Awhile ago Wizards of the Coast released its 4th edition of Dungeons & Dragons which has polarized fans of D&D 3.5. Some love it, others hate it. Since WotC has abandoned it, Paizo Publishing has taken up the mantle of the 3.5 edition with its Pathfinder Roleplaying Game, which maintains backward compatibility with D&D 3.5 while extending the system (thanks to the Open Gaming License which WotC released much of its content under, Paizo doesn’t have to obtain WotC’s permission to do so).
The main book for the game came out a few weeks ago and it is a) huge and b) gorgeous. And, of course, expensive at $49.99 for the 576 page hardcover. I’ve come this close to picking up a copy even though I don’t have any time to play it.
The interesting thing for me, though, was how Paizo decided to approach its PDF pricing. For high profile new releases like this, typically a good rule of thumb is$10 off. A lot of big publishers will take their $50 book and sell it for $35 or $40 as a PDF. Some will go down to a 50% discount so the PDF is $25.
Paizo priced the PDF version of the Pathfinder RPG book at just $9.99.
The first time I saw that price I thought it was a mistake. The $9.99 must be an error or maybe its for some bastardized subset of the core rulebook. Nope, $9.99 gets you the entire book as a DRM-free PDF. Paizo does use the now ubiquitous (at least in RPG circles) “social DRM”, so in my PDF at the bottom of each page is a grayed out line with my name, email address and a serial number. So if I should decide to go posting the PDF on Torrent sites without generating some sort of derivative PDF that omits the identifying material, Paizo could track me down and sue my ass.
Personally, I think the pricing is awesome. I’ve owned pretty much every ebook device and software I could get my hands on over the years, and ultimately I’ve concluded I want both print and electronic versions of the books I read. There is a lot to be said for print books, and I still do the majority of the reading I do with traditional books. That said, after I’ve finished a book I want an electronic copy for reference quickly available from my laptop or ebook reader.
The problem is that the prevailing pricing model of ebooks makes it extremely difficult to do both. Imagine if I’d had to pay $49.99 to get the printed version of the Pathfinder RPG and then turn around and spend another $29.99 to get a PDF version of the book I already bought? I’m only going to be able to spend that much money on a very rare occasion for an RPG, or any book for that matter.
More publishers should use Paizo’s model of selling the PDF/electronic version of a book as an enticement/supplement to purchasing the physical book. I suspect they’d see their sales of both increase.