So, with the news that IPad sales of Black Library books has done well without setting fire to the physical copies of the stock and dancing on there grave, it raises a question - would GW be advised to sell PDF's of the Army Books and Codexes too?

Now, it wouldn't work brilliantly for your own forces - I'm not used to digital books much, but I can't imagine flipping through a PDF is that convenient - but to take a peek at other armies, or look at them to see if you want one? It might be an idea...especially for the obsessive among us like me, who prefers to at least have a copy of each book so I know what I'm getting into when I face another army (and read the fluff...if it isn't Matt Ward) so I'm not caught off guard/screwed by a TFG. £25 is a tad much, however. I'd not mind forking out, say, £$-5 ti get a proper PDF

I know there are many ways of doing this already, without having to pay, to acquire such things already - but the same's true of the Black Library books, and people seem to buying them all the same.

Of course, it would mean GW has to stop thinking of the Internet as the Darkest of All Foes and as something that, potentially, can net it some additional income. Which isn't too likely. But you never know, stranger things have happened..

I think the risk of easy piracy would outweight the benefit, in their eyes. Much like what turned out to be the case for Wizards of the Coast with their 4E D&D books. I think there's genuine potential for it to be a solid market for them, but I doubt they'll ever see it as a financially viable option.

There is already easy piracy of GW's books. Partially because they won't release them in PDF form. You don't have to look very hard to download a copy of every codex, rulebook, and forge world supplement. I'd happily pay for a PDF copy of GW's books if they offered them.

PDF's? Maybe.

E-books? Absolutely.

Sure, I like the art and it does add to the immersion in the setting, but would I rather pay, say 15 bucks for limited art, mostly text, no painted army section, and something that could fit on my kindle? In a heartbeat.

augustus5 wrote:There is already easy piracy of GW's books. Partially because they won't release them in PDF form. You don't have to look very hard to download a copy of every codex, rulebook, and forge world supplement. I'd happily pay for a PDF copy of GW's books if they offered them.

Yeah, it's true. Pretty much everything is easily pirated nowadays. I feel pity for people who still pay for movies and music. Arrgghhh.

Some people do prefer to pay for stuff, if the company is remotely deserving. Whether that describes GW is another matter, and most likely a personal preference.

But let's be realistic - within a month of release you can already get most Codexes on a torrent site. Even without releasing them as PDF's, they're going to be pirated. At worst GW makes some sales for whatever the cost of hosting/web shop will be and those who want to pirate the codex might get a cleaner PDF to download.

Which is likely why they won't do it.

Why should they(or I, or anyone who buys the books) give a crap about the git who will only torrent the book having a crummy scan?

That's not my problem. Shell the money out for the book.

Lt. Coldfire wrote:I feel pity for people who still pay for movies and music. Arrgghhh.

Save your pity and just give your thanks. Without them you won't have anything worth downloading.

That's the thing - I won't. Not any more. £25 is just too much for me to justify paying for an army I don't pay. Honestly, I have trouble justifying it for Armies I do play...still haven't gotten the Grey Knights book, and I've been playing them for half a decade.

If someone is going to pirate the book, they'll pirate the book. As long as the scan is legible they won't care, but GW won't see a penny. If they sell the book, the guys who pirate may well get a better copy - but they'd not have paid regardless. On the other hand, GW will have at least made some money on selling it.

It's working for the Black Library stuff they're selling on IPads. They've not seen a large drop in sales for the real books, they've made money selling the books online and, yes, the Black Library books are available as torrents as well. It seems to be working. What makes the army books different?

Mastiff wrote:

Lt. Coldfire wrote:I feel pity for people who still pay for movies and music. Arrgghhh.

Save your pity and just give your thanks. Without them you won't have anything worth downloading.

True, but I'm sure those people who torrent movies end up selling their copy, so it doesn't cost them much. Just time and effort. We appreciate them.

W file sharing? No way. That's a huge hit to their income. Look at Paizo's Pathfinder items and then cross-reference how much of it is available for download. (Granted Pathfinder is based off of an OGL.)

-J.

You should have put up a poll

I think piracy will always exist in some form no matter what they do. I'd argue that it's pointless trying to fight it - whether an ebook or a PDF will produce more of it I don't know, but I do know most people would be willing to pay for high quality PDF documents - at a reduced rate to their print books of course. I still think most people who are into the GW hobby will buy a Codex/Army book, the majority of hobbyists are collectors after all. If they released army lists through PDF, that might be better than whole Codex books and might generate increased sales - people who know the game and lore could then easily dip into other armies, it might just get them to start an army they previously wouldn't have though to.

I'd argue a case for GW to open up an Archive - call it what you will. They could release all previous editions of games and OOP games via PDF format, people could subscribe to it for £2-3 a month and it could get updated with old White Dwraf articles and such - there's a bucket load of old Space Hulk campaigns and missions written etc they could re-release. Their lack of creativity into this kind of thing frustrates me (shrugs).

Again it boils down to GW's refusal to move with the times, when 3D printing becomes more accessible/evolved/cheaper it would make high quality counterfeiting possible - and it will happen - then we'll all travel to China to get our minis

Kanluwen wrote:Which is likely why they won't do it.

Why should they(or I, or anyone who buys the books) give a crap about the git who will only torrent the book having a crummy scan?

That's not my problem. Shell the money out for the book.

Neither you nor GW should care about people's crummy codex downloads, but that doesn't change the fact that GW is missing out on potential revenue by refusing to recognize that so many people no longer purchase hard copies of books of any kind.

Either way pirates will still pirate, and not all pirate PDFs are crummy, most are really well done by the way.

augustus5 wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Which is likely why they won't do it.

Why should they(or I, or anyone who buys the books) give a crap about the git who will only torrent the book having a crummy scan?

That's not my problem. Shell the money out for the book.

Neither you nor GW should care about people's crummy codex downloads, but that doesn't change the fact that GW is missing out on potential revenue by refusing to recognize that so many people no longer purchase hard copies of books of any kind.

Either way pirates will still pirate, and not all pirate PDFs are crummy, most are really well done by the way.

Do you really think that people would buy the books if suddenly they were available in an eBook format?

Lt. Coldfire wrote:

Mastiff wrote:

Lt. Coldfire wrote:I feel pity for people who still pay for movies and music. Arrgghhh.

Save your pity and just give your thanks. Without them you won't have anything worth downloading.

True, but I'm sure those people who torrent movies end up selling their copy, so it doesn't cost them much. Just time and effort. We appreciate them.

If the bulk of folks felt this way, you wouldn't have movies to download - because movies cost money, which they pay for from sales. You wouldn't have quality books - they cost a lot of time to write, and the author usually wants paid. You won't get music either - most free music is bands trying to catch a record labels eye. Shockingly, while you may be unwilling to pay for stuff, a lot of people are unwilling to work for free as well.

Take anime, as an example - a lot of anime studios have closed shop recently. They're just not making money. Some of that is poor business choices, some of it's piracy. So anime makers are making stuff that's safe. The same old crap. Why risk experimenting when it's unlikely to earn them much money? More Copy and Paste martial arts anime, please.

Some folks prefer to pay, and support the things they love. Because if they don't they won't get it. And yes, some people will say, 'Well it doesn't matter - I wouldn't have bought it anyway, so it's costing them nothing' but that is, let's be fair, just an excuse. They could have saved up and bought it instead. They just want it for free.

Kanluwen wrote:
Do you really think that people would buy the books if suddenly they were available in an eBook format?

I do.

Kanluwen wrote:

augustus5 wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Which is likely why they won't do it.

Why should they(or I, or anyone who buys the books) give a crap about the git who will only torrent the book having a crummy scan?

That's not my problem. Shell the money out for the book.

Neither you nor GW should care about people's crummy codex downloads, but that doesn't change the fact that GW is missing out on potential revenue by refusing to recognize that so many people no longer purchase hard copies of books of any kind.

Either way pirates will still pirate, and not all pirate PDFs are crummy, most are really well done by the way.

Do you really think that people would buy the books if suddenly they were available in an eBook format?

Yes. GW says so. At least for the Black Library books.

Kanluwen wrote:

augustus5 wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Which is likely why they won't do it.

Why should they(or I, or anyone who buys the books) give a crap about the git who will only torrent the book having a crummy scan?

That's not my problem. Shell the money out for the book.

Neither you nor GW should care about people's crummy codex downloads, but that doesn't change the fact that GW is missing out on potential revenue by refusing to recognize that so many people no longer purchase hard copies of books of any kind.

Either way pirates will still pirate, and not all pirate PDFs are crummy, most are really well done by the way.

Do you really think that people would buy the books if suddenly they were available in an eBook format?

I would, although I'd prefer PDF.

Jon Garrett wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

augustus5 wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Which is likely why they won't do it.

Why should they(or I, or anyone who buys the books) give a crap about the git who will only torrent the book having a crummy scan?

That's not my problem. Shell the money out for the book.

Neither you nor GW should care about people's crummy codex downloads, but that doesn't change the fact that GW is missing out on potential revenue by refusing to recognize that so many people no longer purchase hard copies of books of any kind.

Either way pirates will still pirate, and not all pirate PDFs are crummy, most are really well done by the way.

Do you really think that people would buy the books if suddenly they were available in an eBook format?

Yes. GW says so. At least for the Black Library books.

Which is dealing in novels. Novels in an ebook format can be utilized on laptops, tablets, some phones, etc. Things that many people take with them on long trips and keep secured during those trips or day to day life.

I can't think of many game shops where I'd feel comfortable taking something valuable like a laptop, tablet, or smart phone with me and leave unattended if I go to the bathroom or something like that. If individuals steal models from people's armies--yeah, I wouldn't be surprised to see the others suddenly 'walk off'.

Jon Garrett wrote:

Lt. Coldfire wrote:

Mastiff wrote:

Lt. Coldfire wrote:I feel pity for people who still pay for movies and music. Arrgghhh.

Save your pity and just give your thanks. Without them you won't have anything worth downloading.

True, but I'm sure those people who torrent movies end up selling their copy, so it doesn't cost them much. Just time and effort. We appreciate them.

If the bulk of folks felt this way, you wouldn't have movies to download - because movies cost money, which they pay for from sales. You wouldn't have quality books - they cost a lot of time to write, and the author usually wants paid. You won't get music either - most free music is bands trying to catch a record labels eye. Shockingly, while you may be unwilling to pay for stuff, a lot of people are unwilling to work for free as well.

Take anime, as an example - a lot of anime studios have closed shop recently. They're just not making money. Some of that is poor business choices, some of it's piracy. So anime makers are making stuff that's safe. The same old crap. Why risk experimenting when it's unlikely to earn them much money? More Copy and Paste martial arts anime, please.

Some folks prefer to pay, and support the things they love. Because if they don't they won't get it. And yes, some people will say, 'Well it doesn't matter - I wouldn't have bought it anyway, so it's costing them nothing' but that is, let's be fair, just an excuse. They could have saved up and bought it instead. They just want it for free.

Any movie worth it's salt will more than pay for itself in theaters alone. I'm gonna say these people are doing quite alright if Brendan Fraiser is getting paid millions for a stupid movie like "Furry Vengeance". Often times I feel like I should be getting paid for some of the stupid crap that shows up in theaters.

Jon Garrett wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

augustus5 wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Which is likely why they won't do it.

Why should they(or I, or anyone who buys the books) give a crap about the git who will only torrent the book having a crummy scan?

That's not my problem. Shell the money out for the book.

Neither you nor GW should care about people's crummy codex downloads, but that doesn't change the fact that GW is missing out on potential revenue by refusing to recognize that so many people no longer purchase hard copies of books of any kind.

Either way pirates will still pirate, and not all pirate PDFs are crummy, most are really well done by the way.

Do you really think that people would buy the books if suddenly they were available in an eBook format?

Yes. GW says so. At least for the Black Library books.

Seriously, their own financial report talks about what an awesome thing it's been to have e-books for the Black Library, and that to their surprise, it hasn't majorly impacted real book sales.

So even GW seems to realize that this might make them even more money. Now to just convince them to make those cut down army lists for an e-reader.

proditorcappela wrote:

Seriously, their own financial report talks about what an awesome thing it's been to have e-books for the Black Library, and that to their surprise, it hasn't majorly impacted real book sales.

So even GW seems to realize that this might make them even more money. Now to just convince them to make those cut down army lists for an e-reader.

See my above statement. Novels are not necessarily the same thing as army books.

Army Books are big sellers. People don't "pirate" novels, by and large. They are not necessities to play 40k/FB.

Kanluwen wrote:

Jon Garrett wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

augustus5 wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Which is likely why they won't do it.

Why should they(or I, or anyone who buys the books) give a crap about the git who will only torrent the book having a crummy scan?

That's not my problem. Shell the money out for the book.

Neither you nor GW should care about people's crummy codex downloads, but that doesn't change the fact that GW is missing out on potential revenue by refusing to recognize that so many people no longer purchase hard copies of books of any kind.

Either way pirates will still pirate, and not all pirate PDFs are crummy, most are really well done by the way.

Do you really think that people would buy the books if suddenly they were available in an eBook format?

Yes. GW says so. At least for the Black Library books.

Which is dealing in novels. Novels in an ebook format can be utilized on laptops, tablets, some phones, etc. Things that many people take with them on long trips and keep secured during those trips or day to day life.

I can't think of many game shops where I'd feel comfortable taking something valuable like a laptop, tablet, or smart phone with me and leave unattended if I go to the bathroom or something like that. If individuals steal models from people's armies--yeah, I wouldn't be surprised to see the others suddenly 'walk off'.

I bring my laptop with me to the FLGS every time I play. That way I can avoid bringing a full library worth of books. If I decide to play a Planetstike game with somebody I'm good, if there is a big apocalypse game forming I'm good, I can pull out the battle missions if I choose, or I can reference the rules for any of my opponent's armies as well as their FAQs. I will never go back to lugging around all the books or leaving rules I might potentially use at home.

As far as worrying about your laptop being stolen; where I play every week, there are plenty of people who know each other and will look out for each other's stuff. I can leave my army and laptop there and run to go pick up a pizza and I'm happy to watch out for other people's stuff if they need to take a break or run up the street somewhere.

If you are having issues with stuff being stolen where you play, perhaps you might consider playing elsewhere.

Kanluwen wrote:

proditorcappela wrote:

Seriously, their own financial report talks about what an awesome thing it's been to have e-books for the Black Library, and that to their surprise, it hasn't majorly impacted real book sales.

So even GW seems to realize that this might make them even more money. Now to just convince them to make those cut down army lists for an e-reader.

See my above statement. Novels are not necessarily the same thing as army books.

Army Books are big sellers. People don't "pirate" novels, by and large. They are not necessities to play 40k/FB.

I love the way you speak in definites and provide zero back-up. My allegorical evidence says you're completely wrong. Check any torrent site and you'll see quite literally tens to hundreds of thousands of pirated novels.

And to make it more specific, were I of a mind I could with little to no effort grab every single thing ever published by the Black Library and run it on an e-reader. Heck, I've had friends offer on several occasions. Seriously, you have zero idea what you're talking about here.

