Thought it about time to ask again about Digital Books?
Still waiting to buy any of the books after PH2, since none of them have been offered digitally.
I'll buy them all as soon as we get PDFs or some other format.
Please.
I agree it would be a good thing, but I doubt it's going to happen. To bring them back would be to admit to making a mistake stopping their sale in the first place.
True; but, if they did, I know I, personally, would respect them more for doing so; it would definitly go leaps and bounds over the amount I lost for the company after this whole debacle.
I'm not asking for PDFs specifically, just some sort of Digital version.
Maybe subscription-based, where you have to log into your DDI account once a week or something to be able to use them offline. A site, GreenPrint, does that. Free pdf printing, as long as you log on to their website once a week to look at the new ads. In the same way WotC could verify you are a DDI user and have access to the digital books. Or even only if you are connected to the internet. That would be limiting, but better then nothing.
To bring them back would be to admit to making a mistake stopping their sale in the first place.
I would much rather buy from a company that could admit its mistakes that one that claimed to be perfect and gloss over them. As some people so enjoy pointing out, Wizards is staffed by real people. Well real people make mistakes, or even "well intentioned and properly advised misjudgements".
To bring them back would be to admit to making a mistake stopping their sale in the first place.
By all accounts when they pulled them I was pretty sure they said they were looking into other options. So bringing them back is not an admission of anything.
I'm guessing they were pulled over piracy concerns?
I would much rather buy from a company that could admit its mistakes that one that claimed to be perfect and gloss over them. As some people so enjoy pointing out, Wizards is staffed by real people. Well real people make mistakes, or even "well intentioned and properly advised misjudgements".
So would I, and if they put the PDFs back on sale, I would be happy to buy them again. I had bought everything they released up until PHB2. Unfortunately Wizards track record seems to be more inclined to protect the faces of whoever is making the decisions rather than correcting the problems when a mistake becomes evident.
By all accounts when they pulled them I was pretty sure they said they were looking into other options. So bringing them back is not an admission of anything.
The net result of pulling the PDFs in the first place has been to ensure Wizards got no money from the people who wanted to legally buy them while pirate scans still seem to show up within a week or two anyway.
Putting PDFs back on sale would seem to be a public admission that they can't stop the piracy, and probably whoever pulled them in the first place would be wondering if he'll be having to explain why they ended up losing money from sales. My money going to WotC dropped about 90% per annum with their decision to stop selling them. I still buy the physical books I want, but I'm no longer getting the PDFs just because they might be interesting and they don't take up physical space.
I'd love it if they could come up with some clever solution that gives them the security they want in their files without screwing over the customer's rights or ability to use the files without some sort of online connection as well. Unfortunately given the WotC track record with digital products I'm not hopeful, especially since nobody else in any field which has piracy issues has ever come up with a solution that works, except possibly for the "make it both cheap and less hassle to do it legally than to pirate it" system of I-tunes and similar sites.
I'm guessing they were pulled over piracy concerns?
Yep. People were buying the PDFs then putting them onto sharing sites and torrents. They're in the process of legal action against about 8 people over it. WotC rather mishandled the manner in which the sales were pulled, and as I noted above, didn't have any real effect on discouraging piracy at the same time as they lost the money they were getting from legal sales.
Yep. People were buying the PDFs then putting them onto sharing sites and torrents. They're in the process of legal action against about 8 people over it. WotC rather mishandled the manner in which the sales were pulled, and as I noted above, didn't have any real effect on discouraging piracy at the same time as they lost the money they were getting from legal sales.
No, the main issue was a distributer selling "one" pdf multiple times and literally pocketing the money.
No, the main issue was a distributer selling "one" pdf multiple times and literally pocketing the money.
Have you got a source on that one? I thought I'd kept up fairly well with the whole PDF thing and hadn't heard of anything like that, or any legal action against the only business legitimately selling 4E PDFs. In fact WotC even allowed them to give a download day of all TSR/WotC PDFs for people to make sure they had backups. I have trouble believing they'd have done that if there was a legal issue like that involved.
Forgive me for sounding dumb here - I must be misunderstanding. If they're selling digital copies they would just make a copy and let you download it after you've paid for it? How (or why) would they sell separate individual files to each buyer? Like I said - I had to have missed something here.
I think what Herrozerro was suggesting (and I haven't seen a source for this either so I am holding off on the "truth" or not of it) was that from the distributor did indeed retail from a single source file...
...but for a group of actual transactions in which a copy of this original source file was sold, the distributor only reported one, or a few. This meant that the remaining transactions were unreported which allowed them to keep all of the money associated with them rather than handing it over to Wizards.
