Peter Newman, the Buyer for Bosco's in Anchorage, Alaska, read Marcus King's comments (see "Marcus King of Titan Games & Music on RPG PDFs") regarding the recent RPG PDFs news and had this to say:
I knew Mr. King many years ago when he ran a game store in my home town, Anchorage, Alaska. I've always had respect for him, but I think that he may be wrong on this one:
"In response to the White Wolf announcement that their Exalted 2nd Edition book will be free on PDFs -- I want to know, can they please send my store four free copies of the actual printed book? I mean, if the PDF is free, why would anyone ever need the printed book? And although I have several copies on hand, in stock at both my stores, evidently I am just a schmuck for stocking this title! Golly, thanks White Wolf!"
I've been playing games for over 30 years, and been buying them for a store for over 15 years. I've been hearing good things about Exalted since its 2001 First Edition. In all that time I have never bothered to look at it myself. I downloaded the free PDF this morning. Within an hour I knew that this was a great game that I should have looked at before. I also knew that it was so hard to create a character from the PDF, because "flipping" pages is difficult, that I would be buying a paper copy very soon. I also knew that -- even if the PDF was enough for me -- the game was so good that I'd want to buy some supplements for it.
Maybe it's not just me who thinks that. The proper question is, "Will the added exposure for Exalted mean that we will make more on sales of the core book, to people who want more than a PDF, and on sales of the supplements to people who will want more, than we will lose from people who would have bought the hardcopy, but will now be satisfied with the PDF?"
We'll have to wait and see what the answer is.
The opinions expressed in this Talk Back article are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.
'He may be wrong on this one'
Posted by ICv2 on April 9, 2009 @ 11:00 pm CT

MORE TALK BACK
'Crowdfunding Sites Are Taking Sales Away from Us at Some Point'
June 13, 2022
Mark Craddock of Comic Book World, Inc. in Florence and Louisville, Kentucky saw Paul Alexander Butler's column about Twitter and RPGs, and shared his thoughts.
On Hot Comics, 'Magic' Sales, 'HeroClix', Action Figures, More
December 14, 2021
In this Talk Back, Rod Lamberti of Rodman Comics in Ankeny, Iowa wraps up 2021 with some observations on hot comics, Magic: The Gathering sales, HeroClix plans, action figure sales, and more.
MORE GAMES
New Fantasy Dice Game
August 8, 2022
Queen Games will release DragonQuest , a new fantasy dice game, that will release into retail.
Two Board Games by Czech Edition Games
August 8, 2022
Czech Edition Games previewed prototypes of Starship Captains and Deal with the Devil for ICv2 at Gen Con 2022.