Now, since I like the IP, what I have instead is a bookshelf lined 2 deep, and 2 high with just 40k novels. Because I think you support what you like.

Which is why I'd like it if GW decided not to be a bunch of ignorant luddites and put out their books in an electronic format.

@Kanluwen: Well what about other "big seller" books, like the Harry Potter or Twilight series? People could download illegal pdfs of them, yet I'd bet if you talked to someone and asked if they read it, they probably read the hard, purchased copy instead of downloading it. While the army books are easier to pdf-itize due to their smaller size, I don't think their high popularity will decrease the number of sales due to piracy to any degree more than already is happening.
People who pirate will still pirate, regardless of format, but imo more people would buy a pdf than would steal said pdf. Plus, if GW pares down the content to pure crunch, people interested in the fluff still have to buy the books (still keeping that revenue stream open).

augustus5 wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

Jon Garrett wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:

augustus5 wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Which is likely why they won't do it.

Why should they(or I, or anyone who buys the books) give a crap about the git who will only torrent the book having a crummy scan?

That's not my problem. Shell the money out for the book.

Neither you nor GW should care about people's crummy codex downloads, but that doesn't change the fact that GW is missing out on potential revenue by refusing to recognize that so many people no longer purchase hard copies of books of any kind.

Either way pirates will still pirate, and not all pirate PDFs are crummy, most are really well done by the way.

Do you really think that people would buy the books if suddenly they were available in an eBook format?

Yes. GW says so. At least for the Black Library books.

Which is dealing in novels. Novels in an ebook format can be utilized on laptops, tablets, some phones, etc. Things that many people take with them on long trips and keep secured during those trips or day to day life.

I can't think of many game shops where I'd feel comfortable taking something valuable like a laptop, tablet, or smart phone with me and leave unattended if I go to the bathroom or something like that. If individuals steal models from people's armies--yeah, I wouldn't be surprised to see the others suddenly 'walk off'.

I bring my laptop with me to the FLGS every time I play. That way I can avoid bringing a full library worth of books. If I decide to play a Planetstike game with somebody I'm good, if there is a big apocalypse game forming I'm good, I can pull out the battle missions if I choose, or I can reference the rules for any of my opponent's armies as well as their FAQs. I will never go back to lugging around all the books or leaving rules I might potentially use at home.

As far as worrying about your laptop being stolen; where I play every week, there are plenty of people who know each other and will look out for each other's stuff. I can leave my army and laptop there and run to go pick up a pizza and I'm happy to watch out for other people's stuff if they need to take a break or run up the street somewhere.

If you are having issues with stuff being stolen where you play, perhaps you might consider playing elsewhere.

I'd suggest you read this very forum. Every few weeks, we get someone talking about how they were at a RTT and had X stolen, , right off the table or from their bag, when they stop paying attention for a few minutes.

Playing at RTTs is not the same as playing in your local venue. You do not know the people in question, by and large, and that makes people think they can get away with a lot more.

proditorcappela wrote:I love the way you speak in definites and provide zero back-up. My allegorical evidence says you're completely wrong. Check any torrent site and you'll see quite literally tens to hundreds of thousands of pirated novels.

Prove to me that they're pirated. A great many works are public domain.

And to make it more specific, were I of a mind I could with little to no effort grab every single thing ever published by the Black Library and run it on an e-reader. Heck, I've had friends offer on several occasions. Seriously, you have zero idea what you're talking about here.

I'm willing to say to you that "every single thing ever published by the Black Library" is not available in an e-reader compatible format. People might LIST it as "First and Only by Dan Abnett" when in reality it's a great big picture of their junk and a virus for your PC.

Now, since I like the IP, what I have instead is a bookshelf lined 2 deep, and 2 high with just 40k novels. Because I think you support what you like.

Good for you.

Which is why I'd like it if GW decided not to be a bunch of ignorant luddites and put out their books in an electronic format.

It would be nice, but I cannot see it happening for army books. Army Books are too much of a big deal for GW to go and do it. They account for a good deal of GW's sales(with many people buying army books for each faction, even if they're not going to play them if only so that they can see what their enemy might have) and they cost a lot for GW to produce.

I would purchase ebooks/PDFs, especially if they were updated when FAQs came out.

kanluwen wrote:I'd suggest you read this very forum. Every few weeks, we get someone talking about how they were at a RTT and had X stolen, , right off the table or from their bag, when they stop paying attention for a few minutes.

Playing at RTTs is not the same as playing in your local venue. You do not know the people in question, by and large, and that makes people think they can get away with a lot more.

I wouldn't bring my laptop to a tournament. There is no reason to need to bring all of the books to a tournament, because all you need is the rulebook, codex, and FAQ for you specific army. I also wouldn't leave any of my stuff unattended at a tournament, which will probably have a lot of people there playing that I don't know or play with on a regular basis, and the people I do know will be too busy at their own table for me to ask to watch my stuff. At my FLGS, it's a different story. I can and do bring a laptop, so I can have access to the entire library of rules and expansions, and I can trust people there that I know to keep an eye on my stuff if I step out for a break.

kanluwen wrote:Prove to me that they're pirated. A great many works are public domain.

I don't think the examples he gave, like Harry Potter or Twilight are public domain yet. Try again...

kanluwen wrote:It would be nice, but I cannot see it happening for army books. Army Books are too much of a big deal for GW to go and do it. They account for a good deal of GW's sales(with many people buying army books for each faction, even if they're not going to play them if only so that they can see what their enemy might have) and they cost a lot for GW to produce.

Perhaps YOU can't see it happening, but many others would disagree.

augustus5 wrote:

kanluwen wrote:Prove to me that they're pirated. A great many works are public domain.

I don't think the examples he gave, like Harry Potter or Twilight are public domain yet. Try again...

He didn't give those examples, darkPrince010 did. And you should notice that "a great many works" is not the same as "any and all".
Reading comprehension is critical.

kanluwen wrote:It would be nice, but I cannot see it happening for army books. Army Books are too much of a big deal for GW to go and do it. They account for a good deal of GW's sales(with many people buying army books for each faction, even if they're not going to play them if only so that they can see what their enemy might have) and they cost a lot for GW to produce.

Perhaps YOU can't see it happening, but many others would disagree.

Well good for them. I'm trying to look at this from GW's perspective, which as we all know is not "what's best for the customer".

If they're putting out army books like the Orcs & Goblins/Tomb Kings books--you can bet your bottom they're not going to be doing any digital version that can interfere with sales of those books. Which of course leads to people pirating shoddy scans of the books, but it all comes down to the Pirate Justification Cycle. "They want me to pay HOW much? No, screw that! I'll pirate it instead!"--which then leads to tighter control on the legitimate copies and only hurts the people who actually purchase the items in question, not the pirates.

I wouldn't have a use for an ebook version of the codices, personally. They are small enough that they fit in my computer bag when I travel and want to bring them along. I prefer novels in my Kindle. I flip back and forth too much when reading a codex for it to be useful on a Kindle.

A pdf might be more useful at home, but I'd still rather have the book in my hands. However, if I were traveling and wanted to check something that might be in another codex, I could see the value in a pdf version.

There would have a be a significant savings from the hard copy for me to purchase the pdf version instead of the hard copy.

I think it'd be great idea for gw to release them on some sort of digital medium. I myself am guilty of "pirating" a few that I already own the physical copy of. It comes down to convenience for me. If I'm on my lunch break at work and I'd like to look something in a codex, I'm not going to be lugging around physical copies them, but there's a good chance I'll have my Ipad/netbook with me. It's situations like these that digital copies would make sense.

Btw, first post!

@Kanluwen: Any and all. Yup, surprisingly there is a huge group willing to scan and edit the texts for redistribution. And no, not all of them are in e-reader format. Some are in word, some are in pdf. And almost all of them are convertible with 5 seconds of work with a freeware e-reader program called Calibre.

Examples of pirated works: Harry Potter, The Dresden Files. THE HORUS HERESY.

Seriously, you literally have no idea what you're talking about.

At all.

And as to me proving it to you, how do you suggest I do that? Do you want me to provide you with pirated work? Really?

A suggestion: Educate yourself instead and look at the hundreds of sites offering these books. No need to "buy", just look. It'll be an educational experience.

GW doesn't really understand how THE INTERBLAG works, so chances are they'll put out PDF's for a bit less of a price, then wonder why they're losing so much money.

kanluwen wrote:If they're putting out army books like the Orcs & Goblins/Tomb Kings books--you can bet your bottom they're not going to be doing any digital version that can interfere with sales of those books. Which of course leads to people pirating shoddy scans of the books, but it all comes down to the Pirate Justification Cycle. "They want me to pay HOW much? No, screw that! I'll pirate it instead!"--which then leads to tighter control on the legitimate copies and only hurts the people who actually purchase the items in question, not the pirates.

This isn't necessarily true. The pirating of music was going to destroy the entire industry more than a decade ago. Record companies decided to begin licensing their music and selling it digitally. Napster was purchased and turned into an online store, iTunes came about, and now digital downloads of music are big business for record companies. It's still easy to pirate music, but based on the success of digitally downloaded music, and the success of the proven black library digital sales, GW should consider selling their army books in such a way.

kanluwen wrote:He didn't give those examples, darkPrince010 did. And you should notice that "a great many works" is not the same as "any and all".
Reading comprehension is critical.

I'll ignore your cheap reading comprehension is critical statement. I understand that some people resort to insults when they feel like they have no real argument to present and I have come to expect that sort of thing from you based on other posts you've made in other threads. I'd like you to address this point. You said:

Prove to me that they're pirated. A great many works are public domain.

This was in relation to proditorcappela saying:

I love the way you speak in definites and provide zero back-up. My allegorical evidence says you're completely wrong. Check any torrent site and you'll see quite literally tens to hundreds of thousands of pirated novels.

And to make it more specific, were I of a mind I could with little to no effort grab every single thing ever published by the Black Library and run it on an e-reader. Heck, I've had friends offer on several occasions. Seriously, you have zero idea what you're talking about here.

How many pirated works are public domain? Where is this even coming from? Black Library books are certainly not public domain. With very little effort you can find an available download for almost any book, including those in the BL.

proditorcappela wrote:@Kanluwen: Any and all. Yup, surprisingly there is a huge group willing to scan and edit the texts for redistribution. And no, not all of them are in e-reader format. Some are in word, some are in pdf. And almost all of them are convertible with 5 seconds of work with a freeware e-reader program called Calibre.

Examples of pirated works: Harry Potter, The Dresden Files. THE HORUS HERESY.

And as I said, ARE THEY THE ACTUAL WORKS. Please fething read if you're going to pick fights.

Seriously, you literally have no idea what you're talking about.

At all.
And as to me proving it to you, how do you suggest I do that? Do you want me to provide you with pirated work? Really?

I want you to prove to me that every single iteration of what you're claiming is actually what you're claiming it is. I have acquaintances who go out of their way to get everything "free", and I end up being the one puzzling out what specific file was a virus uploaded by some spanker who was trying to start a botnet.

A suggestion: Educate yourself instead and look at the hundreds of sites offering these books. No need to "buy", just look. It'll be an educational experience.

I'd rather not educate myself with an enterprise that I feel is full of scumsucking gits. Thanks.

There's already PDF copies available. The incentive, in my mind, to a publisher to do PDFs is to reclaim some of 'losses' by providing a hopefully 'better' product at a reasonable price point.

Publishers can provide better value in several ways: better-made PDFs, features like hyperlinks, reduced file sizes, as well as updates.

The basic idea of online publishing is that infringement is going to happen, so provide an alternative that has a reasonable cost. You won't satisfy anyone or kill infringement, but you can reduce it.

augustus5 wrote:

kanluwen wrote:If they're putting out army books like the Orcs & Goblins/Tomb Kings books--you can bet your bottom they're not going to be doing any digital version that can interfere with sales of those books. Which of course leads to people pirating shoddy scans of the books, but it all comes down to the Pirate Justification Cycle. "They want me to pay HOW much? No, screw that! I'll pirate it instead!"--which then leads to tighter control on the legitimate copies and only hurts the people who actually purchase the items in question, not the pirates.

This isn't necessarily true. The pirating of music was going to destroy the entire industry more than a decade ago. Record companies decided to begin licensing their music and selling it digitally. Napster was purchased and turned into an online store, iTunes came about, and now digital downloads of music are big business for record companies. It's still easy to pirate music, but based on the success of digitally downloaded music, and the success of the proven black library digital sales, GW should consider selling their army books in such a way.

And as I keep bloody saying but it's apparently not clicking--a novel is not the same as an army book. You do not "read" through an army book like you do a novel, you are constantly referring to various parts.

kanluwen wrote:He didn't give those examples, darkPrince010 did. And you should notice that "a great many works" is not the same as "any and all".
Reading comprehension is critical.

I'll ignore your cheap reading comprehension is critical statement. I understand that some people resort to insults when they feel like they have no real argument to present and I have come to expect that sort of thing from you based on other posts you've made in other threads.

And I'll ignore your cheap shot at insisting that I have no argument to present. Your statement was that the poster I replied to "gave an example". He did not. Someone else did.
"A great many works" is not the same as "any and all". I can find legitimate, public domain works available online. Films like Romero's original "Night of the Living Dead", for example, is public domain...because the title slide and copyright information was not present in the theatrical distribution.

I'd like you to address this point. You said:

Prove to me that they're pirated. A great many works are public domain.

This was in relation to proditorcappela saying:

I love the way you speak in definites and provide zero back-up. My allegorical evidence says you're completely wrong. Check any torrent site and you'll see quite literally tens to hundreds of thousands of pirated novels.

And to make it more specific, were I of a mind I could with little to no effort grab every single thing ever published by the Black Library and run it on an e-reader. Heck, I've had friends offer on several occasions. Seriously, you have zero idea what you're talking about here.

How many pirated works are public domain? Where is this even coming from? Black Library books are certainly not public domain. With very little effort you can find an available download for almost any book, including those in the BL.

Yeah, if he can't be bothered to trawl through and find out if each and every iteration of a published work available online is actually the published work and not just a trojan with some promo material, then I can't be bothered to dig through and find the information you want.

By the by?
"The Odyssey", in its original Latin publication, is public domain.
The translations, however, are not.

If GW was smart they would release digital codices for half the price (due to not having to print and ship or stock them ).. They would sell A LOT more and not have to pay any overhead

Seriously dont expect them to do that. I have PDFs for virtually every GW book made and until they sell me a digital copy that doesnt suck then that'll be how I store them.

PS - I probably own more FW and codexs than most so spare me the ethical harping (Also I dont care) :p

Kanluwen wrote:

augustus5 wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Which is likely why they won't do it.

Why should they(or I, or anyone who buys the books) give a crap about the git who will only torrent the book having a crummy scan?

That's not my problem. Shell the money out for the book.

Neither you nor GW should care about people's crummy codex downloads, but that doesn't change the fact that GW is missing out on potential revenue by refusing to recognize that so many people no longer purchase hard copies of books of any kind.

Either way pirates will still pirate, and not all pirate PDFs are crummy, most are really well done by the way.

Do you really think that people would buy the books if suddenly they were available in an eBook format?