Again, I say this is my own understanding of what Herrozerro had said and I am still not assured of its validity, and will not be until a source is produced.
I odnt have a source, but it is what I Gleaned from following the situation.
May or may not be true.
From what I heard from Bill Slaviscek at GenCon when I asked him about this, they would like to do digital products, but they are unwilling to do so without some sort of protection from piracy. The PHB2 was available for download so quickly, and with such a wide spread, that it caught their attention, and they shut down pdfs.
From what I heard from Bill Slaviscek at GenCon when I asked him about this, they would like to do digital products, but they are unwilling to do so without some sort of protection from piracy. The PHB2 was available for download so quickly, and with such a wide spread, that it caught their attention, and they shut down pdfs.
If you talk to him again, you might suggest he try poking the names of any 4E product released since the PDF sales stopped into a search engine and see how many torrents and download sites he finds.
The only way to completely prevent piracy of their products is to release no products at all. Physical copies can be scanned and OCRed. As it is, only the people who want to do things legally are inconvenienced by WotC not selling.
By all accounts when they pulled them I was pretty sure they said they were looking into other options. So bringing them back is not an admission of anything.
Of course a cynical person would say that they simply said they were "looking into it" to mollify their customers who are annoyed/angered by it. A cynical person would say they never had or have any intention of returning digital books.
I'm guessing they were pulled over piracy concerns
A cynical person would point out that they also removed the out of print books. With Pathfinder working to be compatible with a portion of those old out of print books, keeping them available would in all likelihood have helped their competitors more than the sales they got from the PDFs. As books become out of print for 3.5e, they become increasingly harder to find.
After all, the 3.5e books aren't being produced anymore. Therefore the pirates will have obtained any of the legitimate 3.5e PDFs they desired to then pirate. Therefore how does pulling 3.5e books hurt piracy? Either they're already available through torrents, or the pirates have no interest in them and as such aren't available and will likely never have become available.
Given that pulling the 3.5e books has no effect on piracy, one must wonder as to why the 3.5e books were pulled at all?
No, the main issue was a distributer selling "one" pdf multiple times and literally pocketing the money.
That would explain why that distributor had their license yanked. Not why everyone had their licenses yanked. Although hey, if WotC can treat all of its customers like criminals simply because of a certain population. Why couldn't it treat its sellers like criminals too?
I odnt have a source, but it is what I Gleaned from following the situation.
May or may not be true.
Right, I'm going to go with not.
I want to make it clear everything in my post is not confirmed. Hence why I kept saying "a cynical person would claim."
Not that I'm a cynical person of course.
From what I heard from Bill Slaviscek at GenCon when I asked him about this, they would like to do digital products, but they are unwilling to do so without some sort of protection from piracy. The PHB2 was available for download so quickly, and with such a wide spread, that it caught their attention, and they shut down pdfs.
It's a great idea, but until they invest in a way to make the print books piracy-proof it's a little silly.
As I type this I'm browsing a torrent site (I pooched the change of my VCR after Sunday's clock roll back and missed the last 5-minutes of Stargate) and there's already a copy of Draconomicon 2 being advertised. It could be a hoax or fake but it just as easily could be the real thing, available online for pirates seemingly two weeks before it's available in stores.
If they decide to change their printing to be un-scannable or pick a curious font that defies OCR then maybe they have a chance to beat pirates. But not likely.
Pirates are always going to steal books and never going to buy them. Every. It is not costing sales. Not having digital copies for people who want them IS costing sales.
They need to:
a) Eat crow. Apologize and get the e-books back-up. It would be a great goodwill gesture. They could even mock themselves a little bit making everyone feel a little easier.
b) Sell PDFs at a reasonable price. I.e. NOT more expensive than the print books.
Selling electronic (pdf or otherwise) copies of out-of-print material, including Classic D&D and 3.5, is the only way Wizards of the Coast will regain me as a paying customer. There are many classic accessories and modules that I was never able to buy in the '80s, and I could really use electronic copies of my 3.5 books to help prevent the wear of using the printed volumes.
Until these products become availble again, the entirety of my relationship with WotC will the occassional use of these forums. My gaming dollars are currently being spent on OGL material sold by other publishers.
I odnt have a source, but it is what I Gleaned from following the situation.May or may not be true.
There are sources listed on other threads that I used to participate in. If you really want to find them you could use the search function. Just like you said, unscrupulous sellers were selling pdfs and not giving WotC their share. I was rather confused about this until other forum members pointed it out to me, and WotC really didn't do a whole lot to clarify their position. They probably could have saved a lot of ill will if they had done a better job of stating the reasons behind their decision.
