Quote from: HinterWeltThere are alternatives. Most of them are not great.

I'm curious -- what would it take for there to be a great alternative?

I got a free product from one of them once, and when my ISp collapsed and i got a new one, then got a new computer I found I couldn't use the free prodiuct due to DRM.

Needless to say, it put me off buying pdf products.

Quote from: blakkieBTW do you have a link to the actual message board post?

Sure. It's at
http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/HLSS/?yguid=210530151

Thanks.

I suspect the barriers to entry for new PDF distributors are fairly low. That is, I for one am not inclined to "browse the racks" at a virtual storefront. Instead I learn about product from other sources, I visit the creator's website, and then I'm directed from there to whatever service they use. (Or I use Froogle, though not for PDFs...yet.)

So I suspect that if there's money to be made at RPGNow prices, someone else will step in to provide competition to the newly merged entity.

Is IPR set up to do PDFs?

Hm. I see that Key20 does PDFs. I have no idea how they stand in terms of fees.

Quote from: RezendevousI'm curious -- what would it take for there to be a great alternative?

Totally subjective but for me:
Primary is Traffic.

Second is customer experience. RPGNow has some problems on this front and DTRPG more but basically, the ability to find what you are looking for with a minimum of fuss, a professional looking site and ease of purchase.

Third, publisher tools. I will fold a 25-30% rate into this one. The tools need to facilitate upload, promotion and revision of products. DTRPG and RPGNow did this well (RPGNow the best) and ENGS sucked donkey.

That is off the top of my head. I am sure Clash could come up with a few. To be honest, it would be tough to compete with DTRPG or RPGNow when they were separate, after the merger I think it will be even rougher.

Bill

Quote from: Dominus NoxI got a free product from one of them once, and when my ISp collapsed and i got a new one, then got a new computer I found I couldn't use the free prodiuct due to DRM.

Needless to say, it put me off buying pdf products.

None of the RPGNow pdfs are DRMed, and the vast majority of DTRPG's pdfs - none of mine, for example - are DRMed. The most common method of protection at DTRPG is watermarking.

-clash

Quote from: HinterWeltTotally subjective but for me:
Primary is Traffic.

What would you consider a "good" range of visitor numbers?

Quote from: HinterWeltTotally subjective but for me:
Primary is Traffic.

Second is customer experience. RPGNow has some problems on this front and DTRPG more but basically, the ability to find what you are looking for with a minimum of fuss, a professional looking site and ease of purchase.

Third, publisher tools. I will fold a 25-30% rate into this one. The tools need to facilitate upload, promotion and revision of products. DTRPG and RPGNow did this well (RPGNow the best) and ENGS sucked donkey.

That is off the top of my head. I am sure Clash could come up with a few. To be honest, it would be tough to compete with DTRPG or RPGNow when they were separate, after the merger I think it will be even rougher.

Bill

No - I think you nailed it, Bill, in order.

-clash

Quote from: PaulChapmanWhat would you consider a "good" range of visitor numbers?

I am not sure to be honest. All I can say is I have always been happy with RPGNow volume. It seems the advertising with them is fairly effective for me as is a lot of their promotional tools.

If traffic equates to sales I would through out a bottom of $150 per month net and be quite happy with $200. Nice supplemental money for the print side and rather modest IMHO.

Bill

Since I'm primarily a pdf publisher, my minimum requirements are about twice Bill's. I don't have a lot of print sales to fall back on.

-clash

Quote from: HinterWeltI just keep feeling like Lando on the cloud city and James and Steve (especially Steve) are Darth Vader.

Are you going to fly the Millenium Falcon into the heart of the Death Star and blow it up?

Quote from: flyingmiceWhat do you want us to do, take the increase ourselves? Margins are slim enough. I'm seriously thinking of an across the board price increase.

About fifty cents should do it. Seriously.

For those who don't know, the way the sales of pdfs on these sites work is that you upload the thing, they host it and process the payments and delivery, and they take a percentage of your sales, a commission. Say that commission is 25%; it could be 25% of $100, or 25% of $1, the site doesn't care (there's some minimum commission like 75 cents, I think, to cover credit card fees, can't recall). People were on all different contracts, but basically all the vendors already on Drivethrurpg will see no increase in commission at all, and those on RPGNow.com will see it go from 25% or 30% to 30% (if you go exclusive with the new site), or 35% (if you want to sell your stuff at other sites).

So at the very worst, you'll see the commission go from 25% to 35%. That means your profit on the $10 pdf will go from $7.50 to $6.50. That's significant if you're a big guy like Phil Reed making a living from pdfs, and pulling in thousands of dollars of sales a month, but it's not significant if you're a part-time or hobbyist guy like most of the vendors on RPGNow.com.

Our pdfs range in price from about $3 to $12, as do those of most vendors on RPGNow.com. The average increase in commissions will be from 25% to 30% - may as well sign an exclusive contract with the new site, because all the other sites' sales are just insignificant in comparison to these two sites, that 5% dfference in commission is more than the sales the other sites would get us.

So a rise of fifty cents on each product will easily cover the rise in commissions, and I doubt very strongly it'll have an effect on sales. If you are counting every last fifty cents in your wallet, then I doubt very strongly you'll be able to afford a computer, internet connection and printing.

Quote from: Elliot WilenI suspect the barriers to entry for new PDF distributors are fairly low.

You need a complete product which doesn't look like absolute shite. Just mediocre is okay, people will buy it. Then you need either $40 to get a vendor account set up on the e-distributor site, or you need to buddy up to someone already signed up, and sell your stuff through them. If you cannot manage forty bucks, or enough social skills to get some vendor to bother looking at your stuff and uploading it, then you're pretty hopeless.

The main thing is just to be able to complete a product. There are a zillion people out there thinking how nice it'd be to be a writer, and plenty of them are gamers who have a homebrew rules system or setting. But actually completing a book isn't an easy thing. To have a good idea, and enough notes to be able to run it with your buddies at the game table, that ain't hard - to write it up so that anyone can read your book and use it in play, that's hard. For example, d4-d4 took about 120 hours of dedicated effort over eight weeks, and even with that effort only reached completion because I was lucky to score an excellent proofreader who'd proofed for far more talented and skilled people than me.

Most people who start a book will never finish it, that's a fact. All the other difficulties are just minor shit compared to actually finishing a whole book.

Don't worry about the prices, guys. Most prices won't go up at all, and those which do, it'll be something like fifty cents or a buck. That's not even one packet of cheetos

Quote from: Caesar SlaadAre you going to fly the Millenium Falcon into the heart of the Death Star and blow it up?

If I had a Falcon and a thousand years...maybe.

Bill

Quote from: MaddmanHell, I'm thinking of a service that works over bittorrent and makes money off google ads and offer publishers the service for free.  I'll have to think about it some more, but it would seem to be doable.

Could be interesting indeed, would support rather fast dloads as well.