Yes

GW could release a slimed-down codex as an ebook, containing just the list and the rules, leaving all the nice gamer-porn for the real book. The ebook could be pretty cheap and would fill a different role from the real book. People could then have access to the rules on their ipads/smartphones. If you can't see the value in releasing something like this, then you're a relic. We live in a digital society, GW should move with the times. Releasing BL books as ebooks is a nice first step.

I believe that most people in my group would buy both books for the armies they play/are most interested in, and would buy only the ebook for other armies. Pretty much how it is now, people own many of the books and have them and all the others on their ipad, except now people are forced to piracy because of the lack of other options. Releasing codexes digitally would probably lessen piracy as long as the price was kept down.

guess who again... wrote:And I'll ignore your cheap shot at insisting that I have no argument to present. Your statement was that the poster I replied to "gave an example". He did not. Someone else did.
"A great many works" is not the same as "any and all". I can find legitimate, public domain works available online. Films like Romero's original "Night of the Living Dead", for example, is public domain...because the title slide and copyright information was not present in the theatrical distribution.

Of course you can find many public domain works online for download. What does that have to do with the fact that you can also find almost any non-public domain work online for pirated download as well?

It would be great and all, but I like having a library of armybooks, and all it takes is one bloke to pass around the pdf he just bought.

Well atleast they made a sale from 1 bloke instead of 0

Kirasu wrote:Well atleast they made a sale from 1 bloke instead of 0

Where do you think the army books that get scanned in come from?

Oh I know where they come from

Kanluwen wrote:
I have acquaintances who go out of their way to get everything "free", and I end up being the one puzzling out what specific file was a virus uploaded by some spanker who was trying to start a botnet.

They're doing it wrong then, ESPECIALLY if they're going out of their way.

A Black Ram wrote:It would be great and all, but I like having a library of armybooks, and all it takes is one bloke to pass around the pdf he just bought.

Invalid argument. There are already plenty of blokes passing around pdfs.

The segment that downloads pirate pdfs won't grow much. They are already available if you want them. If anything, some people who download pirate copies, like myself, would instead purchase them. I don't download them because I'm cheap, but because I like the convenience of having a digital copy. I don't want to have stacks of game books in my house. I don't buy paper books of any kind any more.

That always gets said, but then when push comes to shove nobody does it.

I love a thread of a bunch of people who steal codex books anyways saying, "Come on GW, make electronic versions you old fuddyduddies... it won't hurt your sales at all! Who knows? I might even pay for what I steal! (not really)"

I don't think I'd care for a digital format because I don't care for using digital readers. The codex I have doesn't heat up and I don't have to worry about the battery running down. And if the thing fell in the tub or whatever I wouldn't lose every book I've ever bought in my life.

But that's just me.

What would be REALLY hot would be if they sold digital content that automatically updated itself when new rules/errata became available. And I could see how players would enjoy having to carry less to the gamestore. It just isn't a big issue for me to carry my codex and pocket-sized rulebook. But sure, if you want all your rules for multiple systems and all your dexes/army books in one place, that would be nice. Also, my bookcase is groaning under the weight of my GW/WD collection. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad to consolodate it all into one PADD.

Kanluwen wrote:

proditorcappela wrote:@Kanluwen: Any and all. Yup, surprisingly there is a huge group willing to scan and edit the texts for redistribution. And no, not all of them are in e-reader format. Some are in word, some are in pdf. And almost all of them are convertible with 5 seconds of work with a freeware e-reader program called Calibre.

Examples of pirated works: Harry Potter, The Dresden Files. THE HORUS HERESY.

And as I said, ARE THEY THE ACTUAL WORKS. Please fething read if you're going to pick fights.

Seriously, you literally have no idea what you're talking about.

At all.
And as to me proving it to you, how do you suggest I do that? Do you want me to provide you with pirated work? Really?

I want you to prove to me that every single iteration of what you're claiming is actually what you're claiming it is. I have acquaintances who go out of their way to get everything "free", and I end up being the one puzzling out what specific file was a virus uploaded by some spanker who was trying to start a botnet.

A suggestion: Educate yourself instead and look at the hundreds of sites offering these books. No need to "buy", just look. It'll be an educational experience.

I'd rather not educate myself with an enterprise that I feel is full of scumsucking gits. Thanks.

Wow, ad hominem attacks.

Okay, point one, and I'll respond as I was responded to: Of course they are the actual you fething mouthbreathing slack-wit (Did I get the tone right?) You asked, I answered. Why in the name of all that's holy would I bother mentioning stuff that was not genuine? Maybe you should take your own advice and read for comprehension.

I'm going to reiterate: You have no idea what you're talking about. Not a clue. But feel free to yell and insult as it seems to be only thing you recognize as debate.

Further educational advice: Look up "Straw man", "Ad Hominem".

Back to everyone else: I'd love to have electronic version of the codexes because then I'd actually have the codexes. I've already stated I like the IP and I beleive you should support something you like so they, ya know, make more of it. But stating that the ONLY reason to not make pdf's or e-books would be to stem the waves of lost revue...

Prove it.

Get me some neutral figures on lost revenue due to the existance of pdf's and e-books. The RIAA is not neutral on pirating, neither is piratebay. Find something neutral that talks about how it's piracy and not e-media that is killing printed media. Find me something that details how every record label and film distributor went out of business by changing and adapting to digital media, and were thus so easy to pirate that they lost all of their income.

I already know you can't.

Not everyone who wants a digital format is looking for an easier way to pirate. I can hold 3500 books on my kindle, so why the hell would I want to actually carry any when I could have it on there? They digital format is also usually cheaper due to the lowered production costs which makes it attractive. iTunes did the same thing wiht the 99 cent song. This is simple stuff and you have years of examples on how to do it right.

Some people don't like to look at real world example...

A Black Ram wrote:It would be great and all, but I like having a library of armybooks, and all it takes is one bloke to pass around the pdf he just bought.

tbh, me too, but i would probably by a lot of them in a PDF/eBook format ... in addition to the actual books.

nkelsch wrote:I love a thread of a bunch of people who steal codex books anyways saying, "Come on GW, make electronic versions you old fuddyduddies... it won't hurt your sales at all! Who knows? I might even pay for what I steal! (not really)"

I could care less if GW decides to make digital copy or not. As I've mentioned before, if they did, I would purchase them. Since they do not, I choose to download someone else's scanned copy. Either way I'm not carrying around a bunch of books to the FLGS every week, and only purchase hard copy books for the armies I choose to play at tourneys.

FWIW. I hope they do make modified versions available for iPhones. In a choice between not having any reference for my opponent's codices, or paying $3 for a very simple version, I'd buy them for reference.

I have no interest in buying my opponent's codices in paper form because I'm not planning on carrying them to games anyways.

I have a Kindle. I just got it last week, and I will say it's convenient. I've got 4 books on there right now(a piece on the V-22 Osprey, Osprey Modeling book on scale armour that I wanted to pick up since it was so much cheaper[which was a HUGE mistake since it's black and white, and the pictures that are stage by stage are supposed to be in color], and two Old Republic novels), but I cannot say I would enjoy army books on there for anything outside of convenience.

However, like I said earlier, I don't see GW going to army books on eBooks or .PDF simply because people want it for convenience. They want their army books to be gorgeous pieces that draw people's eye in, not a huge chunk of words all over the place.

Kanluwen wrote:*Snipped*
However, like I said earlier, I don't see GW going to army books on eBooks or .PDF simply because people want it for convenience. They want their army books to be gorgeous pieces that draw people's eye in, not a huge chunk of words all over the place.

I can see that, and I think there's absolutely a place for that product.

But consider this...

You make a stripped down "army list" for lack of a better term, all rules, no fluff. Sell it at 15 bucks a pop and make it e-reader friendly. I can almost guaranteee that you'd have a ton downloading it for the ease of use during play. And also, as someone else suggested, so that you could see lists you don't collect.

Now why?

To sell more minis. 15 bucks is a good price point to suck people in to the game itself with a cool list and some neat rules. Even with the codex being a prestige piece for GW, they make the overwhelming share of their money when they sell minis, yes? So make it easier to buy in to the rules and it becmoes more attratcive to buy the armies.

I think it could be a great tool for them if they went with both a pdf and a e-reader version. (Maybe digitally sign the pdf so that if one does start making the rounds, you know who did it).

I would absolutely buy a pdf of a codex. I've been thinking recently of starting a blood angels force and was thinking literally just the other night how useful it would be to pop online and download a codex, instead of having to either go and physically buy one or wait for one to arrive by post. I'm going on holiday in a couple of days and so won't be able to get a copy of the codex for a couple of weeks. Had there been an online version, reasonably priced (I would have probably paid up to around £8-10ish) I would have bought it then and there and avoided the wait.

I might not be representative of the market as a whole however - I play the vast majority of games either at home or someone else's home, so no danger of someone walking off with my laptop etc. I'm also conscious of the fact that if I bought a pdf version, I may not then go and buy a hard copy. On the flip side though, I would probably buy more pdf codexes than I would hard copies.

Kirasu wrote:If GW was smart they would release digital codices for half the price (due to not having to print and ship or stock them ).. They would sell A LOT more and not have to pay any overhead

I just want to point something out. I work for a major publishing house and noticed people sugesting that the books might be cheeper than the paper counterparts. I'm afraid that this is not true. There is a very good reason for this. The unchangable cost of a book make up about 80-90% of the cost of a book. Content, editorial, admin etc. The rest is stuff is bits that can be lost. A book costs anywhere from 50p to £2 + to print (for basic softback books) depending on print quality, paper quality, colours etc. For GW i would guess it would be at the upper end of this, given the fact that they are low volume, high quality product with full colour pages. Distribution is around 5% for a very efficent publisher going up to 10%. given the low volumes but small distribution network i would guess around the middle for GW.

This gives about 20% of the cost reduction for electronic books. They do, however, have some extra costs. Most of which im not sure of, as it is not my area of the business. There is compatability testing, re type setting, and the like, each needing doing for every divice. Then, in the uk at least, books are vat free. Ebooks on the other hand have 20% VAT on them.

I just thought people would be interested in the facts about the costs of ebooks.

Paul wrote:I just thought people would be interested in the facts about the costs of ebooks.

Certainly am interested - I didn't realise the cost broke down that way. In that case, a pdf that cost close to hard-copy price is not something I'd be interested in.

@Paul: If they released a stripped down e-ink (No color, few pictures) version, would the costs still be as high? Becuase that might be the nail in the coffin right there.

1. The main rulebooks should be for purchase.

2. I think Codex/Army books should be free as PDFs. A tabletop game requiring several volumes to play is just silly and frankly a bit spiteful. I for one think it is important to know your opponents rules, as well as your own- players ought to have access to the rules to play the game they bought. I should be clear that its not necessarily an issue of expense from my viewpoint. I don't mind paying for army books, but I also hoard printed matter. I have a few old GW books that... gasp... have all the army lists in one volume.

The current system of releasing a new edition, and not updating many codices for years and years, being lapped by new editions, is terrible business and is cause for a great deal of the anger directed toward GW. I for one can't figure out why people continue to play a ruleset that would do that.

Games Workshop has stated many times that they are primarily a miniatures company, rules makers second.

PDF would be relatively easy to tweak on a regular basis adjusting rules, points values, adding new units as they're released, etc. Heck, even a once-a-year update would help GW balance armies better and make players feel like someone is at least thinking about their faction.

Yes, people like eye candy- and if GW wants White Dwarf to sell again that's what it could do-provide what a PDF does not.

On point 2, I'd say the bare rules (Special abilities, available wargear, statlines, etc.) should be free (or largly reduced in cost, like 50% or something), with the actual fluffy, pictures-included rulebook still being purchased seperate. That way, you can read about all the awesome fluff for your SW/Nids/IG/whatever, but still know if your opponent is misinterpreting the rules for JotWW or some similar codex-only special rule.

Put plainly, it's damn stupid that I'd have to buy a full-price rulebook for an army I'll never pick up and play, simply so I can see what a certain ability or unit does. It's like buying the Lord of the Rings books, but having to pay an additional $15 to find out what happens to Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimili.

Ebooks on the other hand have 20% VAT on them.

Ouch

I still think Army Lists would be a good idea - most hobbyists are collectors anyway so would want to buy the books - especially if they're pretty . For those who know the fluff and colour schemes etc (or simply don't care for background) then I can see them being popular. Piracy is inevitable - and most people would rather make a down-payment on high quality material. They could still make some money instead of not making any from the inevitability of piracy (and the many people who would use such dirty, underhand, unethical methods - isn't that right bruv? ). It could be a subscriber's thing - people would pay and it's easy enough to set up with Paypal. They might get people into new armies that way more easily too...

Either that or they could just print army list entries/stat cards with their boxes or as a part of the instructions, all stats are avilable for free anyway with the reference sheets.

proditorcappela wrote:@Paul: If they released a stripped down e-ink (No color, few pictures) version, would the costs still be as high? Becuase that might be the nail in the coffin right there.

Probably higher. The removal of the pictures would meen the book going all the way back to the production editors and type setters to totaly re-jig the format.

What i must admit is those costs are based on a book being made as a print book then re-worked. I would guess that there might be a small saveing if you were to edit a book with e publishing in mind right from the start, but i would guess ( as i said i don't work on that side) that it would be 5% ish.

Having said all of that there is no reason that they could not write a book for electronic and print from the start and bundle them up as a single print and ebook offer for the same price ( the editoral bit is a one off cost and you still sell the one copy to one customer effectivly, and you give sell it as a buy the print get the ebook free to avoid the tax). That is something that i would pay a little more(£1-£2 for).


Automatically Appended Next Post:

warspawned wrote:

Ebooks on the other hand have 20% VAT on them.

Ouch

The publishers association are fighting against it, but i can't see anything changing until ebooks become more widely read. Until then the government will keep saying that it is a waste of time changing the rules for a middle class toy, and that the people with ebook readers can afford it.

My Kindle and IPhone currently have: all the GW FAQs for all systems, all the Mantic rules and army lists, rules from at least two other systems (Hell Dorado and either Malifaux or Infinity) and all the downloads for BFG on it.

PDF army lists would be most appreciated.

There are a variety of reasons I barely play GW these days, this is definitely one of them.

I don't think GW should sell pdf or e-book versions of the rules whether codex, army book, supplement or main rule book.

I think they should give them away for free.

They should update them regularly and make them available for download the way they're doing for the FAQs. The only way they should sell them would be as print-on-demand.

Occasionally when the masses complain about the shoddy state of rules for the core games, GW will come out and say that, well, they're not really a game company, they're a miniatures company. They should follow through on that idea and just give us the rules. We all know the rules only exist in order to sell the models, but in the current business model the rules are a barrier to entry. They know that. That's why they put a small rulebook in the starter sets. The starter sets would never sell to a newbie if he had to buy a $58 book in order to use his $99 set.

I think downloadable rules would make the game better. They could update the rules, incorporating clarifications as needed. The old BA codex, for all its faults, was actually updated for 5th edition. Imagine if they did that for every codex instead of leaving them to languish for a decade before their time to come for a big release.