I haven't given WotC a dime since the pdfs were pulled, and once they are back up, they can have my money again. Pdfs are much more convenient for me, as I can't haul an entire bookshelf to Iraq or Afghanistan, and they are easier to search through as well. I like print books to just browse through and read, but during gameplay I like my pdfs.
Personally, I think they need to start selling pdfs again. If the problem is going through other vendors, then they can sell them directly from their own web site. They managed to get DDI going directly from them, so it shouldn't exactly be rocket science. However, they also need to offer them for a reasonable price. There is absolutely no reason that the pdf should cost more than the print version.
EDIT: BTW I am also against having to be online to access them (if that was the case you might as well just use the Compendium and CB) or even regularly logging online to verify yourself to continue their use. For one, that means I still can't use them during deployments. Two, that means WotC can pull the plug any time they choose. If they decide to really push 5e, they could just shut down the verification for any 4e digital books. And there's always the chance that WotC could go the way of TSR, or more likely that changing times might mean that D&D becomes such a small part of their income that it isn't profitable to keep sustaining it, so they shut it down and move on to bigger and better things like Pokemon the RPG or some crap like that.
From what I heard from Bill Slaviscek at GenCon when I asked him about this, they would like to do digital products, but they are unwilling to do so without some sort of protection from piracy. The PHB2 was available for download so quickly, and with such a wide spread, that it caught their attention, and they shut down pdfs.
This is the part I don't understand. Myself and another poster here both said we bought the PH2 pdf. So even if it was available immediately upon release as a torrent, we chose to pay for it. I know many many others did as well. I'll say this part again, as I have said this in the past.
Sell pdfs, make some money. Don't sell pdfs, make no money.
Selling electronic (pdf or otherwise) copies of out-of-print material, including Classic D&D and 3.5, is the only way Wizards of the Coast will regain me as a paying customer. There are many classic accessories and modules that I was never able to buy in the '80s, and I could really use electronic copies of my 3.5 books to help prevent the wear of using the printed volumes.Until these products become availble again, the entirety of my relationship with WotC will the occassional use of these forums. My gaming dollars are currently being spent on OGL material sold by other publishers.
I'd forgotten about the back catalogue. It's already out in the digital realm AND it's out of print. So the only two ways of getting the books are illegally or through a used book store, neither result in ANY profit for WotC.
Even if putting their 1e-3.5e products online results in theft, someone might buy them and that leads to profit for them. And if they host it through their website (and via Digital River) they can by-pass Paizo and DriveThru and collect 100% of the profit.
Negligible start-up costs and straight profit... it's silly not to host it.
A while ago, Wizards of the Coast pulled all PDF material that could be bought from online stores because a few people were caught with illegal copies of the Player's Handbook 2. In effect, what WoTC has done has punished the entire gaming community for the acts of a relative few. They have punished those of us who legitimately bought our PDFs because a few people decided to cheat the system. This would be like giving an entire class a failing grade on an exam because a few people decided to use a downloaded answer key.
Recently, Wizards mentioned that they were working on the PDF issue. I would like to know what has been recently done to correct this issue. Myself, I in the past had bought not only the hard copy of the books but also the PDFs because I found them to be an invaluable resource. However, I am unable to buy the PDFs now not because I had done anythng wrong but simply because people had downloaded illegal copies.
If WoTC is waiting for the day for their material to be safe from illegal distribution, this day will never arrive. Every hour of every day, on thousands of illegal download sites, WoTC material is being handed out like candy and WoTC is powerless to stop it. That is because these sites are being hosted in countries that do not have copyright laws such as we do.
In the past, there were two ways of getting the PDFs for the material. The first way was to buy the PDFs from a legitimate online company. In this way, WoTC would make money from each sale. The second way is to download them from one of the illegal torrent sites. In this way, WoTC makes no money.
So ultimately WoTC has pulled the legitimate PDF material because people were illegally downloading it. However, by doing that WoTC has basically made it only possible to acquire the PDF by using illegal means.
I for one want the PDFs returned to us. I personally liked the idea of carrying around a stack of books on my flash drive rather than having to haul my entire library in a bookbag.
A while ago, Wizards of the Coast pulled all PDF material that could be bought from online stores because a few people were caught with illegal copies of the Player's Handbook 2. In effect, what WoTC has done has punished the entire gaming community for the acts of a relative few. They have punished those of us who legitimately bought our PDFs because a few people decided to cheat the system. This would be like giving an entire class a failing grade on an exam because a few people decided to use a downloaded answer key.
