Report To The Stakeholders

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by philreed

For us to make something like this profitable, I would estimate $75 or so retail for a box set like you're describing at a reasonable run.

doable, cheaper than many lego sets.

[DreadDomain]

Originally Posted by philreed

We don't sit in the office and never have ideas. We run numbers. We bounce ideas off of each other. We talk to retailers, distributors, other publishers -- hell, even gamers. In short, we put our energy into figuring out what works and then working to do the best job that we can.

You do?!? <duck>

Speaking as a PDF naysayer, here is what I would minimally need to jump on the bandwagon.

1) Don't turn PDF into fast food publishing. I am greatly annoyed by "a few pages" PDFs and as much as I like Dungeon Fantasy (I really do), I hope getting a book published "by subject" won't become so mainstream that sixteen and less pages PDF will become the norm. At 32 pages DF is bearable. Creature of Night right now isn't. If you ever do a CotN compilation I might buy it (see point 2).

2) Make sure there is a cover. Dungeon Fantasy is great, the content is great, the layout is great, the editing is great but the lack of cover makes it look like fast food publishing or at least as less than finished product.

3) This one I don't need but is a nice addition : color pictures when possible. Might as well take advantage of the lower production cost.

4) A nice, affordable tablet. Is there any?

Point 1) and especially 2) are musts for me to become a PDF customer in the short term. For point 4) I can make do with my laptop but eventually I will need a tablet otherwise I will end up never using the PDFs.

Just my 2 cents.

Dread

[Rocket Man]

Originally Posted by roguebfl

doable, cheaper than many lego sets.

Don't know about that, friend. I winced at paying roughly the same amount for the two volumes of the Basic Set, and that was for nice hardcover volumes with good illustrations. Paying the same amount for a softcover book, a box that (based on my past history) will probably get destroyed within three months, and markers and dice that I can steal from another game doesn't really appeal to me. I do like the idea of some simple scenarios to try out the rules with, but the rest of the set wouldn't grab me.

[roguebfl]

Originally Posted by Rocket Man

Don't know about that, friend. I winced at paying roughly the same amount for the two volumes of the Basic Set, and that was for nice hardcover volumes with good illustrations. Paying the same amount for a softcover book, a box that (based on my past history) will probably get destroyed within three months, and markers and dice that I can steal from another game doesn't really appeal to me. I do like the idea of some simple scenarios to try out the rules with, but the rest of the set wouldn't grab me.

it not soft cover int he box that make it worth it is the Hex maps board with some quailty drawn map on it.

also for me ti the read to go rule set for teaching converts for me.

[DocRailgun]

I was (still am?) fairly negative towards PDFs that I have to pay for. I like books, and I like my gaming books to be sturdy because they tend to be passed around quite a lot. DF (and a new laptop) has changed that a bit for me. I doubt that I will ever buy Ultratech or any other GURPS rulebook as a PDF, but I will buy these smaller PDFs, for the following reasons:

1 - Readability. I don't want to have to scroll through a lot of pages to find what I want. I want to _know_ where to look for something... I could find anything in my 1st ed AD&D book in two page turns. I can't do that with a PDF.

2 - Printability. 32 pages is too much to print.... I'm too cheap to pay for the ink and paper. I would rather pay for SJG's ink and paper and have a bound product already in my hands. A standard rulebook would eat up my precious, precious ink. This is also why I don't want much art in a PDF, or a fancy title page... I'm not going to print it anyway, so it's a waste of everyone's time and money. I'm using a PDF in a game.... noone in my game will need to see the product's cover. Pretty color picture covers are for hardcover books.

3 - Price. Less than $10 is good got me, even for 32 pages. I'm not likely to spend more than that on something that can disappear from my laptop due to hardrive failure, or a button press by a curious 2 year old.

I have bought the 2 Dungeon products out at this time, I'll buy the others, and I will buy them POD or otherwise dead-tree once they are compiled.

Originally Posted by DreadDomain

Speaking as a PDF naysayer, here is what I would minimally need to jump on the bandwagon.

1) Don't turn PDF into fast food publishing. I am greatly annoyed by "a few pages" PDFs and as much as I like Dungeon Fantasy (I really do), I hope getting a book published "by subject" won't become so mainstream that sixteen and less pages PDF will become the norm. At 32 pages DF is bearable. Creature of Night right now isn't. If you ever do a CotN compilation I might buy it (see point 2).

2) Make sure there is a cover. Dungeon Fantasy is great, the content is great, the layout is great, the editing is great but the lack of cover makes it look like fast food publishing or at least as less than finished product.

[Andrew Hackard]

Originally Posted by DocRailgun

3 - Price. Less than $10 is good got me, even for 32 pages. I'm not likely to spend more than that on something that can disappear from my laptop due to hardrive failure, or a button press by a curious 2 year old.

Just a reminder: if you register prior to making e23 purchases, your purchase is saved and you can ALWAYS re-download the files, making this point less of an issue. Registration isn't required, of course, but then you're running the risk you mentioned.

[philreed]

Originally Posted by DocRailgun

1 - Readability. I don't want to have to scroll through a lot of pages to find what I want. I want to _know_ where to look for something... I could find anything in my 1st ed AD&D book in two page turns. I can't do that with a PDF.

Bookmarks. You want bookmarks. And the search function. You definitely want the search function.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Andrew Hackard

Just a reminder: if you register prior to making e23 purchases, your purchase is saved and you can ALWAYS re-download the files, making this point less of an issue. Registration isn't required, of course, but then you're running the risk you mentioned.

Well its worth a shot. But my personal experience is you are more likely to lose access to those than to lose your downloaded copies. I don't believe I've ever lost anything more significant than old e-mail to disk failure (perhaps I back up more often than some people?), but as far as I recall I've had to open new accounts at places like this because of interface migrations, or e-mail address changes followed by loss of password cookies or something on three different occasions (once each at Baen, Amazon and SJG), and had to go through several rounds of e-mail exchanges to recover yet another (for the CSD).

[Pomphis]

Originally Posted by malloyd

(perhaps I back up more often than some people?)

How often ? I do a complete backup on an external harddrive every 1 or 2 weeks, and if something important happens in between a specific one for that on an USB stick.

[PK]

Originally Posted by malloyd

Well its worth a shot. But my personal experience is you are more likely to lose access to those than to lose your downloaded copies. I don't believe I've ever lost anything more significant than old e-mail to disk failure (perhaps I back up more often than some people?), but as far as I recall I've had to open new accounts at places like this because of interface migrations, or e-mail address changes followed by loss of password cookies or something on three different occasions (once each at Baen, Amazon and SJG), and had to go through several rounds of e-mail exchanges to recover yet another (for the CSD).

Your account is not tied directly to your email.

If you can remember your login name and your password (and note that, if you're a Pyramid or JTAS subscriber, your e23 login/password is automatically the same as your Pyramid/JTAS one), you can login and redownload your files, even if you've forgotten or lost all access to the email address you signed up with.

To be honest, it seems like you're making assumptions about how e23 works rather than looking into how it actually works.