I know it will never happen because GW are a stodgy company with a fossilized business model. If they could charge you for the air in a GW store they would.

Yeah, this would really be nice. I personally would take free (Or significantly cheaper, 50-75% or whatever) rules and codexes in a heartbeat, even if they were so fluff-free that they read like a technical manual. Fluff is nice, and giving us fluff is nice, but I'd personally prefer the option of fluff in my rules, rather then pay full-price for a great deal of fluff every time.

If I wanted fluff, I'd just get more BL books...

Just cause I'm not familiar with the whole eBook scene. Could the Powers-That-Be offer rules updates (in the form of Rulebook V2.01) that could be redownloaded to your eBook so you'd have the most recent set of rules?

Also don't eBooks have bookmarking features so you could back and forth to particular places you used a bunch?

I think that if most recent rules updates were offered with an electronic purchase of the rules, that would be a huge selling point. GW needs to get with the future.

Yes, subscription based license, $50 a year for access to all books, be it codex, army book, core rules, etc (with out the fluff) via a DRM'd app that will be licensed to expire every year. You get all updates that year for the price of the app $50, and you must renew it. This is a business model that will generate GW constant revenue, and to be honest, $50 a year for 40K and Fantasy rules and army books in ebook format, would be a good deal. I'd buy it.

They can charge $100 if you want all the fluff painting guides, and so forth. Have it licensed to that owner and that app, so it cannot be copied. If you price it at $50 a year you will encourage people to just buy it, and have the app auto-update the books with the FAQs, and perhaps have an option to send user feed back to GW. Sure, some people may still pirate the scanned ebooks, but look at the Kindle, it is not like piracy put it out of business.

They need to make it affordable, and they can cut out a lot of the fluff, and painting and modeling articles and keep those in the books, to differentiate the product. Make it subscription based to gain access to all books for all games. Otherwise, people may buy one or two, but end up pirating the rest. DRM will happen, even though I hate it, but it will happen.

When you make something of value that people want to purchase from you... you can totally assume all the risk by using what ever delivery model you feel is best for your business model.

I love when people want some other business to assume all the risk based upon their personal opinions on how media and business should work... especially when these people are the ones who pirate things.

I am not convinced GW's current model is bad or failing, and I am not convinced it would be fincacially enhanced from a buisness point of view with electronic delivery.

Would it be nicer for entitled selfish gamers who steal everything anyways? yes! But GW's primary goal is not spreading information as fast and as easy as possible... it is to sell copyrighted materials to a very small and focused customer base.

Personally, Wargaming is a very tactile hobby and I want physical books. You also got to realize a severe majority fo the actual target audience is not sitting at a wargaming table with a 500$ tablet device or Iphone... they are kids and teens. I am not convinced that the attitudes of people on Dakka are even close to reflecting the majority of how people use GW products.

As for the people who simply want free rules and Living rule books... You just don't want to pay for things and anything that moves away from you paying money you will support, even if it breaks great financial harm to GW. I don't respect your opinion or business advice when it is motivated by that motivation. If you feel it is the way to go... then make your own rules and release them for free as a LRB on electronic format.

Arschbombe wrote:The starter sets would never sell to a newbie if he had to buy a $58 book in order to use his $99 set.

+ a codex ($25-30?). You're getting close to the cost of the $99 set just with the books.

I like what Corvus Belli are doing with Infinity. All rules, lists (minus fluff and art) and markers are available for free download. You download all the rules and play a game of Infinity using your existing 28 mm models from another company. You like the game and decide to buy an Infinity army (seems to be how a lot of people get into that game).

I know you can't apply that same reasoning to GW since their games and products usually are a big gateway for new players (in other words,you probably don't have a squad of models soldiers to play with as a newbie). As a gateway game though, it would make it easier to start if it required less of an initial investment.

Arschbombe wrote:I think downloadable rules would make the game better. They could update the rules, incorporating clarifications as needed. The old BA codex, for all its faults, was actually updated for 5th edition. Imagine if they did that for every codex instead of leaving them to languish for a decade before their time to come for a big release.

They do release erratas and FAQs every once in a while, but not often enough it seems. I'm not sure the frequency of updates would change much were they to switch over to e-formats. It would still take some time and effort for someone to sit down and write the clarifications (costs money).

nkelsch wrote:As for the people who simply want free rules and Living rule books... You just don't want to pay for things and anything that moves away from you paying money you will support, even if it breaks great financial harm to GW. I don't respect your opinion or business advice when it is motivated by that motivation. If you feel it is the way to go... then make your own rules and release them for free as a LRB on electronic format.

Release our own LRB? I could go and write my own version of the Bible, but I doubt I'd be able to convince many people to follow what I write in there...
Similar problem with GW, when you have a hobby that is saturated by product from a single source. Dakka's proposed rules is filled with codex ideas, but how many of those people actually play with their rules at their flgs or club? I would suspect the number is fairly small if any.

Plus, who says teens and kids want the fluff?

Give them the option of the more expensive rulebook/pdf/stone tablet with the fluff, painting, and rules, and offer a cheaper rulebook/pdf/stone tablet with just the rules. GW has a very high entry barrier in terms of cost, and I believe (imo, which you apprently don't respect...) that reducing the initial cost to enter the hobby would benefit GW in terms of gamers who will then enter the hobby and continue to buy their material.

darkPrince010 wrote:

nkelsch wrote:As for the people who simply want free rules and Living rule books... You just don't want to pay for things and anything that moves away from you paying money you will support, even if it breaks great financial harm to GW. I don't respect your opinion or business advice when it is motivated by that motivation. If you feel it is the way to go... then make your own rules and release them for free as a LRB on electronic format.

Release our own LRB? I could go and write my own version of the Bible, but I doubt I'd be able to convince many people to follow what I write in there...
Similar problem with GW, when you have a hobby that is saturated by product from a single source. Dakka's proposed rules is filled with codex ideas, but how many of those people actually play with their rules at their flgs or club? I would suspect the number is fairly small if any.

Plus, who says teens and kids want the fluff?

Give them the option of the more expensive rulebook/pdf/stone tablet with the fluff, painting, and rules, and offer a cheaper rulebook/pdf/stone tablet with just the rules. GW has a very high entry barrier in terms of cost, and I believe (imo, which you apprently don't respect...) that reducing the initial cost to enter the hobby would benefit GW in terms of gamers who will then enter the hobby and continue to buy their material.

And you can totally throw the business model of *YOUR* company on its ear and assume the risk *YOURSELF*.

It doesn't seem broke right now... I can't see a business case where it would actually increase profits. This seems like a change that gamers want solely based upon the good will and possible income it MIGHT generate in other aspects of the hobby. I see no evidence that cost of entry is actually impacting GW, that GW actually is losing sales for codex costs and no evidence that people prefer rules only and dislike the fluff or format of the codexes. It may be true, but I wouldn't risk my business based upon such assertions without research by actual people who know what they are talking about. I guarantee GW has a lot more qualified people than random dudes on the internet who don't anything and have no business skills whatsoever except of that of being an entitled customer.

Just people stating their personal wants as the hands down 'truth' of how the customerbase thinks and wanting GW to make a massive shift, possibly a damaging one to please people who are admittedly not actual customers of the codexes in the first place.

I see lots of flaws with that line of thought and don't really respect it.

nkelsch wrote:I guarantee GW has a lot more qualified people than random dudes on the internet who don't anything and have no business skills whatsoever except of that of being an entitled customer.

A company of GW's size? No chance. There are a higher number of qualified people posting in either the Dakka or Warseer topics on their latest results than a company of GW's size can afford to employ.

nkelsch wrote:When you make something of value that people want to purchase from you... you can totally assume all the risk by using what ever delivery model you feel is best for your business model.

And some businesses keep up with the changing times. The music industry started fighting piracy by offering digital downloads and it saved them from collapse.

I love when people want some other business to assume all the risk based upon their personal opinions on how media and business should work... especially when these people are the ones who pirate things.

Why do you love this?

I am not convinced GW's current model is bad or failing, and I am not convinced it would be fincacially enhanced from a buisness point of view with electronic delivery.

The current model isn't bad or failing. It doesn't have to be. They might expand their business by offering digital downloads of their game books. It works well for their BL books.

Would it be nicer for entitled selfish gamers who steal everything anyways? yes! But GW's primary goal is not spreading information as fast and as easy as possible... it is to sell copyrighted materials to a very small and focused customer base.

There would be fewer people sharing scanned copies if digital copies were available, if what happened with the music business is any indication. Would it be nicer for entitled, arrogant fanboys who always troll threads like this? No, they would have to vent their nerd rage elsewhere.

Personally, Wargaming is a very tactile hobby and I want physical books. You also got to realize a severe majority fo the actual target audience is not sitting at a wargaming table with a 500$ tablet device or Iphone... they are kids and teens. I am not convinced that the attitudes of people on Dakka are even close to reflecting the majority of how people use GW products.

Don't worry, you can touch and hold your paper books all you want; we'll even give you a little privacy with them if you choose. We aren't suggesting that GW cease selling paper books, but rather that they sell both hard and digital copy, perhaps bundling the two together.

As for the people who simply want free rules and Living rule books... You just don't want to pay for things and anything that moves away from you paying money you will support, even if it breaks great financial harm to GW. I don't respect your opinion or business advice when it is motivated by that motivation. If you feel it is the way to go... then make your own rules and release them for free as a LRB on electronic format.

I'd love to have a living rulebook. Who wouldn't? If GW can't produce well-written rules through their current system, why not address this with monthly updates? You say this will cause great financial harm to GW. How exactly? I don't respect your opinion or business advice when it sounds like it's coming from a whipped fanboy.

nkelsch wrote:I wouldn't risk my business based upon such assertions without research by actual people who know what they are talking about. I guarantee GW has a lot more qualified people than random dudes on the internet who don't anything and have no business skills whatsoever except of that of being an entitled customer.

*snip*

I see lots of flaws with that line of thought and don't really respect it.

I'm sorry, your Phd in Business Marketing you assume to have automatically makes my opinion inferior. I should have known better

Seriously though, GW has been losing sales in the US, UK, and Australia (From their most recent report, showing ~5% sales drops in all but Australia, which is more around 11%), and while this may be a part of the recession, they are still attempting to sell high cost "luxury" items at high costs during a financial downturn.

While their entire company is built around selling said luxury items, it seems fairly logical (To me, at least. Dunno what your Phd says about it though ) that lowering the initial cost of entry (Note I didn't say make everything cheaper. Just make the bare essentials to joining the hobby cheaper) seems like it would allow for more people to enter the hobby, and proceed to purchase other GW products, giving them the revenue they need and want.

Does everyone who plays GW games hate the costs for products? Probably not. Is everyone who considers entering the hobby restricted by prices? Again, probably not. However, GW relies on both an influx of product bought by existing gamers (Served by new codex and model releases) as well as encouraging new gamers to enter the hobby and purchase product. As has been stated before on this and other threads, children rarely have their own revenue stream, and instead rely on parents to purchase high-cost items like this.

This is part of why (imo, which you probably still don't respect ) CCGs like MtG and Pokemon are so popular; Entry into the game is the cost of a single pack of cards. Sure, your deck may not be very good, competitive, or powerful, but the initial investment is small enough to encourage the entry into the game. While GW does operate differently in that they cannot sell their product for that low of a cost, they can learn from their example of using a low-cost entry product to entice new gamers.

$15-20 for a playable GW product (Similar to a MtG boxed set), which is within the $20 impulse purchase range, is nessesary, since the current $30-35 for a box set of models (Even more for AoBR or IoB) is outside of the impulse purchase range of many people. Factor into this nearly $100 in rulebooks to simply play with your $35 models, and perhaps you can understand why some poeple on this thread seem to think cheaper rulebook options (To say the least) would improve GW's gamer base and financial outlook.

augustus5 wrote:I'd love to have a living rulebook. Who wouldn't? If GW can't produce well-written rules through their current system, why not address this with monthly updates? You say this will cause great financial harm to GW. How exactly? I don't respect your opinion or business advice when it sounds like it's coming from a whipped fanboy.

I don't buy it. This is just another 'I hate GW and want free stuff because I gonna pirate it!' thread. Digital media distribution is not as easy and simple as everyone thinks it is... Go google the fight between Amazon and Apple over Kindle iapp in-app delivery. Apple only makes money when you make an IN-APP purchase. Amazon was sending people to a browser to make web-based purchases to their account where Apple made ZERO money. Apple shut Amazon down because of it. Digital media delivery methods are way more complicated than morons on a forum know and if a small company doesn't have the skills or tools to compete in that forum, especially when there is no immediate need to enter that market... why accept the risks? You also have to remember, if the APP stores of the devices are taking upwards of 30% of your digital download profits, you either have to reach more customers or raise prices. GW can't expand as they are not selling media for the sake of media, these publications have a VERY limited use and audience... and this same audience is going to be the first to say "i won't pay more than 1.99$ for this! GW is evil!"

Every online community is the same... they are entitled, stupid and want unreasonable things. They think it is as easy as hitting 'print' on a computer and making a PDF and all of a sudden you have a complete digital distribution business model and somehow the same amount of money will flow in to your bank account from customers... right? isn't that how it works? Post a PDF on your website and you still sell the same amount of everything? I would never expect a buisness to make decisions based upon the common unvetted business advice of an online community... that is madness.

No, it is not how it works. If GW is not equipped to handle digital distribution, and there is not a pressing need, then they shouldn't even gamble. I think they are smart with starting with actual books where people actually intend to read 100% of the words in the copyrighted publication. Once they feel comfortable with how to sell their publications electronically through Black Library, then maybe they will make the shift for rules... but I would say that is even a year or two before they should even attempt it. And they may find their customer base is less technically driven than you guys think it is and find it is not a profitable or even beneficial addition to their business and dump digital downloads all together. Caution is much more reasonable than "free PEE DEE EFFS ON THE ITNERNET FOR CUSTOMERZ WHO DON'T BUY THINGS ANYZWAYZ"

nkelsch wrote:

augustus5 wrote:I'd love to have a living rulebook. Who wouldn't? If GW can't produce well-written rules through their current system, why not address this with monthly updates? You say this will cause great financial harm to GW. How exactly? I don't respect your opinion or business advice when it sounds like it's coming from a whipped fanboy.

I don't buy it. This is just another 'I hate GW and want free stuff because I gonna pirate it!' thread. Digital media distribution is not as easy and simple as everyone thinks it is... Go google the fight between Amazon and Apple over Kindle iapp in-app delivery. Apple only makes money when you make an IN-APP purchase. Amazon was sending people to a browser to make web-based purchases to their account where Apple made ZERO money. Apple shut Amazon down because of it. Digital media delivery methods are way more complicated than morons on a forum know and if a small company doesn't have the skills or tools to compete in that forum, especially when there is no immediate need to enter that market... why accept the risks? You also have to remember, if the APP stores of the devices are taking upwards of 30% of your digital download profits, you either have to reach more customers or raise prices. GW can't expand as they are not selling media for the sake of media, these publications have a VERY limited use and audience... and this same audience is going to be the first to say "i won't pay more than 1.99$ for this! GW is evil!"

