Which is, ah, currently what we do, no?

Well then, go more with general terms. Or maybe a listing of each of the facets of the adventure, IE.

Involves: Action, Combat, Mystery

I understand the intent of missions and I've read enough of the previous two runs to understand how they are set up. Im just trying to make a suggestion of finding a way to pique interest among the other portion of the population: The non-Missions folks. I mean, CGL is going to be giving the product away to the primary consumer: the GMs running Missions. If the product stands to make any money at all then, it has to come from the non-Mission GMs who are looking for a little help fleshing out runs from other GMs (the Missions writers). If you provide them with an overview more than is currently provided (a quick paragraph) you increase the likely hood that they purchase the product. The best way to do this would be to provide some kind of standard set of ratings or descriptors which gives information about the product but doesn't release so much of the published scenario that there si no reason to buy. Of course, I'm betting this has already been thought of, but if not, I figured this was an appropriate place to mention it as I'd rather see the endeavor successful rather than a failure.

Honestly wouldn't know I haven't looked at any of the Missions besides a quick, "Oh shit I've got a game and nothing planned for it" download on one of them. I was just stating my opinion on .pdf sales for Catalyst

I mean for the *other* books we sell -- we post a reasonable [IMO] amount of PDF previews. For the previous Missions seasons, we did not post previews to them as the entire download was free. [And as mentioned, we'll be kicking off the new season with a free download.]

Adam, in my opinion, RPGNow has a decent model for such small downloads as the e-books are planned to be. Usually there is a small preview available that only has the first couple of pages, these include the cover (if there is one) and a table of contents. Anymore than that, and you may as well give the pdf's away for free.

Believe me Adam, you guys do a great job enticing me to buy your stuff

Agreed. I had just found a new group to game with and they rotate games regularly too. Some interest was voiced about a Shadowrun campaign. Might run them through the already released SR Missions but otherwise avoid them altogether.

PDF files are nice and all (I use them all the time at work), but they just don't give me the same feel as a hunk of dead tree does. Plus I am not that keen about paying for files that I may end up losing due to hardware failure. It's much harder to have a book suffer irreparable hardware failure than it a thumb drive, hard drive, or CD.

Just have more copies of it than you use and IIRC you get more than one download when you buy a .pdf

Two things:

#1: We were not going to release Shadowrun Missions as a printed product. It's just not possible to release a monthly small/low price product and make money. With the reduced expense of going direct to PDF, we can manage it. We're going to continue exploring the release of adventures in print, of course.

#2: If you ever have some sort of catastrophic computer failure and don't have your files properly backed up, and all you have to do is get in touch with us and we'll make sure you're able to re-download them all again. And, of course, we encourage you to print out a dead-tree copy for yourself if you want it, and to back it up as appropriate.

I'm actually hungering for full-blown published Shadowrun adventures. I threw my newbie Shadowrunners through "On the Run" and they did fairly well at it, and I thought the adventure had a lot to offer. I'd like to see more advanced adventures of that caliber published.

The Shadowrun Missions so far are good for giving me ideas to put into my game, but I haven't seen one that's been so wonderful that I just HAD to use it. However that might have something to do with the fact that I was running my game in Seattle and the last SR:M was set in Denver.

I don't know if I'd pay $5 for them unless the preview material was in-depth enough to let me know that I would REALLY want to run my folks through it.

I have less of a problem with PDF adventures than I do rulebooks. I find scrolling through Rulebooks on a monitor or laptop to be tedious during a game. It's easier and quicker for me to thumb through a hard copy book.

Adventures it's much easier to have the PDF on standby since you typically don't have to thumb through it constantly while playing.

Or, head on over to http://mozy.com/home and set yourself up with cheap, online backups for $5 a month. It can probably be done for free with some amount of work, but Mozy has saved my ass a bunch of times.

What's the signal-to-noise ratio on printing collections of Missions scenarios? Obviously, it ain't gonna happen for SRM01 or SRM02, but what about The Future?

