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Is Shadows of Light worth looking for a copy of these days?

Nightbane, Between the Shadows, Nightlands, and Through the Glass Darkly. Waiting on Nightbane Survival Guide to arrive at current. Which I hear that one is pretty good?

But Shadows of Light seems much harder to come by these days. I'm curious those of you who have had a look at it, what you think, and whether it is something worth the effort of getting with it out of print at current.

Dark wrote:Is Shadows of Light worth looking for a copy of these days?

Nightbane, Between the Shadows, Nightlands, and Through the Glass Darkly. Waiting on Nightbane Survival Guide to arrive at current. Which I hear that one is pretty good?

But Shadows of Light seems much harder to come by these days. I'm curious those of you who have had a look at it, what you think, and whether it is something worth the effort of getting with it out of print at current.

You can get a PDF of it from DrivethruRPG.com I believe its 22.95 for a copy.

I found that there was stuff in the book that I could use. I Especially liked the new psi classes, the drug that makes them and the powers they have. Personally I found it worth while to get my PDF. If I can get a new physical copy I would like it, but I am not going to go out of my way to do so.

eliakon wrote:

Dark wrote:Is Shadows of Light worth looking for a copy of these days?

Nightbane, Between the Shadows, Nightlands, and Through the Glass Darkly. Waiting on Nightbane Survival Guide to arrive at current. Which I hear that one is pretty good?

But Shadows of Light seems much harder to come by these days. I'm curious those of you who have had a look at it, what you think, and whether it is something worth the effort of getting with it out of print at current.

You can get a PDF of it from DrivethruRPG.com I believe its 22.95 for a copy.

I found that there was stuff in the book that I could use. I Especially liked the new psi classes, the drug that makes them and the powers they have. Personally I found it worth while to get my PDF. If I can get a new physical copy I would like it, but I am not going to go out of my way to do so.

Holy crap, that is way overpriced!

The Beast wrote:

eliakon wrote:

Dark wrote:Is Shadows of Light worth looking for a copy of these days?

Nightbane, Between the Shadows, Nightlands, and Through the Glass Darkly. Waiting on Nightbane Survival Guide to arrive at current. Which I hear that one is pretty good?

But Shadows of Light seems much harder to come by these days. I'm curious those of you who have had a look at it, what you think, and whether it is something worth the effort of getting with it out of print at current.

You can get a PDF of it from DrivethruRPG.com I believe its 22.95 for a copy.

I found that there was stuff in the book that I could use. I Especially liked the new psi classes, the drug that makes them and the powers they have. Personally I found it worth while to get my PDF. If I can get a new physical copy I would like it, but I am not going to go out of my way to do so.

Holy crap, that is way overpriced!

It's the Palladium way. They only sell PDFs of out-of-print titles, and they charge damn near as much as you'd pay for a hard copy. And then when sales are dismal because they're only selling titles that aren't in demand and they're charging more than the market will bear, they turn around and say "Yeah we trialed PDFs and they didn't sell, so we were right when we decided not to do PDFs of current titles".

Rallan wrote:

The Beast wrote:

eliakon wrote:

Dark wrote:Is Shadows of Light worth looking for a copy of these days?

Nightbane, Between the Shadows, Nightlands, and Through the Glass Darkly. Waiting on Nightbane Survival Guide to arrive at current. Which I hear that one is pretty good?

But Shadows of Light seems much harder to come by these days. I'm curious those of you who have had a look at it, what you think, and whether it is something worth the effort of getting with it out of print at current.

You can get a PDF of it from DrivethruRPG.com I believe its 22.95 for a copy.

I found that there was stuff in the book that I could use. I Especially liked the new psi classes, the drug that makes them and the powers they have. Personally I found it worth while to get my PDF. If I can get a new physical copy I would like it, but I am not going to go out of my way to do so.

Holy crap, that is way overpriced!

It's the Palladium way. They only sell PDFs of out-of-print titles, and they charge damn near as much as you'd pay for a hard copy. And then when sales are dismal because they're only selling titles that aren't in demand and they're charging more than the market will bear, they turn around and say "Yeah we trialed PDFs and they didn't sell, so we were right when we decided not to do PDFs of current titles".