Every online community is the same... they are entitled, stupid and want unreasonable things. They think it is as easy as hitting 'print' on a computer and making a PDF and all of a sudden you have a complete digital distribution business model and somehow the same amount of money will flow in to your bank account from customers... right? isn't that how it works? Post a PDF on your website and you still sell the same amount of everything? I would never expect a buisness to make decisions based upon the common unvetted business advice of an online community... that is madness.

No, it is not how it works. If GW is not equipped to handle digital distribution, and there is not a pressing need, then they shouldn't even gamble. I think they are smart with starting with actual books where people actually intend to read 100% of the words in the copyrighted publication. Once they feel comfortable with how to sell their publications electronically through Black Library, then maybe they will make the shift for rules... but I would say that is even a year or two before they should even attempt it. And they may find their customer base is less technically driven than you guys think it is and find it is not a profitable or even beneficial addition to their business and dump digital downloads all together. Caution is much more reasonable than "free PEE DEE EFFS ON THE ITNERNET FOR CUSTOMERZ WHO DON'T BUY THINGS ANYZWAYZ"

You really have a very high opinion of yourself and a very low opinion of the wargaming community as a whole. Were you an only child? Or is that just my entitled, stupid and unreasonable opinion?

Also: http://9to5mac.com/2011/07/25/amazon-brings-kindle-newspapers-and-magazines-to-ios-devices/#more-85067
and: http://9to5mac.com/2011/07/25/google-relents-to-apple-removes-store-link-from-google-books-app/#more-85143

@Nkelsch: Apparently, a certain person doesn't read very carfeully...

Pdfs are not nessesarily going to be cheap to make. Simply not true, unless they simply cut the binding and scan the books (and that's already online...).

However, making said pdf, and offering it as a cheaper option will encourage people to enter the hobby, become interested in it, and buy the fluffy rulebook and expensive models.

Also, before you attempt to hand-wave this arguement or condescend on the ideas (not set-in-stone business practices to be implemented in two days, ideas), please state any and all qualifications younhave to make your judgements, as you seem to assume an air of superiority that, as of yet, you have not demonstrated any reason for us to believe exists. I personally am a college student studying Biology, with a single course in 100-level economics and 21 years of life experience. What about you?

Toodles!

<broadcast mode active: stay on topic, folks, and try to avoid insulting generalizations; discuss the argument, and not the people making it>

MightyGodzilla wrote:Just cause I'm not familiar with the whole eBook scene. Could the Powers-That-Be offer rules updates (in the form of Rulebook V2.01) that could be redownloaded to your eBook so you'd have the most recent set of rules?

Yes. Sellers like Drive Through RPG offer regular (technically limited, but effectively unlimited) access to your files as well. It is a manual process, but that depends on the format selected.

MightyGodzilla wrote:
Also don't eBooks have bookmarking features so you could back and forth to particular places you used a bunch?

Most do. 'eBook' is a blanket term for a bunch of tech and file formats. Most readers (Kindle, nook, iBooks, etc.) support a number of formats that are basically methods of displaying an augmented text stream. What this means is that the reader application handles pagination and such. This is good for reading as it means that a reader can reformat the text stream easily for a smart phone (small display) or tablet (large display) but you lsoe relaible page numbering and similar. Most do support some extra features for special typography and things like tables. A GW-style Codex could be stripped down for this, but it might not be easy.

Other 'eBooks' are in Adobe's PDF format. PDF is more page-focused, which has advantages and disadvantages. Since it's page-formatted a Codex (for example) would effectively look the same. However, it may be hard to read on a smaller device. Android and iOS both have PDF viewers with features to assist with this, but they aren't perfect, and you generally need a lot of scrolling. I've read books on my iPod touch. I don't think I could read a rulebook, but I do use them for reference.

Both of the abofe families of formats offer a ton of potential features. Hotlinked tables of contents, bookmarks, links to web content, etc.

MightyGodzilla wrote:
I think that if most recent rules updates were offered with an electronic purchase of the rules, that would be a huge selling point. GW needs to get with the future.

It's not an easy issue. The bad side is that the printed books become a 'premium' version, but aren't updated and can't be updated economically... Still, the PDF is great for minor updates like typo fixes.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Crom wrote:Yes, subscription based license, $50 a year for access to all books, be it codex, army book, core rules, etc (with out the fluff) via a DRM'd app that will be licensed to expire every year. You get all updates that year for the price of the app $50, and you must renew it. This is a business model that will generate GW constant revenue, and to be honest, $50 a year for 40K and Fantasy rules and army books in ebook format, would be a good deal. I'd buy it.

They can charge $100 if you want all the fluff painting guides, and so forth. Have it licensed to that owner and that app, so it cannot be copied. If you price it at $50 a year you will encourage people to just buy it, and have the app auto-update the books with the FAQs, and perhaps have an option to send user feed back to GW. Sure, some people may still pirate the scanned ebooks, but look at the Kindle, it is not like piracy put it out of business.

They need to make it affordable, and they can cut out a lot of the fluff, and painting and modeling articles and keep those in the books, to differentiate the product. Make it subscription based to gain access to all books for all games. Otherwise, people may buy one or two, but end up pirating the rest. DRM will happen, even though I hate it, but it will happen.

I would rather GW not do an app as they tend to be short-sighted in such things. Remember their army construction software? An app would likely lag behind computer technology on the best case scenario, which segments their market. The web and PDFs are cross-platform and likely to be supported for quite a while.

Which is not to say your idea doesn't have some merit. Charging a fee for 'premium' access to stuff would be a good compromise. Offer al-a-carte sales for $15/book, or a subscription for $50/year which also includes goodies like back issues of White Dwarf (older issues), occasional discounts on ordering printed versions and maybe some other fun stuff. GW 'wins' if you subscribe and would only pay for three or less army books a year ($45 cost) individual price.

Done right, it would be indispensable for 'serious' players.

However, DRM being cracked is pretty much a certainty. The best 'DRM' schemes tend to be the ones that actually benefit the consumers. Take the Steam gaming system, for example. Sure, it validates my account every time I run a game, but I get a lot of neat stuff in return like the ability to store saves in the cloud, open access to my game library, etc. For another example, look at Drive Through RPG: They watermark as their primary DRM (so every PDF I download has my name and order # on it) but they offer a library of past purchases and updates.

Of course they should.

One only need look at places like DriveThruRPG.com and companies like Catalyst Game Labs to see how this works. Catalyst has entire (highly successful) product lines that are only availalbe as PDF releases, and all of their big releases come out in PDF before they come out in print format.

Hell... I haven't bought a print format BattleTech book in years. Everything I have now is PDF.

There's a guy in our group who doesn't own a single hardcopy version of any of FFG's 40K RPG books. He does own every book in PDF though, bought via DriveThruRPG.


A couple of interesting studies recently showed that those that pirated movies/DVDs/music often ended up buying more of said products than those that didn't. You won't hear much about these reports as they were commissioned by those that wanted to show how piracy affects them badly... except when the results showed the opposite the studies were abandoned.

GW should be releasing PDF's for their Codices. In the world of things like the iPad and other tablets, having electronic books is a very good thing. We've actually used a pair of iPads and a Laptop when playing Dark Heresy/Deathwatch, and it makes things so much quicker.

I would rather GW not do an app as they tend to be short-sighted in such things. Remember their army construction software? An app would likely lag behind computer technology on the best case scenario, which segments their market. The web and PDFs are cross-platform and likely to be supported for quite a while.

Which is not to say your idea doesn't have some merit. Charging a fee for 'premium' access to stuff would be a good compromise. Offer al-a-carte sales for $15/book, or a subscription for $50/year which also includes goodies like back issues of White Dwarf (older issues), occasional discounts on ordering printed versions and maybe some other fun stuff. GW 'wins' if you subscribe and would only pay for three or less army books a year ($45 cost) individual price.

Done right, it would be indispensable for 'serious' players.

However, DRM being cracked is pretty much a certainty. The best 'DRM' schemes tend to be the ones that actually benefit the consumers. Take the Steam gaming system, for example. Sure, it validates my account every time I run a game, but I get a lot of neat stuff in return like the ability to store saves in the cloud, open access to my game library, etc. For another example, look at Drive Through RPG: They watermark as their primary DRM (so every PDF I download has my name and order # on it) but they offer a library of past purchases and updates.

App itself would only be for license authentication, via the subscription. Otherwise all content would come in indexed PDF files. So they are search-able for keywords. No more flipping through the rule book, instead do a key word search. Of course you hire a developer to write a framework in say C++ and then use things like python or what not to add functionality, and it would work in every OS. Windows, OS X, Linux/Unix, Android, and iOS since those are open standards. They could go to a company that already writes publishing apps for amazon, the Mac App store, and so forth and have them tailor one for them. There is no reason they should reinvent the wheel.

This way you can have a subscription license of $50 a year (which is reasonable) and it would encourage people to not pirate it, and they'd be making $50 a year, per a person. The players that only ever play one army because they don't want to buy all the army books to read the rules to see if they 'may' like the army in question won't have to pirate the product. They already paid for it.

Subscription license at a really fair price is where it is at. This way GW has a steady stream of income yearly from this, and there is very little over head. In fact, if they sell it on amazon's and Apple's app stores the over head is even smaller.

The only thing that has me wondering on the prices, is Paizo. They do massive hard covers of greater quality than a GW book (Hard cover, all color, hundreds of pages, tons more art) and they release their pdf's for roughly a quarter the price of the hardcover. Now maybe as Paul said, they were designed that way from the get-go, but it seems that again, someone already has shown the way, and you could take a few notes on how to do it.

They also can do a 256 full color hardcover for under 40 bucks a pop, so it's also probably a question of scale.

Ultimate magic provided for reference: http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/v5748btpy8k8r

I'd think if you designed the book that way from the start, you could break it out at a three tiered price scheme and still get some good traffic. So Hard cover for those who like to have the book to peruse at their leisure. PDF for those who want electronic and easier portability, and the no frills e-reader version (Which could just be not in color, I've sen plenty of e-books with art) for those who only really want a handy reference on a cheap platform.

proditorcappela wrote:The only thing that has me wondering on the prices, is Paizo. They do massive hard covers of greater quality than a GW book (Hard cover, all color, hundreds of pages, tons more art) and they release their pdf's for roughly a quarter the price of the hardcover. Now maybe as Paul said, they were designed that way from the get-go, but it seems that again, someone already has shown the way, and you could take a few notes on how to do it.

They also can do a 256 full color hardcover for under 40 bucks a pop, so it's also probably a question of scale.

Ultimate magic provided for reference: http://paizo.com/pathfinderRPG/v5748btpy8k8r

I'd think if you designed the book that way from the start, you could break it out at a three tiered price scheme and still get some good traffic. So Hard cover for those who like to have the book to peruse at their leisure. PDF for those who want electronic and easier portability, and the no frills e-reader version (Which could just be not in color, I've sen plenty of e-books with art) for those who only really want a handy reference on a cheap platform.

The books are already being designed in publishing software. All they would have to do is output their books into a digital format like PDF. Adobe InDesign already does this. I had to create some technical how to documents at work so I installed InDesign and imported all my text files, dragged pictures on the pages, arranged it all in a coherent manner and exported it to a PDF.

Publishing apps already have these things built in. They can scale images, compress files and so forth. However, to be honest, to differentiate the products, I would suggest that GW only put the core rules, and the army rules in the digital versions and leave a lot of the art and fluff out. That way the printed versions are a different product, and the digital ones can more justifiably be a lot cheaper.

nkelsch wrote:
I don't buy it. This is just another 'I hate GW and want free stuff because I gonna pirate it!' thread. Digital media distribution is not as easy and simple as everyone thinks it is... Go google the fight between Amazon and Apple over Kindle iapp in-app delivery. Apple only makes money when you make an IN-APP purchase. Amazon was sending people to a browser to make web-based purchases to their account where Apple made ZERO money. Apple shut Amazon down because of it. Digital media delivery methods are way more complicated than morons on a forum know and if a small company doesn't have the skills or tools to compete in that forum, especially when there is no immediate need to enter that market... why accept the risks? You also have to remember, if the APP stores of the devices are taking upwards of 30% of your digital download profits, you either have to reach more customers or raise prices. GW can't expand as they are not selling media for the sake of media, these publications have a VERY limited use and audience... and this same audience is going to be the first to say "i won't pay more than 1.99$ for this! GW is evil!"

...thanks for judging me? I assume the whole 'I hate GW and want free stuff because I gonna pirate it!' thing is aimed at me, since I'm the topic starter - even though I very carefully pointed out I don't, infact, like piracy. But hey, here was me thinking of a way that GW might be able to please some of the people and make some money. Silly me. I mean, sure, if I was in the mood for free stuff I could go, right now, to various sites and download all those silly books I bought...wow. Kinda insulted by this one.

I simply wanted to know what people think. Given how shocked GW seem that selling stuff from the Black Library (which, given your comments, I must assume is a terrible idea on there part and isn't making them anything, despite there claims it's working out fairly well) it seems like a logical next step, especially given how much the Army Books cost now. And yes, I like a copy of them all. I've got a copy of them up until the latest Orcs and Goblins book, where I finally stopped because they were getting too pricey for armies I don't play...or in the case of the Grey Knights, I just wanna punch Matt Ward, but never mind. And while I play a lot of armies, most of them I simply buy to read up on, and find out about opponents armies.

A lot of companies I deal with do a lot of PDF stuff - Paizo, the people behind Pathfinder, often bundle a PDF when you buy one of there books. Apparently they're making a hefty sack of cash. They sell this stuff from there own store, too. Now, we know GW can you make a webstore. We also know GW can handle putting PDF's on there. The two shouldn't be too difficult to combine into one thing - which means bar the cost of hosting, getting it into a PDF format such as they did with the free PDF's codexes like the Witch Hunters and Daemonhunters it's pure profit. No printing costs.

nkelsch wrote:
Every online community is the same... they are entitled, stupid and want unreasonable things. They think it is as easy as hitting 'print' on a computer and making a PDF and all of a sudden you have a complete digital distribution business model and somehow the same amount of money will flow in to your bank account from customers... right? isn't that how it works? Post a PDF on your website and you still sell the same amount of everything? I would never expect a buisness to make decisions based upon the common unvetted business advice of an online community... that is madness.

No, it is not how it works. If GW is not equipped to handle digital distribution, and there is not a pressing need, then they shouldn't even gamble. I think they are smart with starting with actual books where people actually intend to read 100% of the words in the copyrighted publication. Once they feel comfortable with how to sell their publications electronically through Black Library, then maybe they will make the shift for rules... but I would say that is even a year or two before they should even attempt it. And they may find their customer base is less technically driven than you guys think it is and find it is not a profitable or even beneficial addition to their business and dump digital downloads all together. Caution is much more reasonable than "free PEE DEE EFFS ON THE ITNERNET FOR CUSTOMERZ WHO DON'T BUY THINGS ANYZWAYZ"

They may not to take this particular risk, but they gamble all the time - every time they release new models, new codexes, new anything. They put the time and money into setting the stuff off, and if it fails? They aren't seeing that money again. Now, I'm not, despite your slightly irritating claim, demanding free stuff. What I'm suggesting is that GW use a format it's already familiar with, as seen several times with there own codexes that they put online (which I seem to recall hearing is the rumour for the Sister's codex too, but never mind) and a webstore they already own to make yet more profit off a product they're going to sell anyway. The risks are minimal - we storage space isn't going to bother GW, since they do host these things on occasion, and they do it for free. As long as it isn't edited from the original codex, the costs of turning it into a PDF, assuming it's not developed as one, are minimal.

