Before this comes accross as a WOTC defense, it isn’t. This is a genuine “What would I do?” moment. I believe WOTC kneejerked yesterday, and is facing the mob today… Regardless, on with the point of my post…
Let me set up a hypothetical scenario here. Assume you are a publisher, you publish books. It doesn’t matter what kind of book, but books is how you make your living. It doesn’t matter if you are a deep pocketed corporation or a 5 man small enterprise, because either way, people who work at the company depend on those books selling to get a paycheck. From the president to the janitor.
Now, you find that you can make extra money selling your books electronically as PDF’s, but you also find that they are now being heavily given away on the internet. And this may or may not affect your sales of physical books, because after all, people may decide that free trumps paying. Look at the newspaper industry, free news on the internet is killing the morning paper accross the country. This isn’t my opinion, it’s a fact.
What do you do? How would you manage your own company, that people depend on thriving to get a weekly check, if it were facing this scenario?
I’m curious for solutions. My comment space is yours.
www. Newbie DM .com 
Wyatt
April 7, 2009
It depends on what I publish. One thing I would like to see about fiction publishing and RPG rules publishing is more chapter-by-chapter purchases. For example, purchase JUST the first three chapters of a novel or something from an iTunes like service as a teaser (and with the ability to purchase the rest and use them along with the first 3 I just bought), or purchase JUST the one article I want from dragon, at a low price (like the 99 cent songs from iTunes).
So what I would do is set a micro-purchasing service like that, with the ability to buy up to what you want or need electronically for a decently low price, and the full thing available through a print purchase.
Dominic Ford
April 7, 2009
Lock them with a macro so that if it goes to more than 3 IP addresses, it automatically deletes itself?
MJ Wilson
April 7, 2009
As a writer and game designer I understand the frustration that comes with piracy. However I find that WotC’s decision is not the wisest as the .pdf files are already out and so piracy will only increase. Also it is not that hard to scan books into a computer and create your own .pdf file and so their decision makes no sense. The genie was already out of the bottle and all they have done now is anger their customers and lost a source of revenue that their honest customers would have used. I can still get on limewire and other P2P networks and get all the .pdf files I want and now that WotC has suspended sales of .pdf that is my only option.
Stuart
April 7, 2009
I would look at the success of iTunes. I would do my homework, eg. Hard data on ebook piracy versus sales http://tr.im/inGr
If I were WotC, a company that makes most of it’s money via cards + plastic, I would try and sell things along with all my print books like non-randomized miniatures and glossy MtG style power-cards (things you can’t pirate online).
I would sub-contract to people who know what they’re doing if I don’t have people internally who understand things like: marketing, software development, public-relations, etc.
Tom
April 7, 2009
Make a decent product and hope people pay for it. That is the only thing that can be done. Every attempt to combat piracy has only harmed consumers and had no effect on piracy.
You cannot fight piracy on a proactive level, you can only hope your customers pay you. If you can’t except that, then go out of business.
newbiedm
April 7, 2009
Stuart: That’s a great idea.
Maybe WOTC could have packed in a mini for each character class with the purchase of a PHB, and mini’s of the kobolds and white dragon with the purchase of the DMG, to facilitate the running of the mini-adventure ion the back of the book.
Then they could have done the same with the PHB2, a mini for each class.
Not bad. Pack-in buyer incentives, added value stuff. Nice.
Dominic Ford
April 7, 2009
They did that in 3.5… the Player’s Kit (not the starter kit) came with Dice, a box of minis, some basic instructions, and a paperback copy of the PHB. It was great!
Anarkeith
April 7, 2009
Stuart’s suggestion is a good one. I think what got WotC into trouble in the first place was that 4e was primarily a grab at revenue being “lost” to other publishers. Instead of looking at ways to add value to the core, they tried to change the playing field to lock out the other publishers. A little more marketing research would have revealed that people don’t just play Dungeons & Dragons (tm, circle r, circle c, all rights reserved), they play fantasy role-playing games colloquially refered to as “dungeons and dragons”. You can’t own what you don’t have.
newbiedm
April 7, 2009
But let’s get back to my core question. Forget D&D. You are a publisher facing this situation I described. What do you do to remedy it?
Harlan
April 7, 2009
Give people a very low priced “barebones” version of the core rulebooks on pdf. No-frills, no pictures, flavor text, or even complete descriptions. Skills, for example, only get a chart, not full writeups. Offer this pdf for a buck or two.
These are the people who weren’t going to buy your book anyway. You’ve given them a way to access the rules for a low amount, and people are willing to pay for online content as long as the pricing ir right.
But you’ve exposed them to the game, and hopefully hooked them to buying the “real thing”, in addition to non-core books like Open Grave, minis, dice etc.
greywulf
April 7, 2009
If we’re talking about RPG publishing here…..