I don't see why people think that the PDF book should be significantly cheaper. Your still getting the same book so why not pay the same amount? Now if the books are PDF only then sure...but if the book competes with the physical copy then no, you pay the same amount for both books (unless they WANT to stop selling paper copies).
Regardless I had to estimate the cost because I only paid 11.50 for mine (I do not recall the details on the discount but my drivethru account shows 11.50 as the purchase price the 22.00 is struck through)

Because the margins on a paper/physical product are totally different from those of a PDF sale? You have continuing production/stocking/logistics costs for providing/selling a physical product that justify a higher price that don't exist with PDF sales. So in short, they are worth more because they cost more to produce and deliver to the customer. PDF sales don't have these as a component, and just simply put are not a physical book in your hands. There is no reason the two should cost the same.

Dark wrote:Because the margins on a paper/physical product are totally different from those of a PDF sale? You have continuing production/stocking/logistics costs for providing/selling a physical product that justify a higher price that don't exist with PDF sales. So in short, they are worth more because they cost more to produce and deliver to the customer. PDF sales don't have these as a component, and just simply put are not a physical book in your hands. There is no reason the two should cost the same.

If they don't cost the same though then the PDF is competing with the Paper book.
So what your saying is that they should cut their own paper-book sales throats......
That's fine if you want Palladium to go to pure PDF, but if we want them to keep printing paper books (And I for one want that) then they need to not compete with themselves. Not to mention that the savings on the physical book are not that impressive if your only selling a smaller number of books total. The development costs (Writers hours, editing, proofreading ect) are flat. And the margins are not that great to start with. Remember palladium sells a copies of books in the 'few thousand' not in the 'hundreds of thousands' so they need to recoup more per margin because they have less of a total pool to play with.

Dark wrote:Is Shadows of Light worth looking for a copy of these days?

Nightbane, Between the Shadows, Nightlands, and Through the Glass Darkly. Waiting on Nightbane Survival Guide to arrive at current. Which I hear that one is pretty good?

But Shadows of Light seems much harder to come by these days. I'm curious those of you who have had a look at it, what you think, and whether it is something worth the effort of getting with it out of print at current.

If you are not a "Collector" and you have the copy of the rifter that contains the article that SoL was expanded from...nah not really.

eliakon wrote:

Dark wrote:Because the margins on a paper/physical product are totally different from those of a PDF sale? You have continuing production/stocking/logistics costs for providing/selling a physical product that justify a higher price that don't exist with PDF sales. So in short, they are worth more because they cost more to produce and deliver to the customer. PDF sales don't have these as a component, and just simply put are not a physical book in your hands. There is no reason the two should cost the same.

If they don't cost the same though then the PDF is competing with the Paper book.
So what your saying is that they should cut their own paper-book sales throats......
That's fine if you want Palladium to go to pure PDF, but if we want them to keep printing paper books (And I for one want that) then they need to not compete with themselves. Not to mention that the savings on the physical book are not that impressive if your only selling a smaller number of books total. The development costs (Writers hours, editing, proofreading ect) are flat. And the margins are not that great to start with. Remember palladium sells a copies of books in the 'few thousand' not in the 'hundreds of thousands' so they need to recoup more per margin because they have less of a total pool to play with.

There are small publishers all over Drivethru that sell POD books and PDFs both with more reasonable prices. I'd hesitate to speculate about Palladium's numbers/factors/problems... but if one-man shops can do it, with apparent success, I'd like to think Palladium can and would be benefited in doing so as well. I may be wrong.

eliakon wrote:I don't see why people think that the PDF book should be significantly cheaper. Your still getting the same book so why not pay the same amount? Now if the books are PDF only then sure...but if the book competes with the physical copy then no, you pay the same amount for both books (unless they WANT to stop selling paper copies).
Regardless I had to estimate the cost because I only paid 11.50 for mine (I do not recall the details on the discount but my drivethru account shows 11.50 as the purchase price the 22.00 is struck through)

Because you aren't getting a physical product that you can hold in your hands and add to your impressive collection, and a whole bunch of expenses that have to be covered in traditional publishing (printing, shipping, distributors, retailers) just don't exist for ebooks.

And it's just how the market turned out. Most publishers charge less for ebooks than regular books because they can and because it drives sales, and consumers aren't impressed by the companies that try to demand twentytwo bucks for a pdf file.