So GW takes a small risk, and possibly makes money off it. I'm not saying it's guaranteed. The folks who download the PDF's might get hold of it, and use it - but they'd get hold of a copy of some kind anyway, and use that. At worst, GW has provided them with a slightly better looking copy. Oh no! Some people might, however, fork over a few pounds or dollars to take a peek at another army, maybe if they're thinking about buying a new one and wanna check out the rules. With tiny over heads each one makes a fair whack of profit. GW wins. And people like me, who wanna own all the books but don't wanna fork over that much cash, win as well instead of having the current choice - pay GW a price you don't agree with for a book you won't use much, or torrent it for free.

Really not seeing a downside, myself.

I stopped playing for a long time because my books we either wrecked by a kid that decided to touch without asking, and in the last case/straw my rulebook was stolen...
Would I rather have a copy of the rules I don't care about/can take notes in freely.

Yes Please.
Am I willing to spend $70 again on a new rule book? Nope.

Side note on the gambling angle: Sort of like they did with Dark Eldar? Sure, everyone loves them now, but there was an awful lot of "They're wasting their time on what now?" when the rumors started coming out.

I'd argue that that a failed mini army is a MUCH bigger gamble than digital media, especially for a company whose stated purpose in life is to sell miniatures.

Kanluwen wrote:

However, like I said earlier, I don't see GW going to army books on eBooks or .PDF simply because people want it for convenience. They want their army books to be gorgeous pieces that draw people's eye in, not a huge chunk of words all over the place.

Actually from a old skool pre press prodcution worker, the other possible additional reason for the hard copy codexes/rule book is to make it more difficult to make a good scan of the product in question by the average person. Only the hard core are going to cut the spine's off of the book to digitally scan it to make it a PDF. The rest of us is not going to bother with it. Then you have also to deal with the watermarks, type and quality of paper (and so on) that can also influence a good scan copy.

The Kan wrote:They want their army books to be gorgeous pieces that draw people's eye in, not a huge chunk of words all over the place.

Ok, you're going to have to explain what you mean by this.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

The Kan wrote:They want their army books to be gorgeous pieces that draw people's eye in, not a huge chunk of words all over the place.

Ok, you're going to have to explain what you mean by this.

I'm just starting to use a Kindle that I got for my birthday so bear with me.

It seems to be absolutely terrible at anything that isn't a novel. If they did brief summations, I can see it working well in that format.

But I can't see them doing that. They like their artwork too much.

Ok... well... we have plenty of FFG 40K RPG PDF's (acronym overload!) and they look 100% exactly like the books - same artwork, page layouts, everything!

They needn't be done in 'kindle' or 'nook' format. PDF's is perfectly fine and readable by most things.

PDF's would be better, if they were to do them with the entire layout.

If they were going to do something for 'convenience', I could see a cutdown thing like the Summary page in the back of the army books now.

I'm not quite sure why you're talking about 'convenience'.

I'm talking about releasing the books, as is, via PDF release through their webstore. It's something that works for quite a few other companies, and it can work for GW.

I believe GW should release books as PDFs alongside their paper releases. If you're worried about your laptop being stolen, simple! Buy a paper copy rather than a PDF one.

One comparison I think is very interesting is with Battlefleet Gothic: GW already releases the rules as downloadable pdf. There are about 20 BFG players in my area and we all have purchased a hard copy of the book. About half of us have also paid a larger sum to get the hard copy of the OOP 'Armada' supplement off eBay. I think us wargamers tend to like the feeling of parchment under our thumbs...

I am finding myself increasingly frustrated reading through some of the current iterations of the rulebooks. The tyranids codex requires about 7 different pages of the 'nids codex to use, not mentioning additional pages in the core rulebook. I have heard from many places that this is to make the books more difficult to pirate, as you need to scan the entirety. However, this is actually making it much easier to use PDF's for me, as you can set up all kinds of cool bookmarks and hyperlinks that allow you to view the rules easily.

I believe that GW could make substantial profits from selling as PDFs. I believe they could quite possibly sell each book as 2 separate PDFs: The 'rules' and the 'fluff' books, so you buy them separately for $10, together for $18, or as paperback for $35 (AUD).

However, there are 2 drawbacks IMO to selling them as PDF:
1) GW's target audience is (supposedly) 10-18. In my experience, not many kids this age have a personal eReader or laptop, though this is increasing.
2) It will be much harder to tell who is pirating. These days, if someone turns up with a printed codex or a laptop, you know they've torrented it. If GW did release PDF's, you wouldn't know, and so this could theoretically actually increase the number of torrented books. This is IMO unlikely as people who are drawn to torrents are most likely doing it for cost/convenience factor, rather than out of a deep-seated need to steal, and increasing the availability of the books will decrease piracy.

2) It will be much harder to tell who is pirating. These days, if someone turns up with a printed codex or a laptop, you know they've torrented it. If GW did release PDF's, you wouldn't know, and so this could theoretically actually increase the number of torrented books. This is IMO unlikely as people who are drawn to torrents are most likely doing it for cost/convenience factor, rather than out of a deep-seated need to steal, and increasing the availability of the books will decrease piracy.

If somebody shows up with a pirated codex and $1,000 worth of GW models, is GW losing? I'm not trying to promote the theft of codexes, but those books are the least any of us spend on the hobby.

H.B.M.C. wrote:I'm not quite sure why you're talking about 'convenience'.

I'm talking about releasing the books, as is, via PDF release through their webstore. It's something that works for quite a few other companies, and it can work for GW.

If the idea is for PDF releases to be "convenient", then the entire book being reproduced(with fluff, artwork, etc) isn't necessary. You'd need the special rules, statlines, and maybe points costs I think.

If they set it up so that you could have some kind of 'proof of purchase' redeemable code for your army book buy so you get it free, I can honestly say I'd likely buy into that. I like paper over files, because at least I know that people can't open and edit the book without having to go through alot of work.

Would someone with a PDF'd rule book be able to play in tournaments at all like the ARD Boys?

It's inconceivable to me that in 2011, they are not selling digital versions of Codexes.

I understand the argument is that "well, if they sell PDF's, people will just torrent them". That's already happening. As of recent, you can generally view codexes before they are even release. By not selling PDF's, they are only removing the first part of that equation (where customer's buy them) and the second part remains (the torrenting). In other words, the current startus quo is all piracy, no income. It's like refusing to bake cookies because your lazy sister will come over right after you bake them and eat a few, so you don't. Congratulations, you didn't get any cookies, and you sister used the cookie tube to make herself cookies and ate them all.

The intelligent way to do this would be to have a code inside each paper codex that can be redeemed for a PDF off GWS's site. You'd have to be registered for the site, just like you do now to buy things online from them, and you can download it as much as you need to, in either pdf or ebook format. They could actually sell cards for this in the store, at a discount, just like a phone card - scratch it off, get a code. It would be a whole new revenue stream!

Alazahr wrote:W file sharing? No way. That's a huge hit to their income. Look at Paizo's Pathfinder items and then cross-reference how much of it is available for download. (Granted Pathfinder is based off of an OGL.)

Since when has Pathfinder lost profits? They basically took every 3.5 and before D&D players under their wing after WotC stabbed them in the back. (granted though 4th aint as bad as they make it out to be.) And I buy hardback Pathfinder books and pdfs whenever I get the chance. (plus if I was ever in a fight that core rulebook could bludgeon a man to death and stop bullets it's so huge.) Matter of fact next to Warhammer and 40K, Pathfinder is my next favorite drug of choice.

Kanluwen wrote:If the idea is for PDF releases to be "convenient", then the entire book being reproduced(with fluff, artwork, etc) isn't necessary. You'd need the special rules, statlines, and maybe points costs I think.

If they set it up so that you could have some kind of 'proof of purchase' redeemable code for your army book buy so you get it free, I can honestly say I'd likely buy into that. I like paper over files, because at least I know that people can't open and edit the book without having to go through alot of work.

Why even bother with that? Releasing the PDF is far easier and requires even less effort on their part. There's no need to release a cut-down 'summary' version. They don't even have to make a version with links in it (as long as its text searchable it's fine). The only effort on their part would be putting the PDF distribution system into their webstore, and then having a server capable of handling the direct downloads.

Y'know, like all the other companies that acknowledge the internet and electricity and all those other modern things and are selling PDF's right this very minute.


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Ouze wrote:The intelligent way to do this would be to have a code inside each paper codex that can be redeemed for a PDF off GWS's site. You'd have to be registered for the site, just like you do now to buy things online from them, and you can download it as much as you need to, in either pdf or ebook format. They could actually sell cards for this in the store, at a discount, just like a phone card - scratch it off, get a code. It would be a whole new revenue stream!

A complete overcomplication.

All they need to do is just sell the fething PDF. It's not difficult.

I was thinking that, in the "my account" section of the site, they could have a section called "my digital locker" or something where they are archived.

The reason for the code inside the paper book would be that you get the PDF free with the book. If you just wanted the digital version, they could sell that online cheaper, just like video games that are DD only are cheaper then boxed copies.

I do like the idea of having access to the books and codexes online somehow, but i agree that it would take a concerted effort on GW's part to make it work out well. What seems to me would work out well, though, would be outsourcing part of the work. If their network wouldn't handle online codex downloads, why not contract out to Drivethru RPG or, if they want to use an ebook format instead, Amazon (kindle) or Barnes & Noble (Nook)? We'd probably see the books closer to the $20-$25 range, but I don't think we'd actually get away with books much cheaper anyways. We the consumer would get online books in a format that's already been working out, and GW would be potentially selling to a market that they don't usually get their books out to normally.
Also, with someone else's finger in the pie, maybe GW'd finally get some QA into their books.

Ouze wrote:I was thinking that, in the "my account" section of the site, they could have a section called "my digital locker" or something where they are archived.

The reason for the code inside the paper book would be that you get the PDF free with the book. If you just wanted the digital version, they could sell that online cheaper, just like video games that are DD only are cheaper then boxed copies.

Ah, I see what you mean. Catalyst does something similar with its products, usually putting up three different options for pre-orders - Book only; Book & PDF; PDF Only.

^^ Agreed with the tri-format thing. However, there is the slight chance that someone buys the book+pdf combo then gives the pdf to a second person: meaning 2 people have legit copies but GW only gets money from one.
A little like i mentioned before, with regards to piracy: someone could should up with a PDF on a laptop and you have no way of knowing whether they gave GW money for it. This probably wouldn't sit well with GW's philosophy of their fortress wall/moat. However, one could easily point them towards the current ebook trade, or the current digital music trade, and say: cheap digital copies of products *reduce* overall piracy rather than enhance it.

HBMC: I disagree with the idea of just using the full PDF. Most people would be viewing this kind of thing on a tablet, ereader or even smart phone, and (as someone who tries to read GW codices on my phone) the book format really doesn't translate well.

i think it would be awesome if they did a cut down ebook that didnt have all the pics etc in it, just rules and fluff, so that ereaders like the kindle that dont cope brilliantly with pics could still use them well.

overall despite having a kindle i prefer to have the books in my hand in paper form the electronic form (i mostly use my kindle for text books)

Kanluwen wrote:I like paper over files, because at least I know that people can't open and edit the book without having to go through alot of work.

Are you seriously afraid that people would edit their pdf codex to cheat? You must have some absolutely horrible opponents

Just FYI: It would be quite a lot of work to edit a pdf codex too, you can't just pop it into word and type away

PDFs can be updated more easily then a print run.
If FAQs are integrated into new versions of the codex, I'd consider buying a new version each update (if big enough).

I like paper over files, because at least I know that people can't open and edit the book without having to go through alot of work.

Lol, I had someone say something like that in RL.. I laughed and laughed cause its probably the dumbest thing someone could do. Wow y ou're editing a copy of something that you can go 5 feet and verify (If youre at a store)

Paper is dead, long live digital. I've made my own Apocalypse PDF with every datasheet printed online, in WDs and all of the imperial armors also. Its very convenient

All of my PDFs have bookmarks, updated FAQs attached to them and organized in a reasonable manner.

In addition I print out my own smaller booklet versions of the codices.

Ive probably bought and painted more GW products than a VAST majority of people who play this game and I can tell you that just because someone downloads a codex doesnt mean GW has lost a sale

Would a non-tyranid player buy the tyranid codex? Probably not. The bigger question is, why arent rules free? Most other companies release rules for no cost. Granted you dont get all the fluff but you do get the rules

Either way, it doesnt impact the game at all so who cares if someone has a digital or printed out book. By law I am well within my rights to print out books i own, so any self righteous person can get off their high horse :p

That's why I prefer to be able to print my stuff out now.
If something happens, like getting snatched by some gakker, or my drink is spilled (Happened to one of my copied versions)
I don't really care.

Also taking notes on what works/doesn't work for each unit.

augustus5 wrote:

2) It will be much harder to tell who is pirating. These days, if someone turns up with a printed codex or a laptop, you know they've torrented it. If GW did release PDF's, you wouldn't know, and so this could theoretically actually increase the number of torrented books. This is IMO unlikely as people who are drawn to torrents are most likely doing it for cost/convenience factor, rather than out of a deep-seated need to steal, and increasing the availability of the books will decrease piracy.

If somebody shows up with a pirated codex and $1,000 worth of GW models, is GW losing? I'm not trying to promote the theft of codexes, but those books are the least any of us spend on the hobby.

Good point, the profit margin on the models is way higher than the books. In fact, I don't think mass printing has really gone down in costs over the years all that much. However, GW has definitely benefited from casting/modeling technology improving, and their switch to plastic kits has saved them tons on overhead versus pewter.

I own a laptop, but I also own an Imperial Guard, Tyranid, Space Wolves, Eldar, Lizardmen, and Ogre Kingdoms armies. So, I hate hauling around a bunch of books all the time, when I could easily have everything I need on one laptop.

My buddy brought over his iPad and we "obtained" an indexed copy of the BRB that was search-able. We wanted to see how it would work. Also, for the record, we purchased 2 copies of the hard bound BRB fantasy books. So GW got our money. We keep one in our game room, and the other one gets checked out by our friends to take home to read. It was really neat to be able to search for key words and pull it up, and then have the nice interface of the iPad itself. I have to admit, it was really slick. Plus given the really light weight of the iPad itself along with the amount of books it could hold, it seems like any table top gamer (be it war games, board games, role playing, etc) would want to take advantage of this technology. Who wants to flip through the book to clarify a rule when you can just search for it instead?

Ouze wrote:It's inconceivable to me that in 2011, they are not selling digital versions of Codexes.

couldn't have said it better. print is dead. you can already download all codexes, rule books, scenarios etc. from various torrent sites.

