ArM5 PDFs

[mad_irishman]

Dear Atlas staff -

Any chance we'll see some more books available in PDF soon? And if so, which ones are we likely to see?

Now that I'm overseas for a few months PDFs are the only feasible way for me to access the books, so I'm the market to duplicate my hardcopy collection back home...

Thanks,
Patrick

[Michelle Nephew]

I think we're fairly well caught up on getting the out-of-print titles into PDFs right now. We don't currently have any on our "To Do" list.

[thrakhath]

Definately adding my backing to this request, as I am in the unfortunate position of having no space for hard copy, so only buying pdfs at all.

I'm also interested in the 4th edition backlog that hasn't yet been pdf yet, especially the tribunal books.

[The Restless Kaiser]

Oooh yeah, old tribunal books would rock as reprints. Esp. as you already stated it is very unlikely you will release them in 5th edition.

[Michelle Nephew]

As soon as they go out of print, we'll consider them for PDF-ing. We still have copies in the warehouse, though, for now.

[DrewC]

I'm sorry if this has been explained elsewhere, but a quick search didn't turn it up: what is your reasoning for only releasing PDFs for out of print books? I understand that you do so, but I'm wondering why you do so. I count myself among the group that buys PDFs only, for reasons of space. I'm curious why you build in this delay. Thanks in advance.

[John Nephew]

I'm sorry if this has been explained elsewhere, but a quick search didn't turn it up: what is your reasoning for only releasing PDFs for out of print books? I understand that you do so, but I'm wondering why you do so. I count myself among the group that buys PDFs only, for reasons of space. I'm curious why you build in this delay. Thanks in advance.

We've had two reasons up to this point. The first is to support the bricks & mortar retailers, who are really the bread and butter of our business. The second has been that we owned the rights to a lot of out-of-print titles, and we wanted to prioritize making available those titles because they were not otherwise on the market.

I have to admit, I've been thinking about changing this policy. I don't think we'd switch to simultaneous release of books in PDF, but now that the out-of-print books are available in digital form, the next category we might think about are the books that are still in print but haven't been widely distributed in years. For example, few if any of the supplements for Over the Edge are available through the typical game distributor (and some of them are probably not stocked by any game distributors anymore); these days most of the sales of these titles go through Amazon and Warehouse 23, because few local game stores will even as a special order get something like a 16-page OTE adventure that was published in the early 90s, even if we have a few hundred printed copies in our warehouse.

So if we find some time to work on getting more PDFs together, books that are, let's say, in print but 5+ years old are likely to be the next candidates for PDFing.

[DrewC]

I understand and respect your desire to support your core business through brick and mortar stores. I certainly don't expect you to move to releasing PDFs simultaneously with the hard copy books (though I'd be very happy if you did), but the thing I'm really missing is PDF copies of long available core books. It doesn't strike me that a book like the Ars Magica 5th Edition core book is going to go out of print any time soon, and it's available in fairly wide distribution. I own a hard copy edition, but I'd really like to buy a PDF copy as well. I don't imagine I'm the only person who would want to own both a PDF and hard copy.

[Xavi]

I second that request. I own 2 core books, but a PDF version would be really appreciated. Maybe showing some proof of ownership of the core book in printed version we can get the PDF for a few bucks more? Probably not going to happen, but you can still hope

Cheers,
Xavi