The PDF Blues

Recently I found myself browsing DriveThruRPG with an increasing sense of frustration and disappointment. There are a lot of amazing titles on DTRPG, So many I could never read and review even all the ones that I would really want to in a lifetime. But at the same time I am having trouble finding ones  that I am willing to buy, because I can't get them in print.

And as I have spent the last couple of years adjusting to new challenges after suffering a brain injury, I have had less and less time to devote to doing the reading and reviewing that I should like to do. And I know that this blog has suffered for it.

When my I am in a state where I am healthy enough to read and review a product, I want it to be something special. I want that rare break in the pain and fatigue to be time best spent. And part of that is that I want to be able to hold the book in my hands, appreciate the art, the layout, and the design as the creators had hoped and intended. And when I test it in Solo play, I want to be able to do so away from screens.

I no longer enjoy working on screens. When I started this blog 5 years ago I was ambivalent. I saw the value in being able to get a PDF. Now, sitting down to read a PDF is difficult for me. And there is part of me that says "screw it, just get the .PDF, play it once or twice, and call it better money spent than a Netflix subscription or a night at the movies.

But every time I sit down in the evening to read a PDF I just fall asleep. My latest PDF acquisition, Chasing Adventure, took me nearly two weeks to get through because this pattern. 

I need is a book I can hold. One that lets me sit at a desk under my reading lamp with notebooks and dice spread out. One that provides with the touch feedback of pages beneath my fingertips. To me, a lone book is well worth paying triple the cost of a PDF. Because an ebook that I can't stay awake long enough to read is not worth paying for.

And, of course, there is the matter of the ephemeral nature of digital products. I learned my lesson the hard way through Google Music or Scene Music: nothing you license digitally is actually owned by you. Things disappear from digital marketplaces. Digital marketplaces themselves disappear. Hard drives get swapped, email accounts lost. A book can only disappear if you don't take care of it.

Getting print books is worth a lot to me.

And there's the rub: DTRPG has some truly incredible content, but almost all of it is digital only. Itch.io has the same problem on steroids.

Now, some of what I want is in print through other marketplaces, like Exalted Funeral, Big Geek Emporium, or The Red Room. But they all have one common problem for me: they have no warehouses in Canada, and shipping isn't just expensive, its untenable. 

Last time I looked at getting myself a hard-copy of Mothership I found myself looking at shipping fees nearly equal to the cost of my order: $85 CAD for the books and $60 in shipping.  Mothership would definitely be worth $90 to me. Even $100. But $150? That is about half my year's sales for my best-selling book. And I am willing to bet in our current economic climate it would be a hell of a lot more than that.

And, of course, a lot of the money that supports this blog is in the form of DTRPG affiliate link credit, which really can't be spent anywhere else.

I just truly wish more things would be made available on POD...

I mena, I understand why many creators don't. And I would not ask any creator to do things that they are not interested in doing. Your book is your baby, you do what you want with it.

 I just would like to make the case that it is worth considering. If nothing else so that your work exists for posterity, and so that it is accessible to those of us who have difficulty with screens, because your work is awesome, and deserves to be appreciated by the widest audience possible.