out and try and predict how long it'll last before the grand digital shift reaches the 50% sales mark and goes beyond.

[Chris Self]

Mok wrote:

Their business forecasting compels everyone to look out and try and predict how long it'll last before the grand digital shift reaches the 50% sales mark and goes beyond.

Ah, but the mark isn't 50%. If you're doing 50% digital and 50% analog sales, you've got two very successful streams going on. Why would you possibly want to kill one of them?

You're going to need to see something more in the 85-90+% digital sales before publishers start thinking about killing their print lines.

[JoelF847]

Another thing to consider is the profit margin on PDF vs. print. Sure, pdfs are cheaper to produce - no printing or distribution costs (or at least drastically lower if you factor in bandwidth), but that doesn't mean that Paizo (or any other publisher) prices them both to make the same profit.

If a publisher wants to keep their print line viable longer, and is confident that a substantial sub-set of their customers prefer print, they can afford to charge for print so that they make more per sale in print vs. pdf (in fact I'm sure they do this for a few core books - since the pdf price is so low to reduce the barrier of entry into the game.)

Because of this, it might require a significantly higher than 50% market for the PDF only to cause a shift away from print altogether.

[Dragnmoon]

there are a few examples of companies selling PDFs before the printed product comes out or, mostly killing the printed product all together.

Catalyst Game Labs releases there Battletech and Shadowrun PDFs before the Print Product, so does Green Ronin.

White-Wolf a mostly fully killed off their Print products and mostly gone to PDF only. They do have a few Print products coming out, but not many.

[Abbasax]

Dragnmoon wrote:

there are a few examples of companies selling PDFs before the printed product comes out or, mostly killing the printed product all together.

Catalyst Game Labs releases there Battletech and Shadowrun PDFs before the Print Product, so does Green Ronin.

White-Wolf a mostly fully killed off their Print products and mostly gone to PDF only. They do have a few Print products coming out, but not many.

White Wolf hasn't killed off their print products though they are going to be releasing most of their products PDF first.

http://forums.white-wolf.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=946939#post946939

[Dragnmoon]

Abbasax wrote:

Dragnmoon wrote:

there are a few examples of companies selling PDFs before the printed product comes out or, mostly killing the printed product all together.

Catalyst Game Labs releases there Battletech and Shadowrun PDFs before the Print Product, so does Green Ronin.

White-Wolf a mostly fully killed off their Print products and mostly gone to PDF only. They do have a few Print products coming out, but not many.

White Wolf hasn't killed off their print products though they are going to be releasing most of their products PDF first.

http://forums.white-wolf.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=946939#post946939

but they are no longer near releasing what they used to into Print..therefore..like I said..mostly fully killed off their Print products and mostly gone to PDF only. They do have a few Print products coming out, but not many.

[Martin Kauffman 530]

Thank G-d for books and printed material. It's nice to have, even if I have to pay a bit more for it

[Martin Kauffman 530]

And let us also hope that, in five years, teenagers will still be reading print books. I think they certainly will. You just have to look at the success of the Harry Potter novels to realize that there are still many young readers out there. You just have to publish a quality product,like Pathfinder, and find outreach methods to interest young people in the game.

[Abbasax]

Dragnmoon wrote:

but they are no longer near releasing what they used to into Print..therefore..like I said..mostly fully killed off their Print products and mostly gone to PDF only. They do have a few Print products coming out, but not many.

I don't understand what you're getting at. They are still releasing print products though, after issuing them first in PDF.

Unless you mean they're releasing less then they did previously, in which case I don't see how that's germane to the subject.

EDIT: That sounded more catty then I meant it to, sorry that wasn't my intent.

[Mok]

Martin Kauffman 530 wrote:

And let us also hope that, in five years, teenagers will still be reading print books. I think they certainly will. You just have to look at the success of the Harry Potter novels to realize that there are still many young readers out there. You just have to publish a quality product,like Pathfinder, and find outreach methods to interest young people in the game.

I guess I wasn't clear there. It isn't that kids won't be reading books, they just are a lot less likely to be reading analog books.

Once tablet computers are cheap then they'll be in every school. Just in the last year there have been K-12 schools that have given swaths of students iPads.

[Matthew Morris]

Dragnmoon wrote:

there are a few examples of companies selling PDFs before the printed product comes out or, mostly killing the printed product all together.

Catalyst Game Labs releases there Battletech and Shadowrun PDFs before the Print Product, so does Green Ronin.

White-Wolf a mostly fully killed off their Print products and mostly gone to PDF only. They do have a few Print products coming out, but not many.

Battletech fans are just happy to see books out, electronic or otherwise. :P

(Ordered my 25th, er 26th, er, 27th anniversary boxed set.)

[LazarX]

Mok wrote:

Just musing... but how many years will it be before PDFs become the release priority?

Probably the same day the computer revolution actually makes us the paperless society it promised us. In other words, most likely never.

[Dorje Sylas]

Mok wrote:

I guess I wasn't clear there. It isn't that kids won't be reading books, they just are a lot less likely to be reading analog books.

Once tablet computers are cheap then they'll be in every school. Just in the last year there have been K-12 schools that have given swaths of students iPads.

Most on experimental bases as text book replacements. A set of classroom textbooks, especially at the high school level, is ridiculously expensive, needs to be updated frequently, and are rarely aligned with state standards (unless you're California or Texas). Speaking from a technology adoption stand point we are likely two generations away from that level of Post-PC use.

Today's kindergartners will be really the first to have a higher degree of "tablet" experience. It won't be until their children are going through school that there will be a tablet expectation. Even that won't rule nation wide and will be limited to unique outlier cases. I speak from the seat of a 1:1 laptop primary ed magnet school support staff. It will not happen as fast as you think it will.

At best 10 years for the tech to meet the needs of a class room, fully, then another 10 to 20 years for wider adoption, assuming "some people" don't outright kill off public education before then.

(We did put in a request for a few iPads as part of outside grant money, but our district shot it down. Correctly argued they are not easy to integrate into a managed account structure. They aren't nice cogs that just snap into place. Still going to fight for it though, much better choice to give Kinder through 2nd then a full laptop or even a netbook.)

[joela]

James Jacobs wrote:

As soon as print books go away, I suspect.

And since Paizo thinks of itself as a producer of print material first and PDF second... it's gonna be a while before we scuttle print books and shift to a PDF release. It might not EVER happen.

Anyway... patience is a virtue!

YES.

[Zarathos]

I have bought all of the PDFs in the Pathfinder RPG line mainly because of the errata issue. In February, I recently bought the Core Rulebook from Amazon because it was in the fourth printing. I guess the chance of any future significant corrections is low.

I see print copies staying dominant with modules and adventure paths because the cost is close and corrections are low to none. I think this also makes more sense to have subscription for the adventure path that includes a free pdf which I am considering.

[Lord Fyre]

So the real question would be, what is the Commodity Price of Paper?

I believe that will be the ultimate determiner of when PDFs surpass print as the priority release.

Note, however, that White Wolf has already gone the route of PDF first.

[golem101]

Mok wrote:

So how long before this antiquated system gives way? When will digital be triumphant at Paizo?

Seems that Paizo has already answered.

While PDF documents are excellent for a quick reference at the gaming table, even the most "pro-digital transition" player I've met agrees that so far nothing beats printed books for ease of reading.
Both for the eyes, and for the tactile feeling of holding something WYSIWYG (no scrolling, zooming, etc.) and flipping pages.

As soon as electronic readers could give the same feeling and/or home printing or print-on-demand services allow for inexpensive harcovers of reasonable quality, I as a customer will be ready for such a transition.