Dresden Files and Fred's Footsteps

[simonjrogers]

Fred Hicks of Evil Hat has done something rather innovative with the long-awaited Dresden Files. I'm not just talking about the game itself, but also the way in which he is selling it. He's offered pre-orders directly from his webstore, with the PDF now. So far, so meh. But what makes this unique is that he's also giving stores the opportunity to

Comments

[drivingblind]

This also let us get the PDF out there several weeks before the book had to go to press (I sent the last of the files over to the printer today). As a result the game has had an extra four weeks of crowd-sourced proofing and patching. It's going to be a more robust product as a result.

Glad to hear you'll be trying something of your own!

[spencerpine]

That's an excellent point. I've just released A Taste For Murder as a preorder PDF and, already, I'm getting people sending me proofreading comments. I hadn't even considered that as a benefit, but it's a great one.

Graham

Advantages to Giving PDFs to Retailers

[christianaj]

One of the advantages of giving pdfs to retailers to promote a product is that retailers have a direct interest in selling products to pay the bills. Fred's system promotes local stores by encouraging players/buyers to frequent their FLGS, while using the store's own capacities for audience building to attract new DFRPG customers.

He is using Economic principals for the good of the hobby. Sure, there will still be those who got the PDF from a store who torrent the file, but stores will be better able to self-promote advanced sales because they can offer a version of the product immediately.

If you do this with Skulduggery and Space, I'll come buying instantly. I would anyway, as I own all of Pelgrane's stuff, but now I'll buy it from Emerald Knight games instead of the intarnets.