1. Release a free pdf which provides an introduction to the system. Make it light enough to easily read and playable in a night
2. Release pdfs of all your books without DRM for a low price point. < $10 is good. < $5 is better. At this price-point, it puts the pdfs within reach of the widest possible target market. So-called “piracy” will still occur (at a much lower rate), but if people like what you write they’ll likely buy the real thing themselves, especially if you offer a free repeat download and automatic errata updates. Write piracy off as marketing and sleep easily at night.
3. Offer print versions of your books too. People who buy the print editions might get the pdfs too (because they’re cheap!) so they’ve a digital copy and inline errata, and pdf buyers will buy the print edition if they like what you write. Dead Trees are convenient too.
4. Profit!
What I wouldn’t do: Anything that Wizards HAVE done.
Daniel M. Perez, The Gamer Traveler
April 7, 2009
I do run such a company and know others that do and depend way more on that income than I. The answer is the same: we focus on the legitimate customers and don’t worry about things we cannot control, like online piracy. It is a fact of the industry: you WILL be pirated once you reach a certain level (congratulations!).
Some companies have made public appeals they hope will reach the pirates and get them to shell out some money for the product they got (effectively turning it into donationware), while others just keep doing their business as usual, perhaps reporting the offending downloads to the site managers but aware that this probably will not have any effect.
WotC didn’t just discover they were being pirated, sorry. That’s why I still don’t buy piracy as the reason for the PDF pullout. It seems more like a very convenient excuse.
anarkeith
April 7, 2009
Offer a subscription. A one-year DM-tier subscription includes printed copies of the core rulebooks, quarterly core rules expansions, and components of this content–like the character builder, a monster stat-block generator, and dungeon-building utility–as online utilities at a secure website.
A less expensive player-tier subscription would offer a printed PHB, and access to the character builder online.
Donny_the_DM
April 7, 2009
Make ann artless or B&W .pdf free.
I seem to remember that the .PDF’s WERE going to be free with the purchase of the book.
This is disappoiting…understandeable, but disappointing. Are the geeks no longer in charge over there or what?
Donny_the_DM
April 7, 2009
people use PDF’s but prefer dead tree.
Make “core” material available as free .PDF
Better yet, (and this is especially relevant to WotC) make the FREE .PDF’s fully updated!!! Working three different sources of errata sucks, especially when they conflict each other.
Syrsuro
April 8, 2009
Problem with the hypothetical:
The only case I know of where specific information is available worked as follows:
http://wilwheaton.typepad.com/wwdnbackup/2009/02/in-which-an-electronic-version-of-sunken-treasure-goes-on-sale.html
Wil Wheaton had a book published and available in print form.
He decided to sell a cheap ($5.00), non-DRM pdf of his book.
Sales of the non-DRM pdf copy of the book were brisk and profitable.
Unexpectedly, as soon as if started offering the cheap, non-DRM pdfs of his book the sales of print copies started to increase as well.
Conclusion: Making inexpensive piratable copies of the book available not only did not hurt print sales, it actually increased print sales.
Implication: If you want to make money from pdfs, sell them cheap and aim for volume. If possible, sell professionally bound (i.e. worth owning) print copies as well.
Imho, this would be even more true in a game where there is a distinct advantage to having the print copy available at the game table.
The mistake WoTC [and others] have been making since day one is in trying to charge full price for the pdfs.
Personal Opinion:
Some people want to OWN books, some people want to READ books.
Those who want to OWN books, buy hard copies.
Those who want to READ books choose to either a) buy pdfs, b) go to the library or c) pirate copies. Note: Two of those three are free.
Conclusion: pdfs are not filling the same demand as hard copy books at this time. So pricing them as if they are hard copies is a bad idea and only drives people towards libraries (if available) and pirating. In contrast, selling pdfs cheaply encourages people to get them legally (they are paying for the convenience of now having to go to the library and the peace of mind of not pirating). And some percentage of those who READ the book (i.e. cheap pdf buyers, library readers and pirates) will decide to own the book once they decide they like it. (And no – that is not sufficent reason to justify the piracy although it is often used that way. That isn’t my point).
Bottom Line: Companies need to stop thinking that their pdfs are competing with print copies and down price them accordingly. Until they do so, they will continue to be seen as grossly over-prices (relative to their demand) and piracy will contine to be rampant.
To put all this another way: I wouldn’t hesitate (much) to spend 50.00+ for a book (in fact I’ve spent far more in the past), but there is no way in Hell that any pdf of any book ever published is worth close to that much. Imho, ymmv.
To bring this back to the original question: Sell cheap pdfs and (relatively) expensive hard copies. Keep in mind that you are selling these to two entirely different markets and that therefore their pricing structures are unrelated.
And finally: The reason newspapers are dying is related and quite simple. Using the analogies given above; no one buys a newspaper to own it. So therefore cheapness and convenience are the only considerations and as a result online trumps print.
Carl
Donny_the_DM
April 9, 2009
That was beautiful carl…