Selling PDF's over the Web

[EvilSchemer]

What's the best solution for selling PDF's over the Web?

PayPal?
VeriSign?
Something else?

In addition, is there any market for it? Does anyone actually purchase PDF games over the web? Is it worth the hassle of setting it up?

[HellHound]

Holy CRAP!

Hey Chris, long time no chat man!

(HellHound of the ancient BlackHammer Project here)

I'm selling (quite successfuly I should add) my PDFs through the storefront at www.RPGnow.com

email me! We can discuss this and old times!

[EvilSchemer]

Hmm.. That's very interesting. I might have to give them a try.

It really works? I mean, how many e-books do you tend to sell a month?

[BiggusGeekus]

EvilSchemer,

Small tale of caution: I downloaded Morpheus this weekend to get a copy of a computer game that I had purchased but accidentally scratched the disk (Master of Orion for those who care). On a lark I checked out the listings of some D&D products. To my horror I found about 6 people offering Monte Cook's PDF and one person offering the WotC book "Sword and Fist".

This kind of file sharing is uncontrolable, but products that start as PDFs seem to get shared more than paper products.

Just some food for thought.

[EvilPixi]

Is there any way to protect against unlicenced distribution of a PDF. Maybe some sort of coding or password protection? Anything?

[RpmQ]

Technically you could.
By providing the user with a username/password, they would have to log into your site to download their purchased .pdf.

Then you can log their ip address when they download the .pdf file. Odds are alot of users wil have different ips each time they log on, but they should be coming from the same block (Dynamic ips from their service providers).
However, theres an odd chance that someone may be over at a buddies house and use their connection to log in/download the .pdf file as well, in which case their ip address would be different. Theres no guard against it, but if you see 2 different ip addresses downloading the file under one user name, and their within 5 minutes of each other or something, then odds are it's 2 different people using one username/file.

Of course, this still doesn't stop people from saving the .pdf file (once downloaded) and offering it for free elsewhere.

It also makes monitoring the activity quite a chore (even if it's scripted to automatically raise a flag when it occurs), let alone how you would handle the situation once something like the above does happen.
-r

[HellHound]

There is no way to protect the PDF once it is distributed...

Necromancer Games puts password protection on the PDF itself, but that is easy to strip... and most pirates just include the password in the filename.

I know of two different locations that you can download my first book for free (and no, I'm not telling where!) - propagated by pirates.

It's the cost of doing business in PDF format.

Chris - I won't go into numbers here (my corporate bottom line is none of anyone's business) - but PDF distribution is still SMALL business.

With a few RARE exceptions (all of them being D20 products, and only the cream of the crop of those I should add), selling 100 copies is a BIG DEAL for a PDF product.

[MicroTactix]

Originally posted by HellHound
With a few RARE exceptions (all of them being D20 products, and only the cream of the crop of those I should add), selling 100 copies is a BIG DEAL for a PDF product.

Well, not ALL of them are D20... :D

All three of our core books for the PlainLabel Game System are WELL over that mark, as are many of our Cardstock Creations and Dirt Cheep Dungeons products.

[HellHound]

My sincere apologies.

I was talking out of my ass again (I do that sometimes).

I amanged to fail to say "on RPGnow.com" in that sentence.

(I'll just go back to bed, I make less mistakes there! :o )

[Tim Gray]

Originally posted by MicroTactix


Well, not ALL of them are D20... :D

All three of our core books for the PlainLabel Game System are WELL over that mark, as are many of our Cardstock Creations and Dirt Cheep Dungeons products.

Over or under 500?

[EvilIdler]

Originally posted by BiggusGeekus
checked out the listings of some D&D products. To my horror I found about 6 people offering Monte Cook's PDF and one person offering the WotC book "Sword and Fist".

This kind of file sharing is uncontrolable, but products that start as PDFs seem to get shared more than paper products.



I have an idea about how to counter this problem for the independent
publishers. This would require some sort of central distribution for the
indie developers, though.

When creating a PDF, there are many fields of information that can be
be included in the document - perhaps one can contain the name of the
owner of the document (the buyer)?

Another advanced solution would be to create a page on the fly
(a page 1) to be injected into the Postscript source, containing some
personal details about the licensee.

Both solutions would mean creating PDFs on the fly, which could be
queued up to ease server load, or passed off to a secondary server.

Add e-payment systems, a nice store front-end, and creator biographies etc.

Any comments? Better ideas? I'm still fairly new to the formats; it
would be easy for people to convert back, strip out unwanted info
etc. before spreading it, but in my experience, the average KaZaA
or Morpheus (now on the Gnutella network) user isn't that experienced.

This would at least help a little in tracking down the ones spreading
the documents they buy. I've seen one distribution mechanism on
the Palm platform, where you use your credit card number first time
you read a book on the handheld. Nasty :)

[Darn Fun Games]

Wow... too much technical stuff for my tastes. Are there any simpler solutions to piracy of PDF's?

[James Wallis]

No. There are no solutions to RPG piracy at all.

We released "Realms of Sorcery" last autumn, a physical 256-page book. Within six weeks a PDF version was being traded on Morpheus.

The people doing this understand that it's wrong, and they understand that it's hurting the RPG companies that produce the games they love. And they don't care.

[Matt M]

Some people seem to do pretty well out of selling PDF games. There's a fair number of people over at The Forge (http://indie-rpgs.com) who've done so, and done quite well. Most of these seem to go for two versions, a basic primer that's free and the full version which costs.

As to piracy, it's pretty much impossible to stop, somebody will always come up with a way of breaking whatever security you put in (or be sad enough to spend days scanning a book in). You may as well just accept this, and hope that people value your work enough to pay for it.



Matt

[Loc]

Unfortunately you sort of have to go with the old shareware policy. "this product is not free. If you like it, please pay for it. Keep shareware (indie-RPG?) alive by supporting the creators."

I am shortly opening my own website to promote a PDF based RPG (join the group huh?) and I'm just expecting to lose a bit of business to piracy. Not that I won't do what I can to stop it, but it's mainly under the radar pirates that you probably loose the most to. . .

On the other hand. Publishing on PDF is pretty cheap, you can't expect to have that translate into a huge profit.

I'm hoping to use whatever I make in selling my game to create a "real" gamebook, and have the group of people that purchased the PDF version as the first market.

[NPC posterboy]

PDF Publishing can work. The PDFs I publish (Darwin's World) have all sold better than I expected (way over 100) and unlike print products, seem to increase sales over time opposed to decrease. Also, its nice that you don't have to produce errta. When something needs to be changed or balanced, you can just release new PDFs. I release new versions of my PDFs at regular intervals, often with new content and customer suggested changes, and its been a great system. There's always the option of doing a print run in the future and the PDF sales can eventually cover the printing costs. Is also a good way to prove your idea if you want to attract a bigger name print publisher.

RPGNow.com is the best way to go for selling pdfs.

[DJorgensen]

The spammer is reported.

I know we have had a lot of new folks asking questions of late, so I will take a moment to point out that iKreative's one and only post in the forum is a SCAM. Your $97 will buy you screenshots and FAQ pages ripped off from ebay, paypal, and other sites. And always question the legitimacy of any business that uses 2checkout as a transaction handler.