Diana at the polls

[ffutures]

An interesting statistic at e23.

Their customers are asked to rate downloads from 1 (dreadful) to 5 (excellent). Currently, with 13 votes received, Diana: Warrior Princess is rated somewhere between 4 and 5; I have no idea where it falls on this spectrum, they just show 4 stars and a half star, which can be anything from 4.01 upwards.

The interesting statistic is that their all-time "Top Ten Rated Items" (based on a minimum of five votes) have scores ranging from 4.74 to 4.90, and one of the higher-scoring games has only six votes. So it's possible that just one or two more 5-star votes will put Diana onto that table.

So if you downloaded Diana from e23 and haven't already voted, PLEASE do so...

Comments

I'd do that, except…

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

I bought a dead-tree copy when it first came out, so I'm disinclined to buy a PDF copy as well. Sorry.

Re: I'd do that, except…

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Not asking you to - but it seems to be a moderately steady seller and I very much doubt everyone who bought it has voted.

Re: I'd do that, except…

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

Didn't think you were asking, just explaining why I haven't voted the 5 that I've always done for your products...

As a side note, and relating to a copyright debate I'm in elsewhere, if part of the payment for a work is a copyright fee in exchange for using the intellectual property, then I feel strongly that one shouldn't have to pay the fee twice in order to use the IP in a different medium [1] or location [2]. Paying a fee for the medium is reasonable, paying the IP fee twice isn't. (Although that's the viewpoint the US is espousing, and pressuring the rest of the world to accept.)


[1] For example, buying a current GURPS book on e23 is almost as expensive as buying the paper version, and there is no no discount if you already own the paper version.

[2] For example, playing a DVD I bought here when I go to work in Europe or China for a year.

Re: I'd do that, except…

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I have no problems with that, if a reasonably good means of establishing that the purchaser genuinely does own the original can be established. But that would probably have to rely on tear-out coupons (which would require the purchaser to damage the book and pay postage) or buying both versions of the book directly from the publisher - and it would have to be the same publisher for this to work. Amongst other problems there are implications related to personal privacy which would deter many customers - do you really want publishers to keep a record of every book you buy? In perpetuity? And can this actually be done without breaching data protection laws in various countries?

I'm not saying that these are insurmountable problems - but they'e things that need to be considered.

Incidentally, e23 recently reduced the price of many of the GURPS PDFs for precisely this reason - they've realised that they're overpriced. I've been selling my PDFs for a smallish fraction of the price of physical books since I started this form of publication, which I think is one reason why Diana has been fairly successful.

Re: I'd do that, except…

[robertprior.livejournal.com]

Things like this are often done for warranty or rebate purposes. O'Reilly has a system for granting limited access to their support sites for purchasers of their books. When I bought The DAM Book it had an ad in the back offering 45 days of digital access -- all I had to do was type in a coupon code. (I haven't done that yet, because I'm waiting until I have 45 days with a resonable amount of spare time, so I can't tell you how easily it works.)

e23 reduced the price of PDFs of out-of-print GURPS books. They kept the price of in-print GURPS books and e23-only GURPS books the same.

As to whether it can legally be done, that probably depends on where you are located. I suspect that publishers without a UK office will feel free to ignore UK laws -- and US laws seem to favour corporations more than UK ones do.

Re: I'd do that, except…

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

When I did the print version of Forgotten Futures, I offered a discount to people who had registered for the e-version.

I had more complaints from retailers than I had people take me up on the discount offer. IIRC you were one of the people who actually took me up on that, right?

But that bitterly, bitterly taught me to never do anything like that again.

From a publisher perspective, the margins on each sale are so low already that just dealing with that issue would wipe out the profits from both sales. If you're the publisher, you don't have to print the book but you still have to pay the creatives their royalty for the sales, so (in my pricing scheme at least) that's already figured in.

Think about it: would you sign a royalty contract based on each buyer rather than the number of copies each buyer bought?

So while I'm sympathetic to your POV (The SJ Games model is different from mine, though. My PDF of a print book is actually a little under 50% of the MSRP, but I get the same amount of money for either sale), I'll never, ever offer something like that.

Re: I'd do that, except…

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

I remember this being a problem for you - especially since British law prevented me from giving you contact details for my registered users. Doing it the other way round, and publishing a printed book with a voucher for a free or cheap PDF, wouldn't bother me, but since it's very unlikely that I'll write anything that has a print edition again it's a fairly moot point. At the moment the only works I have that were printed and are now PDFs are the Forgotten Futures rules (which are free anyway) and Diana: Warrior Princess. It's very unlikely that more will be added.