Each year or so, WotC could ship updated pages to purchasers of the books to reflect current errata. My instincts tell me these should be complementary (price included with original purchase, for a "free" feeling) but that would be more for their marketing, PR, and financial departments to decide. If Twin Strike were errata'd, for example, the entire page on which Twin Strike was located would be shipped to each client.
This would help to keep books a desirable purchase, in a world where constant errata reduces their value, and pirated PDFs are an easily obtained reality. Bonuses to the system includes tabs for easily finding the section you're looking for, the sale of small "modular" inserts that do not need to be bound on their own (the "races" books could be like this) plus a convenient way to store your character sheets.
Thoughts?
In wargames though, the rules are NOT negotiable and you do NOT have debates about wordings in the same way a DM can just make rulings in a role game.
And even they can't manage free shipped errata pages to past customers even with the size of the community in question being fairly finite.
The best I can suggest, is Wizards do what MMP does for ASL. Ship replacement pages in new product as free inclusions. IE buying a new released hardcover, could have say a few pages from recent books given new pages that can be removed to insert into the previous title.
If they were to use binder based manuals.
With hardcovers, this might require manuals have pages that were sticker sheets inserted. But then that means shrink wrapped to retain them. And that almost certainly means definite price increase.
Have you seen the price jump on Eberron Campaign manual all because it has that map added?
The book leaps several bucks for that inclusion.
Free updates simply ain't going to happen. The only way Wizards is going to ship anything anywhere is to current retailers that have current business ongoing from their suppliers such that it is easy to ship to suppliers with the idea being the suppliers can just send some to retailers.
And I emphasize 'some' not a lot.
Free updates simply ain't going to happen.
I was very careful to call them "complementary" not "free"
If their research shows them it would cost 20 dollars per PHB over the lifetime of the edition to ship our errata once a year, they'd tack 20 dollars onto the price. This would have the added benefit of putting pressure on their errata staff to avoid unecessary changes: "We have to reprint PHB 159 WHY?"
The other option is to simply sell the errata'd pages at cost, while maintaining the free listing on their website. I feel like people would bitch endlessly about this option, though. They'd be much happier paying for them without knowing it.
) and read them when I have downtime.I wouldn't want them to somehow change the format of the books because of errata. I read the books for the flavor and mechanical inspiration. When I actually put the mechanics into play, I use the character builder or the compendium, which include the errata. I could always check the errata file if I wanted too, though I rarely do past the day they print it. If I miss the errata somehow, no problem, just don't play with it, or implement it if another player remembers it at the table.