Ouze wrote:The intelligent way to do this would be to have a code inside each paper codex that can be redeemed for a PDF off GWS's site. You'd have to be registered for the site, just like you do now to buy things online from them, and you can download it as much as you need to, in either pdf or ebook format. They could actually sell cards for this in the store, at a discount, just like a phone card - scratch it off, get a code. It would be a whole new revenue stream!

this is exactly how they should do it, and the ability to purchase said code from the website. i'd wager there are many out there that would prefer to purchase a digital copy. they also need to keep attracting younger customers who develop in to lifetime gamers - current codex prices are pretty restricting in this regard.

Kanluwen wrote:
Do you really think that people would buy the books if suddenly they were available in an eBook format?

I have been surprised by the number of people who own the Infinity rule book, despite the rules being free to download. I would say a fairly significant proportion.

So perhaps that is the best of both worlds - the books available in deluxe format in a book for those who like the traditional book, with a free download of a 'lite' version of the rules (minus most background and pictures) from the website, backed up with a wiki that instantly connects you with special rules/stats for anything that you come across.

In fact, I think it's a great way of doing things, and I think probably the best on the market in my experience.

Pacific wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:
Do you really think that people would buy the books if suddenly they were available in an eBook format?

I have been surprised by the number of people who own the Infinity rule book, despite the rules being free to download. I would say a fairly significant proportion.

The post should actually have read "Do you really think that people who were downloading .pdfs or torrenting them would buy the books if suddenly they were available in an eBook format?".

Kanluwen wrote:The post should actually have read "Do you really think that people who were downloading .pdfs or torrenting them would buy the books if suddenly they were available in an eBook format?".

100% of those who choose to go the file-sharing route? Of course not.

10%? Possibly. Especially if the authorized PDF is smaller (as it's not a scan), better quality, has well-done sections and links, and is priced well.

Something to consider is that a percentage of the file-sharers won't pay, ever. However, the reason sin't that they're cheap, it's that they want the file for purposes of being able to say they have the file. I remember reading this about software piracy back in the 80s: A significant number of people copied software just so they could say they had it, not to use it* (and let's not talk about how rampant teacher's copying software they shouldn't have was...). PDFs for RPGs are much the same.

Anyway, trying to sell to people who will never buy is a waste of time. However, claiming 'losses' to that crowd is arguable as it could be said that they'd never buy anyway, so...

The useful percentage, in this case, is people who like the company enough to play the game, want eBooks for whatever reason, and have money. This group exists.


* Possibly amusing story: back in those days, there were a lot of disk-protection schemes of dubious value to prevent making a copy of a 5 1/4" floppy disk**. Otherwise the programs themselves would sue cumbersome look-ups like requiring the user look up a password from a large printed book or code wheel to get the program to run. Lots of clever people spent a lot of time cracking these schemes and would modify the disk contents so they'd have graphics and text proclaiming who did the cracking to remove the disk protection or password scheme. However, these crackers often were more interested in the cool coding puzzles (cracking the software) than the cracked programs, and wouldn't be aware if a crack destabilized the program in some weird way, so copied games might have bugs at certain spots, etc.

** This was kind of like a USB flash drive, but less reliable, held less than half a megabyte, and relied on a magnetically-coated piece of spinning plastic in a plastic sleeve. Things were weird back then, kids.

I still have X-Wing on floppy, I know what they are.

The only downside is I don't have the manual or a computer with a floppy drive, so it's kind of useless.

I may be naive in the ways of eBooks, but... aren't some formats pretty impossible to pirate? Aren't they keyed to your specific reader? And refuse to give you the content unless a server somewhere says that you own it?

Kanluwen wrote:I still have X-Wing on floppy, I know what they are.

The only downside is I don't have the manual or a computer with a floppy drive, so it's kind of useless.

I figured there's a few people here who aren't old enough to remember them. I'm glad they're gone, really. Way too high of a failure rate.

Solorg wrote:I may be naive in the ways of eBooks, but... aren't some formats pretty impossible to pirate? Aren't they keyed to your specific reader? And refuse to give you the content unless a server somewhere says that you own it?

Rule number 1 of software, nothing is impossible to pirate at all ever. There are many successful online digital media business models. Look at the itunes Music store, it makes a ton of money and people still pirate the same. The only difference is, when you can buy a song for $1 you may be more inclined to buy it rather than pirate it.

Look at Steam...I pretty much stopped pirating video games and buy everything on steam these days. Unless the game is going to suck but I want to try it.

Kanluwen wrote:

Pacific wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:
Do you really think that people would buy the books if suddenly they were available in an eBook format?

I have been surprised by the number of people who own the Infinity rule book, despite the rules being free to download. I would say a fairly significant proportion.

The post should actually have read "Do you really think that people who were downloading .pdfs or torrenting them would buy the books if suddenly they were available in an eBook format?".

I would definitely purchase in either ebook or pdf format. The thousands people spend on their figures should give an indication that the wargaming community as a whole is willing to spend money on our hobby.

nkelsch wrote:I am not convinced GW's current model is bad or failing, and I am not convinced it would be fincacially enhanced from a buisness point of view with electronic delivery.

I think electronic delivery and frequent updates to the electronic rules will make the game better. I think the game being better would help attract/keep more players.

As for the people who simply want free rules and Living rule books... You just don't want to pay for things and anything that moves away from you paying money you will support, even if it breaks great financial harm to GW.

I love how you are so skilled at intuiting the motivations of other posters. I want the free and living rules to make the game better and remove a barrier to entry, not because I don't want to pay. I bought the gamer's edition rulebook for 5th edition. I bought Black Reach just to get the mini rulebook because it's a thousand times handier than the big one. I bought two copies of the BA codex so I could chop one up to put in a binder and have the nice pristine one on my shelf (and trips to the loo). I am not averse to paying for the books personally.

I want the books to be free to makeup for the fact that the rules are spread over 16 codices, 1 rulebook, and some supplements. Rare is the player who has them all legally. Actually buying all of the rules for the game costs over $700 now. Does anybody do that?

I don't respect your opinion or business advice when it is motivated by that motivation.

I don't respect yours when it's based on ignorant assumptions.

Arschbombe wrote: *snip* ... the rules are spread over 16 codices, 1 rulebook, and some supplements. Rare is the player who has them all legally. Actually buying all of the rules for the game costs over $700 now.

Dear god, I didn't realise it was that bad. So now it costs $400-500ish to get a full 2K tournament army, and more then the (overpriced) army just to get the rules to know what your opponnents may have? This is fething ridiculous...

I halfway expect GW to start selling time cards you have to swipe to even enter their stores. It'd be less inane then the above stupidity they're engaging in

Kanluwen wrote:

H.B.M.C. wrote:I'm not quite sure why you're talking about 'convenience'.

I'm talking about releasing the books, as is, via PDF release through their webstore. It's something that works for quite a few other companies, and it can work for GW.

If the idea is for PDF releases to be "convenient", then the entire book being reproduced(with fluff, artwork, etc) isn't necessary. You'd need the special rules, statlines, and maybe points costs I think.

You're confusing at a glance reference with convenience. Not everyone reading a codex on an ipad is going to be at a table. Sometimes ebooks are just a hell of a lot more convenient to travel with then a stack of embarrassing real books covered in manly men in purple armor (like on a plane or bus).


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Kanluwen wrote:

Pacific wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:
Do you really think that people would buy the books if suddenly they were available in an eBook format?

I have been surprised by the number of people who own the Infinity rule book, despite the rules being free to download. I would say a fairly significant proportion.

The post should actually have read "Do you really think that people who were downloading .pdfs or torrenting them would buy the books if suddenly they were available in an eBook format?".

Irrelevant. If they are pirating them then they also aren't purchasing actual copies, if they are then it's a total wash. Adding a digital distribution format is about increasing reach and customer option, not about stemming piracy. Your arguments against digital distribution are non sensical and logically full of holes.

Trasvi wrote:HBMC: I disagree with the idea of just using the full PDF. Most people would be viewing this kind of thing on a tablet, ereader or even smart phone, and (as someone who tries to read GW codices on my phone) the book format really doesn't translate well.

How exactly? We’ve all seen a number of different things on tablets, and there’s nothing special about GW’s specific format that wouldn’t translate across to a tablet. Double page spreads don’t work as well... but that’s a general problem with single-page view tablets and not GW’s. On phones with tiny screens, well yeah, a lot of things are difficult to read there, not just Codices. I really don’t see how anything GW does with its books is in any way different on a tablet or smart phone to any other type of publication.

There’s nothing stopping GW from publishing entire Codices via their web store other than infrastructure (the ability to supply and take money for these products) and a fear of new technology. Publishing entire Codices via their web store (and other places like DriveThruRPG.com) would increase their reach and customer base. The piracy concerns are minimal as people are already pirating scans of their books (up to and including entire Imperial Armour books), so how would this be any different?

And that reminds me – they should be doing this for Imperial Armour books as well.

Kanluwen wrote:[Prove to me that they're pirated. A great many works are public domain.

How about the Black Library novels? Are they public domain? Because they're available and a bit closer to the conversation than the Mark Twain novels you're referring to in an effort to avoid answering the real question. I'd love to prove you wrong but posting a link to pirate sites is forbidden on dakka (which I think you already know). They're not hard to find with a simple google search. GW could easily make more money this way selling stripped down versions with just the rules so as to differentiate them from the physical copies. It seems that they don't need it though as the company is "growing" per their financial statement and paying dividends (mainly to the people deciding whether to pay them). They apparently don't need more sales as they've spent all the money they need to grow per the same statement.

I recently bought a netbook and would prefer to bring it to the gamestore instead of all my rulebooks. Despite actually owning every book I actually use (like base rulebooks and supplements like cityfight as well as codices), I refuse to use an electronic book in a store simply because it would appear that I'm using pirated versions. If I weren't already unhappy with GW and not buying their products, I would be a customer who would buy both the phsyical and electronic versions of books I commonly use. Yet again, they prove that they simply don't want my money with their decisions.

To anyone who really doubts that most 40k books are already, illegally, available for torrent I suggest you simply do a quick google search. Warhammer Collection Torrent ought to set aside any doubts you may have about whether people are already downloading these thing from the web. Of course, I also strongly suggest avoiding actually trying to download any - some may be packed full of malware goodness, after all. Which is another reason why people may be willing to buy a clean PDF from GW rather than risking some bug from a torrent site...the cost of a new computer is probably more than you're going to save downloading all the books, albeit not by much.

Of course, that's assuming that GW price there stuff well. If the codexes and army books are still double digit prices then it won't be cheap enough to make a difference. My preference is always going to be hard copy - I'm not even fond of digitial DLC because I'm a Luddite at heart. I want PDF's purely as a cash saving measure, to read up on stuff without the cost of buying the full book or having to go download stuff. Others who have kindles and such can say better whether it's a good format for actual, in game, use - I've never tried it and likely won't for some time.

I don't think so. I prefer a book and I don't want to wait people to scroll through page to page intil they find what they want. Books are reasonable to scroll through and I also hate E-books screen.

I'd actually prefer minicodexes in the same vein as the Black Reach rulebook - so just the info needed to run the game so I didn't have to use my shiny version of the codex all the time..

Perhaps they would come with a Battleforce box.........

a Minicodex would be nice. Considering the theft rate at the Game Store I used to visit, I do not want my e-reader there.

Some of the vehement and downright mean responses to the very idea of pdf books put me in mind if this:

http://youtu.be/0la5DBtOVNI

I also like the idea of a mini-codex in a battleforce. That presumes that they change the battleforce contents enough so that you meet the minimum 2 troops, 1 HQ model, then you'd have a truly awesome starter set for new players.

rockerbikie wrote:I don't think so. I prefer a book and I don't want to wait people to scroll through page to page intil they find what they want.

That's why you do text searches in PDF's. They're very quick.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

rockerbikie wrote:I don't think so. I prefer a book and I don't want to wait people to scroll through page to page intil they find what they want.

That's why you do text searches in PDF's. They're very quick.

Or you use the Index/Table of Contents...

AvatarForm wrote:

H.B.M.C. wrote:

rockerbikie wrote:I don't think so. I prefer a book and I don't want to wait people to scroll through page to page intil they find what they want.

That's why you do text searches in PDF's. They're very quick.

Or you use the Index/Table of Contents...

I don't see how that's much different than searching through a regular book except for exchanging the word "scroll" with "flip". A professionally done (and sold) PDF is easy to search and frankly a hell of alot quicker for someone new to the book to look through than a physical one. Even for people who are very familiar with a codex, you can just skip to the approximate page you want. If someone is painfully slow with searching a professionally done PDF, they'd also be slow searching a physical copy. Obviously this isn't true of the "i just iphone camera pic'ed the codex and uploaded it to a pirate pdf" ebooks.

I dont think a lot of people who hate digital books have seriously used well done PDFs. As others have said, the search capabilities or even simple bookmarking is faster than any human. Thats like saying you can search a dictionary faster than a search engine.. come on lets be realistic here

Yes, a poorly done PDF like most you see on the net arent that much faster and can actually be slower.

Either way, the opinion of the net is fairly irrelevant. Those who dont want to use digital mediums wont and will probably end up like Borders books.. those who do will learn how to make them a ton more efficient than a book can ever be

Personally Ill use whatever I find easiest and convenient. I cant carry around every codex in my pocket in book form.. but my droid x sure can

Kirasu wrote:
Personally Ill use whatever I find easiest and convenient. I cant carry around every codex in my pocket in book form.. but my droid x sure can

My Deathwatch co-gm goes that route (we alternate GMing missions). I bring most of the physical books while he brings ebooks on his laptop and even droid cellphone. It's nice to have a second copy at the table to keep the flow going during a game.

rockerbikie wrote:I don't think so. I prefer a book and I don't want to wait people to scroll through page to page intil they find what they want. Books are reasonable to scroll through and I also hate E-books screen.

Preferring the books is very understandable. I prefer to read books over a computer screen at times as well. However, having an indexed army book or rule book means you can search and that is A LOT more efficient than you thumbing through a book. Also, online distribution = more profit margin since the overhead cost is down. It also allows them to deliver updates to the rules, FAQs, and editing mistakes instantly over the Internet.

Like I said, we own two hard bound copies of the WHFB 8th edition set and I bought assault on black reach so I own the 40K book as well. However, I wasn't about to cut up and scan my own books (I don't even own a scanner) so I downloaded pirated versions of the rules to put on our laptops and iPads. When I go to a buddies house and we aren't sure what game we are going to play, I just bring my laptop. Every book I own is also digitally on it. The guys that take the time to run the scans through OCR software index them and I can search the ebooks. I want to search the exact wording of a rule, I search of it instead of thumbing around for it in the Index and then flipping to the page.

There is so much advantage for them and they don't have to stop selling the print versions. In fact, I would say if you buy the printed version, you should be able to also either get the ebook version for free, or a very small nominal fee. Like when I buy vinyl records these days, most of them come with a free digital download as well. This means I don't have to either 1) rip my own vinyl to my computer, or 2) download pirated music. I like to collect records so I have a ton. However, since I already own the record and I already paid for the GW books I don't feel bad downloading the pirated versions, after all GW already got my money once.

