Starting this summer, Catalyst Game Labs will partner with hobby retailers to offer PDFs of their role-playing books through brick and mortar stores. The program was announced shortly before last week’s GTS and comes in the wake of Wizards of the Coast ceasing sales of all its PDF products (see “WotC Ends PDF Download Sales”) and announcements of other companies’ continued support of the format (see “RPG PDF Publishers Double Down”).

For each sale in a store, a retailer will submit the customer’s information, including e-mail address, to a Catalyst Website. An e-mail will then be sent to the customer containing a download link for the PDF. The customer can simply download the PDF and conclude the purchase. Alternatively, the customer can create an account with Catalyst and “save” his or her purchase and download the PDF at a later time in case of data loss.

“The PDF sales through brick-and-mortar [retailers] allow us to get additional eyes on our product and allows the retailers to share in the sales and offer their consumers a better product and a better buying experience,” said Catalyst Operations Manager David Stansel-Garner.

As an added incentive, retailers who pre-order Catalyst products may receive a discount on the price of PDF purchases of additional products, as part of a “bundle” deal. Though exact pricing details have yet to be announced, the retailer discount should be similar to the discount offered through distributors (about 45% to 50%). While the concept isn’t entirely original – a few manufacturers, notably Evil Hat Productions, have experimented with in-store PDF sales or add-ons to physical sales (see “Fred Hicks of Evil Hat Productions on RPG PDFs”) – Stansel-Garner said that reaction to Catalyst’s announcement was “overwhelmingly positive” among retailers at GTS.