Behold!

(actually, i figure Adam probably already knows about that, since afaict it's how you get ED books in print)

I'm well aware of LuLu -- hell, I worked on a charity project [with Shadowrun content!] -- that was published via LuLu. We've run the numbers, talked to other people who use LuLu, and it's not a viable option for Catalyst to make money. The per-unit cost is too high to sell the books into distribution, and so we're looking at direct sales only, which frankly aren't high enough to make the projects profitable enough.

I'm not saying they couldn't "make money" -- but there are things that we should be working on that will make "more money." Frankly, it makes more sense to wait 8 months, see how the PDFs sold, see how they were received, and then look into releasing a compilation book, as opposed to putting all of the Missions out via LuLu.

LuLu rocks if you're working on a small scale or personal project -- heck, I'm working on a non-Catalyst series of books that very likely will end up on LuLu if I ever make the time to finish them -- but when you're trying to generate enough money to cover salaries and the like, it's just not cost effective.

There are other printers that use similar technology to do short run printing [under 500 copies or so] at much more competitive prices that LuLu, but then you have to add in all the other expenses that are invisible or not-present with LuLu [up front payment for print order, shipping those books to your warehouse, warehousing them, shipping them out to customers/distributors, etc.] and some of the other trials and tribulations that would come with these products [retailers don't particularly like slim products being a prime one] and ... well, we looked at it, and we're not doing it.

Much like RedBrick does with the Shards series for Earthdawn.

to clarify, as i understand LuLu, it is possible for me (the consumber) buy a print-on-demand product published by someone else (say, for example, some company which we shall call Catalyst Game Labs) who are selling some product, (we'll just pretend it's a series of adventures set in New York City in a cyberpunk setting with magic thrown in for good measure... let's call this product 'Shadowrun Missions, shall we?).

so i could go to LuLu and have them print off only 1 copy of a given book as i understand it... have i misunderstood that? never actually *used* their services (i personally have no problem whatsoever owning PDFs as opposed to print) but that's what it seemed was possible.

of course, buying a single small booklet like that is probably horribly expensive compared to a full-blown book which is bought in bulk, but i was just pointing out it is possible, as i understand it, for someone who *really* wants the product in question in printed format rather than PDF, to do so

Yes, that's how LuLu works from a consumer POV.

However, as I've pointed out several times, for Catalyst, it is not possible to make enough money via that setup to cover the costs it will incur.

Well you could do PDF's and then again if you just had a large book binding a whole bunch of SR missions and SR "updated missions" (maybe old missions that can be translated a little better into SR4) I think there would be quite a few people who would pick it up. Trying to sell 16-45 pages for missions probably won't do very well but 150-170 pages of missions I think would make quite a lot of SR GMs very very happy campers.

Yes ... as already mentioned, we'll of course look at the feasibility of doing a compilation book, sometime down the road.

I thought I would just repeat the obvious. Also don't forget you need air and food to live. Hurty things hurt, and always, always remember that tasty things taste good.

Here's how to point out the obvious in a way that makes it relevant to whoever you're trying to convince to do something: say "I would buy this if you did it", not "You could do this."

I have to say, I prefer bound books for my collection. They look good on my shelf, they feel great to flip through on my own time, but when I'm running a campaign, I prefer .pdfs. I own every Shadowrun book ever released in English, though all 4 editions, but I've also backed up every single one on .pdf. And the reason for that is that ctrl+f is your friend when people start throwing you curveballs. If I'm flipping through a book, I look like an amateur, and the players know they might be veering away in the wrong direction. However, if all I do is a few quick keystrokes, they have no idea which direction they're heading. It's quicker for me and more practical to just flip open a laptop and go.

In short: I know that personally, I'd love to have a .pdf release of campaigns, but I'd also (in an instant) purchase a bundled copy of campaigns to sit on my shelf next to all the other pretty spines.

Plus it saves trees and all that.