Kanluwen wrote:The post should actually have read "Do you really think that people who were downloading .pdfs or torrenting them would buy the books if suddenly they were available in an eBook format?".

Let me try and rephrase my point, which I don't think you're getting: if even one person did, it would be a net gain for Games Workshop. Presumably they are already sending PDF's to the printer, so the cost to them is nearly nonexistent.

People who want to pirate are going to pirate. That can't be stopped and it shouldn't be tried - save all the money the video game industry spent wasted on useless DRM that only boned paying customers and never stopped pirates.

Right now, they have monetized zero percent of the digital codex market. Zero. Anything greater then zero would be an improvement.

And yes, I suppose it's possible people could buy a book and then give their code away to download their legal codex to a friend. Not only is that not a problem, it should be encouraged. Games Workshop is a miniature business. They want more people playing the game and buying models, FFS!
Right now they are being penny wise and pound foolish, and missing good opportunities to spread the HHHobby.

Ouze wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:The post should actually have read "Do you really think that people who were downloading .pdfs or torrenting them would buy the books if suddenly they were available in an eBook format?".

Let me try and rephrase my point, which I don't think you're getting: if even one person did, it would be a net gain for Games Workshop. Presumably they are already sending PDF's to the printer, so the cost to them is nearly nonexistent.

People who want to pirate are going to pirate. That can't be stopped and it shouldn't be tried - save all the money the video game industry spent wasted on useless DRM that only boned paying customers and never stopped pirates.

Right now, they have monetized zero percent of the digital codex market. Zero. Anything greater then zero would be an improvement.

And yes, I suppose it's possible people could buy a book and then give their code away to download their legal codex to a friend. Not only is that not a problem, it should be encouraged. Games Workshop is a miniature business. They want more people playing the game and buying models, FFS!
Right now they are being penny wise and pound foolish, and missing good opportunities to spread the HHHobby.

I am willing to bet there is a lot more profit margin in the miniatures than there is the printed materials as well.

warboss wrote:My Deathwatch co-gm goes that route (we alternate GMing missions). I bring most of the physical books while he brings ebooks on his laptop and even droid cellphone. It's nice to have a second copy at the table to keep the flow going during a game.

We've taken to having a lap top open and ready at every session, and if we need to there's a further 3 iPads in the group, so finding stuff quickly ain't hard.

H.B.M.C. wrote:

warboss wrote:My Deathwatch co-gm goes that route (we alternate GMing missions). I bring most of the physical books while he brings ebooks on his laptop and even droid cellphone. It's nice to have a second copy at the table to keep the flow going during a game.

We've taken to having a lap top open and ready at every session, and if we need to there's a further 3 iPads in the group, so finding stuff quickly ain't hard.

We had the same set up.

Only problem was, it was 5 college guys with laptops/iPads. The game would often grind to a halt after a certain image, video, or webcomic was shared. Or when donuts were brought out.

rockerbikie wrote:I don't think so. I prefer a book and I don't want to wait people to scroll through page to page intil they find what they want. Books are reasonable to scroll through and I also hate E-books screen.

The main benefit is ease of access of information. Say you're at a tournament. There's a rule you know is there, your opponent doesn't believe you. You just cannot find it in the rulebook or codex no matter how hard you look. TO is called, he makes the call, and it goes badly for you, even though you were in the right.

Now, you have a tablet with the book. You hit search, enter the name of the rule or something to find it, hit enter, rule found. You were right, game goes along nicely.

infinite_array wrote:

H.B.M.C. wrote:

warboss wrote:My Deathwatch co-gm goes that route (we alternate GMing missions). I bring most of the physical books while he brings ebooks on his laptop and even droid cellphone. It's nice to have a second copy at the table to keep the flow going during a game.

We've taken to having a lap top open and ready at every session, and if we need to there's a further 3 iPads in the group, so finding stuff quickly ain't hard.

We had the same set up.

Only problem was, it was 5 college guys with laptops/iPads. The game would often grind to a halt after a certain image, video, or webcomic was shared. Or when donuts were brought out.

I do this at my house. The simple solution? Turn off the wifi.

While the PDF's would be a great idea for GW a far as straight making money, another thing to consider is how it would influence GW's relationship with the independent stores. I understand that people are pirating a lot of rulebooks and GW could be making money off of virtual sales. I understand that if even one person buys an "e-rulebook" then the project is probably in black ink from that point on. But also for every person who buys a codex online instead of in the store (note: not talking about "instead of piracy" here, but this is if they were going to buy it anyway from a store) then the stores begin losing money at that point.

In general, the gamers would enjoy e-rulebooks and GW would make some immediate money, but would it be worth it for what it would do to the GW-independent store relationship?

Here's my take on it: You need to have a paper copy of your own rules.

Now, that being said, I also think that to stand any chance in tourneys, you need to have a working knowledge of everyone else's rules. I am not going to buy Codices for armies I don't play, but to gather intel on the enemy? I'd buy them all tomorrow if they were available in e-book format. I don't feel like I am undercutting Games Workshop, or my local game store. I would never have bought those books anyway, (and I could always have downloaded them illegally if I really wanted to). Games Workshop might as well be making some money off of me rather than the none they are currently getting.

Calvinus wrote:While the PDF's would be a great idea for GW a far as straight making money, another thing to consider is how it would influence GW's relationship with the independent stores. I understand that people are pirating a lot of rulebooks and GW could be making money off of virtual sales. I understand that if even one person buys an "e-rulebook" then the project is probably in black ink from that point on. But also for every person who buys a codex online instead of in the store (note: not talking about "instead of piracy" here, but this is if they were going to buy it anyway from a store) then the stores begin losing money at that point.

In general, the gamers would enjoy e-rulebooks and GW would make some immediate money, but would it be worth it for what it would do to the GW-independent store relationship?

Most GW stuff has gone to boxed sets anyway and blister packs are all but extinct. Most boxed sets are stocked at stores that resell GW but not really all that stocked. They have slowly been migrating to a mail order business. I can go to my local gaming shop, order a GW item and it shows up at the store in 2 days. Gaming stores usually sell more than just war gaming as well. They sell role playing games, dice, accessories, modeling equipment, green stuff, paints, they usually have a gaming room, sometimes with a private room for rent. Once you start playing games on the reg in their game room you get exposed to all sorts of other games, armies, models and so forth.

What is stopping customers from buying direct from GW now, not paying shipping on orders over what, $75, and getting it shipped right to your house so you don't even have to leave your home? The point is moot, and it sounds like the same old argument the publishing companies use to justify them not going digital.

infinite_array wrote:

H.B.M.C. wrote:

warboss wrote:My Deathwatch co-gm goes that route (we alternate GMing missions). I bring most of the physical books while he brings ebooks on his laptop and even droid cellphone. It's nice to have a second copy at the table to keep the flow going during a game.

We've taken to having a lap top open and ready at every session, and if we need to there's a further 3 iPads in the group, so finding stuff quickly ain't hard.

We had the same set up.

Only problem was, it was 5 college guys with laptops/iPads. The game would often grind to a halt after a certain image, video, or webcomic was shared. Or when donuts were brought out.

Yeah, that's why I've avoided using my laptop at my RPG night except for character generation and similar. It definitely kills everyone's focus.


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Calvinus wrote:While the PDF's would be a great idea for GW a far as straight making money, another thing to consider is how it would influence GW's relationship with the independent stores. I understand that people are pirating a lot of rulebooks and GW could be making money off of virtual sales. I understand that if even one person buys an "e-rulebook" then the project is probably in black ink from that point on. But also for every person who buys a codex online instead of in the store (note: not talking about "instead of piracy" here, but this is if they were going to buy it anyway from a store) then the stores begin losing money at that point.

GW cares about relationships with independent stores?

Calvinus wrote:
In general, the gamers would enjoy e-rulebooks and GW would make some immediate money, but would it be worth it for what it would do to the GW-independent store relationship?

This it the company that curtailed internet sales, limited the available discount offered by retailers, told them who they could and could not ship to, and you're worried pdf's would damage their relationship?

Seriously?

If they're worried about piracy, sell it anyway. If you can't beat them, join them.

iTunes and Kindle are doing well, despite the Pirate Bay and other sources.

Having a legitimate source of rules will only add to the amount of e-books out there. If they can get some money out of it, it's got to be worth their time to set up some deal with Amazon or someone.

Balance wrote:
GW cares about relationships with independent stores?

Our two store owner Dakkites both sing their praises when it comes to physical support from GW for their stores. They seem to have a good image with store owners and a bad one with alot of gamers. When Mikhalia expanded his store, they gave him thousands of $$ worth of shelving. Of course, he just turned around and bought thousands in GW stock and will continue to fill those pegs with it so the compay will make their money back quickly but they did shell out for the initial outlay.

warboss wrote:

Balance wrote:
GW cares about relationships with independent stores?

Our two store owner Dakkites both sing their praises when it comes to physical support from GW for their stores. They seem to have a good image with store owners and a bad one with alot of gamers. When Mikhalia expanded his store, they game his thousands of $$ worth of shelving. Of course, he just turned around and bought thousands in GW stock and will continue to fill those pegs with it so the compay will make their money back quickly but they did shell out for the initial outlay.

I was joking a bit. it seems to vary widely by area. I have heard some store owners that consider GW predatory (mostly from the UK) as they used indie stores to determine where to site theirs, but I know a former local store had good and bad periods as the local GW sales rep went from one who was cool and tried to work with the stores one vents to one that just wanted to sit back and let orders roll in..

Balance wrote:
I was joking a bit. it seems to vary widely by area. I have heard some store owners that consider GW predatory (mostly from the UK) as they used indie stores to determine where to site theirs, but I know a former local store had good and bad periods as the local GW sales rep went from one who was cool and tried to work with the stores one vents to one that just wanted to sit back and let orders roll in..

Don't get me wrong, they are predatory. But if they apparently have no interest in running youe particular store OUT of business then they might extend a friendly hand. They did exactly what you mentioned to my old FLGS when they opened up a store 2 miles down the same road in the same suburb from the best selling/stocked store in the region at the time... and this was only GW's second store in the ENTIRE state so it's not like they had saturated the retail market and had no choice.

Skinnereal wrote:If they're worried about piracy, sell it anyway. If you can't beat them, join them.

iTunes and Kindle are doing well, despite the Pirate Bay and other sources.

Having a legitimate source of rules will only add to the amount of e-books out there. If they can get some money out of it, it's got to be worth their time to set up some deal with Amazon or someone.

Exactly! Lets look at good online business models that are super successful...

Amazon
ebay
iTunes
Steam
woot
newegg

Of course not all of these tie in to ebook sales. However, the business models of each of these can parallel that of ebooks in some sense or another. The fact is, GW would stand to make money off this and it could expand their sales into new gamers.

Ouze wrote:
Let me try and rephrase my point, which I don't think you're getting: if even one person did, it would be a net gain for Games Workshop. Presumably they are already sending PDF's to the printer

THIS is why these discutions go nowhere. People make arguments whilst knowing nothing about the subject. If you read back it is all explained, but it is not as simple as just publishing your printers files.

Paul wrote:

Ouze wrote:
Let me try and rephrase my point, which I don't think you're getting: if even one person did, it would be a net gain for Games Workshop. Presumably they are already sending PDF's to the printer

THIS is why these discutions go nowhere. People make arguments whilst knowing nothing about the subject. If you read back it is all explained, but it is not as simple as just publishing your printers files.

Please show your work. I just re-read every single post in this thread and what you claim "is all explained" is never brought up by anyone, with the sole exception of Crom, who indicates that he did such publishing and it's trivial to output whatever format you like, including PDF.

So, what you said, except the exact opposite. Unless I missed something? Surely you can show me.

Paul wrote:

Kirasu wrote:If GW was smart they would release digital codices for half the price (due to not having to print and ship or stock them ).. They would sell A LOT more and not have to pay any overhead

I just want to point something out. I work for a major publishing house and noticed people sugesting that the books might be cheeper than the paper counterparts. I'm afraid that this is not true. There is a very good reason for this. The unchangable cost of a book make up about 80-90% of the cost of a book. Content, editorial, admin etc. The rest is stuff is bits that can be lost. A book costs anywhere from 50p to £2 + to print (for basic softback books) depending on print quality, paper quality, colours etc. For GW i would guess it would be at the upper end of this, given the fact that they are low volume, high quality product with full colour pages. Distribution is around 5% for a very efficent publisher going up to 10%. given the low volumes but small distribution network i would guess around the middle for GW.

This gives about 20% of the cost reduction for electronic books. They do, however, have some extra costs. Most of which im not sure of, as it is not my area of the business. There is compatability testing, re type setting, and the like, each needing doing for every divice. Then, in the uk at least, books are vat free. Ebooks on the other hand have 20% VAT on them.

I just thought people would be interested in the facts about the costs of ebooks.

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With all respect to crom, reading back on his posts, i tappears that he is not a professional publisher.

I admit that it is not explained in detail but it is not as simple as just outputting to pdf from whatever publishing software you use.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
To go in to more detail...

As soon as you change format, the same is true going fron hardback so softbach, a production editor needs to re-look at the formatting to check that if all fits correctly. Im sure that we have all seen magazines, even good quaty ones where the justification has screwd up a line. You then need to check thatt everything works as it should on every device. All of this is not cheep, and given the size of the market for gw, and the ipad and laptop owners within that, it is most probably not economicly viable.


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If it was as simple as people say don't you think the big publishing houses would have done it already? Or at least one of them?


Automatically Appended Next Post:
If you want more info let me know. I relaise now that my more info is not everything, but it is early and i have not sleeped very well.

Well, it would appear my re-reading was not as thorough as I had thought; I stand corrected. You were right and I was wrong.

That being said, and going back to my original post on this - I think this would be a profitable market for them, even if it cost them some money to do the conversions.

Lets not forgot that if GW sells the PDFs, they'll likely do it through their own webpage on which they'll be able to keep close to 100% of the purchase price (everything but the credit card/paypal fee) as opposed to the majority of codices which are sold via independent retailers (garnering GW about 60% of the purchase price).

Internet piracy is already rampant with hard copy books. I can't imagine what they would be with online PDFs.

Although it would be a cool idea would be to have the codices online so that they could be updated/corrected instantaneously, allowing GW to respond to faults and errors, etc, better.

Kanluwen wrote:Why should they(or I, or anyone who buys the books) give a crap about the git who will only torrent the book having a crummy scan?

That's not my problem. Shell the money out for the book.

It appears that the thread was won, yet it's still continuing...

Medium of Death wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Why should they(or I, or anyone who buys the books) give a crap about the git who will only torrent the book having a crummy scan?

That's not my problem. Shell the money out for the book.

It appears that the thread was won, yet it's still continuing...

Um, mainly because its not even close and his comment doesn't address the point of this thread. We're not talking about pirates (please see the title of the thread and its reference to SELLING the pdfs to customers). There is a demand as evidenced in this thread for professionally done and lawfully sold PDFs; GW is choosing to not produce a supply because they apparently have too much wealth and have spent all the money they can this year for "growth" per their financial statement. Pirated versions will be readily available and downloadable regardless of what GW does.