Quote from: Thanlis;431594By that line of reasoning, if someone wants to license your game for translation, you should give it to them for free. Likewise, second printings of the game should be sold at cost.

No, not at cost.  First of all, a second, third fourth or fifth physical printing of a physical book is still going to have costs of printing associated with it EVERY TIME. There's no moment where there stops being a new cost to print it.  
That cost may be reduced compared to the first printing because with the first printing you have to pay for a bunch of other things besides the actual printing costs.  That means that, in theory, if you wanted to, you could set the price point of the 2nd or 3rd printing cheaper than that of the 1st printing, and still make a similar profit, because your costs are lower.  Following me so far?

With PDFs, after the initial "first printing" phase (really after you have sold enough PDF to cover the costs of paying for your writer, artists, and editor), your costs go on to become ZERO, FOREVER.  You could make a million billion copies of a PDF and the cost would still be zero.  I guess you could try to factor in "server fees" for the website you're selling the pdf from or something, but that would be basically it; the cost would be infinitesmal after paying off the costs of the initial creation of the product.

Therefore, unlike paper printing, with PDFs the overall price SHOULD be lower.

To focus on your other point, if someone wants to do a translation of my game, in order to produce for sale, I would charge them a fee of my choosing; but if I was claiming that fee was meant to pay off my "costs of printing" when they're the ones who'd be doing the printing if any, would make me look like a bit of douchebag, wouldn't it?

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;431731No, not at cost.  First of all, a second, third fourth or fifth physical printing of a physical book is still going to have costs of printing associated with it EVERY TIME. There's no moment where there stops being a new cost to print it.  
That cost may be reduced compared to the first printing because with the first printing you have to pay for a bunch of other things besides the actual printing costs.  That means that, in theory, if you wanted to, you could set the price point of the 2nd or 3rd printing cheaper than that of the 1st printing, and still make a similar profit, because your costs are lower.  Following me so far?

Yes. That's what "at cost" means. Selling it at the cost of printing it.

QuoteWith PDFs, after the initial "first printing" phase (really after you have sold enough PDF to cover the costs of paying for your writer, artists, and editor), your costs go on to become ZERO, FOREVER.

Also true.

You seem to be arguing that there's a fixed profit anyone should be allowed to make from their game, no matter how successful it is. Is that accurate?

Quote from: jgants;431664As for art, surely it must be practically free?  The average Mongoose Traveller book couldn't have more than $50 total worth of art in them, if that.

I don't have Traveller, but unless it's all recycled, I'd imagine it's more than that. I'd think a decent cover alone would be more than $100.

Seanchai

Quote from: Seanchai;431746I don't have Traveller, but unless it's all recycled, I'd imagine it's more than that. I'd think a decent cover alone would be more than $100.

Well, I'm being somewhat hyperbolic in my post, but Traveller uses extremely minimal art as part of its style.

The covers are all text, no art.  The average supplement has maybe 20 small art pieces in it, none of which are overly detailed.

Quote from: Thanlis;431739You seem to be arguing that there's a fixed profit anyone should be allowed to make from their game, no matter how successful it is. Is that accurate?

Not at all; if a game is wildly successful, then they could name their price.  Most games aren't.  What I'm saying is as a general statement of common sense, it make sense to price PDFs low, because we know that the profit margin is high due to the reality of not being a print product.

Good business sense is not "price your product as high as you can possibly milk"; good business sense is "price your product as close as you possibly can to the point where the most possible people will buy it for the best possible profit".

If you sell 3 pdfs at $20 profit each, or 30 pdfs at $5 profit each, the latter is a better overall gain to you than the former.  Likewise, if you'd end up selling 50 pdfs for $1 profit each (because that difference of reducing the price $8 only nets you 20 more customers), then your best bet is to sell them for $5 profit.

The real answer is to find the "sweet spot". Certainly, for some products that sweet spot might be higher than others.

RPGPundit

Well, it looks like DTRPG has upped the ante for those of you calling $10 your max. A ton of RPG core books for $11 each:

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/rpg_newyear.php?affiliate_id=710

Quote from: RPGPundit;431807Not at all; if a game is wildly successful, then they could name their price.  Most games aren't.  What I'm saying is as a general statement of common sense, it make sense to price PDFs low, because we know that the profit margin is high due to the reality of not being a print product.

What if your sales are divided 90% PDF and 10% print?

Quote from: Thanlis;431906What if your sales are divided 90% PDF and 10% print?

Then an important question to ask is WHY are my sales 90% PDF?

RPGPundit