Not a good analogy since past sales were not affected by the pdf shutdown. A better analogy would be that the teacher switched from multiple choice tests to essay tests after the few were caught cheating.
It seems to me that WotC believes that in eliminating the pdf sales the sales increase of HC books is greater than the lost pdf sales. I have no way to confirm or challenge that assumption. I can say that I am spending less on 4e books since the pdf ban.
A while ago, Wizards of the Coast pulled all PDF material that could be bought from online stores because a few people were caught with illegal copies of the Player's Handbook 2. In effect, what WoTC has done has punished the entire gaming community for the acts of a relative few. They have punished those of us who legitimately bought our PDFs because a few people decided to cheat the system. This would be like giving an entire class a failing grade on an exam because a few people decided to use a downloaded answer key.
IIRC the ratio of illegal downloads to legal downloads was 10/1.
That means for every customer that bought a legal copy ten other people pirated it.
I can't say whether the PDF decision was a mistake for WotC in economic terms, but in terms of both PR and credibility in handling of digital matters they haven't made a good showing for themselves. OTOH Paizo is getting a lot more of my money in subscriptions that used to go towards WotC PDFs, and I spent a fair bit during the sales which their competitors put on at the time they pulled the PDFs.
I'm not really trying to make a point or anything (to be honest I buy hard copies and use the compendium for digital needs so I don't have a stake in this); I'm just curious.
a) stop it, so noone can pirate directly (this is what wotc has done) - however, if you publish your work any other way, it will eventually end up in the internet, on some torrents or even all around the place.
b) try to circumvent piracy (this is what music industry is trying to do) - There will be never, nowhere, 100% security. That's a fact to anyone who happens to work in security, but a fact often overlooked by executive decisions. Companies can try to invent better copy protection mechanisms, but this is an arms race - bigger protection, bigger removal tools, bigger protection, bigger removal tools...
Any which way, Piracy Protection often harms those that would legitimately buy the product. (in various ways, either by directly hindering them at using the product, or unwanted side effects.) Examples include, but are not limited to: Sony CDs not being able to be replayed on every player, some DVDs like the german version or Mr&Mrs.Smith installing copy-protection software on your PC that somewhat kills your dvd-burner or slows the system.
c) try not to circumvent piracy, or make it just a minor move. This actually, as easy and sloppy it sounds, is the hardest part. Because you need to up your quality THAT much, that people will buy your stuff voluntarily even if they could download it easily. This happens a lot with good bands (support your artists!) or movies (i'd rather have the whole dvd AND its nice cover), but the same method holds true for RP Books as well.
Sure, drivethru has its own piracy problems - still the companies present there rather make some money than no money from their digital products.
So I guess the question is: if you were running a publishing business, at what ratio would you do something? 100:1? 1000:1? Or would you just do nothing? At what point do you worry that pirated digital copies are eating into physical book sales?
I'm not really trying to make a point or anything (to be honest I buy hard copies and use the compendium for digital needs so I don't have a stake in this); I'm just curious.
I'm not sure where I would draw the line at being worried, but the real issue I have with the WotC decision is that it makes absolutely no difference to the pirates. Their books are still being pirated and distributed as PDFs. A post in this thread said Draconomicon 2 seemed to be available a couple of weeks before the physical book came out. Stopping their own sales has done absolutely nothing to stop piracy of their products.
I don't begrudge WotC trying to stop piracy, and if they came up with a method that worked without restricting the rights of the purchaser or making them unusable without jumping through hoops I'd be glad. I do begrudge them doing something that only affects the people who want to buy their books legally in digital format. It costs them both the money they would have gotten from sales and credibility.
IIRC the ratio of illegal downloads to legal downloads was 10/1.
That means for every customer that bought a legal copy ten other people pirated it.
I seriously question numbers like that. For one, piracy is so widespread and occurs from so many sources that it's impossible to accurately determine the number of pirated digital copies out there. Second, I've seen many times how statistics can be presented to say just about anything you want so long as you word it correctly.
More importantly, the number of downloaded copies is irrelevant. Although WotC didn't make it clear at the time, it later came out that the pdf decision was more directly related to stores selling pdfs and not giving WotC the profits they were due. Still piracy, but of a different nature than what normally springs to mind when you hear that word. Also, the point still stands, lose some sales or lose all sales. I have stopped buying hard copies of books as well since the pdfs were pulled. Personally, I think WotC should just sell the pdfs from their own site instead of going through 3rd parties, and then they get 100% of the profits.
WotC won't come out and directly state their motivations. As such, we can only speculate.
The assumption that any of the people pirating the books would have purchased a copy if piracy was not an option is unfounded.
Carry on.