Rallan wrote:

eliakon wrote:I don't see why people think that the PDF book should be significantly cheaper. Your still getting the same book so why not pay the same amount? Now if the books are PDF only then sure...but if the book competes with the physical copy then no, you pay the same amount for both books (unless they WANT to stop selling paper copies).
Regardless I had to estimate the cost because I only paid 11.50 for mine (I do not recall the details on the discount but my drivethru account shows 11.50 as the purchase price the 22.00 is struck through)

Because you aren't getting a physical product that you can hold in your hands and add to your impressive collection, and a whole bunch of expenses that have to be covered in traditional publishing (printing, shipping, distributors, retailers) just don't exist for ebooks.

And it's just how the market turned out. Most publishers charge less for ebooks than regular books because they can and because it drives sales, and consumers aren't impressed by the companies that try to demand twentytwo bucks for a pdf file.

Not only that, but this book didn't sell well enough to justify additional printings. (IIRC, it's Palladium's worst selling book.) It's also said to have been edited poorly to the point that a couple of the sections refer to stuff that were taken out of it (not even in a Rifter). Cutting the price even more might help earn money back.

Rallan wrote:

eliakon wrote:I don't see why people think that the PDF book should be significantly cheaper. Your still getting the same book so why not pay the same amount? Now if the books are PDF only then sure...but if the book competes with the physical copy then no, you pay the same amount for both books (unless they WANT to stop selling paper copies).
Regardless I had to estimate the cost because I only paid 11.50 for mine (I do not recall the details on the discount but my drivethru account shows 11.50 as the purchase price the 22.00 is struck through)

Because you aren't getting a physical product that you can hold in your hands and add to your impressive collection, and a whole bunch of expenses that have to be covered in traditional publishing (printing, shipping, distributors, retailers) just don't exist for ebooks.

And it's just how the market turned out. Most publishers charge less for ebooks than regular books because they can and because it drives sales, and consumers aren't impressed by the companies that try to demand twentytwo bucks for a pdf file.

that market is changing though.
i am finding more and more pdfs that cost just as much as the actual physical copies do.

Usually if that is the case they offer a physical book + PDF bundle however, where you get both at the same time.

Dark wrote:Usually if that is the case they offer a physical book + PDF bundle however, where you get both at the same time.

only if you order direct from the publisher. Get the PDF from anywhere else and you are paying full price. (unless the seller has a sale at some point).

Sometimes (perhaps even frequently) true, but not always. I see things priced like that very frequently on Drivethru for example.

drewkitty ~..~ wrote:If you are not a "Collector" and you have the copy of the rifter that contains the article that SoL was expanded from...nah not really.

I thought those only contained the Detroit/Athanatos. SoL has all kinds of cool stuff I don't recall seeing in the Rifter like psy classes, Nocturne Librarian, Reapers, Dark Guardians, Strigoi

The question asked for a judgment call and that was my judgement call. To run the game does not need to have every single last everything, and the Rifter article has the major items in it, Detroit & the Athanatos.
If the is a player that wants to play one of those classes then that player will have SoL because they are a die hard collector and the GM can just barrow the book to familiarize herself with those things.

To be fair it also has five seven new psionic classes, each of which has special class specific psionic abilities. None of which was reprinted. I would say that psionic classes and powers are a 'major thing' especially since there are rules for other psions to take and use the powers (thus meaning that these powers are relevant to every psi in the game)

However I would say that if you want it, just go get a PDF copy. Its a lot easier to get the PDF than track down a physical copy, and likely to be much cheaper as well.

Damian Magecraft wrote:

Rallan wrote:

eliakon wrote:I don't see why people think that the PDF book should be significantly cheaper. Your still getting the same book so why not pay the same amount? Now if the books are PDF only then sure...but if the book competes with the physical copy then no, you pay the same amount for both books (unless they WANT to stop selling paper copies).
Regardless I had to estimate the cost because I only paid 11.50 for mine (I do not recall the details on the discount but my drivethru account shows 11.50 as the purchase price the 22.00 is struck through)

Because you aren't getting a physical product that you can hold in your hands and add to your impressive collection, and a whole bunch of expenses that have to be covered in traditional publishing (printing, shipping, distributors, retailers) just don't exist for ebooks.

And it's just how the market turned out. Most publishers charge less for ebooks than regular books because they can and because it drives sales, and consumers aren't impressed by the companies that try to demand twentytwo bucks for a pdf file.

that market is changing though.
i am finding more and more pdfs that cost just as much as the actual physical copies do.

The market might be changing, but not many people are going to be impressed at having to pay the full print edition retail price for an ebook version of something that's been consigned to the remainder bin.

Shadows of Light is only $11.49 on DrivethruRPG.com. Certainly worth it in my opinion.