It may simply be that WotC doesn't (or at least didn't) have the infrastructure set up to sell ebooks that way, and putting that in place would have cost more time and money than the company was willing to allow.
That's a large part of it. Sure they could. They could sell everything through their site. Would they make more or less money, I don't know.
I bet they'd make more money from selling them through their site than they're making on pdfs now.
My wife's mother has informed us that she'll be getting us the Barnes&Noble Nook for christmas (sort of an Amazon Kindle competitor). I wonder if WotC will sell D&D Books in whatever file type these electronic book-thingies use?
as for the formats supported, it's likely to be PDFs for structured books like those from WOTC, and EPUB for all others. and we all know what wizards did to them pdfs.
New thought.
My wife's mother has informed us that she'll be getting us the Barnes&Noble Nook for christmas (sort of an Amazon Kindle competitor). I wonder if WotC will sell D&D Books in whatever file type these electronic book-thingies use?
I don't think they're going to do any sort of digital versions until they figure out the pdf thing.
I feel as though I have been promised an omelet but served scrambled eggs.
In regards to digital copyright concerns. . . please. Piracy will always be in the wings so to speak. You can't stop piracy by lying to your customers.
This is my only real complaint with 4e, being delivered less product than I was promised. I want the features that I was promised. Seriously. Time to pony up. I'm almost upset about this.
Digital books and the online game tools were promised by CP (Chris Perkins) prior to the release of the game, and WoTC have turned away from that promise. To be honest, prior to geting my hands on the books that was what really piqued my interest and lubed me for the change and the sale.
I feel as though I have been promised an omelet but served scrambled eggs.
In regards to digital copyright concerns. . . please. Piracy will always be in the wings so to speak. You can't stop piracy by lying to your customers.
This is my only real complaint with 4e, being delivered less product than I was promised. I want the features that I was promised. Seriously. Time to pony up. I'm almost upset about this.
Well, the idea of a free PDF with each book was scrapped and announced before the launch of 4E. The online tools have been coming out for a year now, so that promise is being kept. Sure it didn't go like they planned, but they are still keeping it.
They used to have PDFs of the books, but because the retailers got greedy and and a few stupid ones that bragged about were ripping off WoTC, they had to stop until they can find a safe way to do the electronic versions.
I understand why people see business plans for a company can seem like a promise to customers, especially when the plan is something they really want. Plans don't always work out, but plans really aren't the same as a promise.
So they are keeping to the end goal of their plans, but getting there is just taking a different road.
They used to have PDFs of the books, but because the retailers got greedy and and a few stupid ones that bragged about were ripping off WoTC, they had to stop until they can find a safe way to do the electronic versions.
But they have a safe way to distro them; they could become the sole distributor themselves. That way theres no worrying about whether or not another company is giving them the correct profits for their sales; anyone other than WotC selling digital books would be wrong, no questions asked. A company could try it anyway, but how would they advertise their product without alerting WotC? And anyone willing to go the illegal route would just pirate them (just like they're doing now and just like they've been doing) instead of buying them from a shady company.
They used to have PDFs of the books, but because the retailers got greedy and and a few stupid ones that bragged about were ripping off WoTC, they had to stop until they can find a safe way to do the electronic versions.
But they have a safe way to distro them; they could become the sole distributor themselves. That way theres no worrying about whether or not another company is giving them the correct profits for their sales; anyone other than WotC selling digital books would be wrong, no questions asked. A company could try it anyway, but how would they advertise their product without alerting WotC? And anyone willing to go the illegal route would just pirate them (just like they're doing now and just like they've been doing) instead of buying them from a shady company.
yeah, but that's going to cost money and time, because it will require setting up a whole department for that, even if it's a small department.
Making a PDF from the print files, is very low in cost and time. Setting it up so someone else deals with the selling and money is also very low cost. I speak from experience, I work in publishing and I regularly have to take print files and make PDFs, for just this very reason.
My company sold and delivered the products, both print and electronic. There has to be people that deal with just that, it's not something that you have someone already doing one job, also manage this. It's a full time job, that needs a support staff.
So, yes they could, but most likely they don't want to get into that aspect of business, because it requires building an infrastructure for it in their company. It's not as simple and easy to say, just sell them online, and be done with it.
It's much cheaper, faster and easier to find a way to make secure PDFs, that existing business structures can sell but not steal.
However, I also leave the option of them selling PDFs themselves open and they just might be working on doing that even as I type this.
All I'm saying is that saying, they can just sell the PDFs themselves seems like the obvious solution, but probably isn't. From my experience in publishing.
www.techdirt.com/articles/20091217/18343...