How Does This PDF/PoD Combo Deal Work Anyway?

The View From the Path

Last year, we started to offer the PDF versions of our books earlier than the physical printed books so that we could avail ourselves of all the detail-oriented eyes in our fantastic fan community. This has worked out really well, and we’ve been able to proceed to making the physical files with far less errata. The one hitch in the whole thing is that some of the folks who want to get the PDF when we first offer it and help us, also want to purchase the physical Print on Demand version and would purchase the PDF/PoD combo if we were offering that right then. So in order not to penalize our “early adopters”, Onyx Path worked out a plan with DriveThruRPG to send discount links to those PDF purchasers that will enable them to get the PoD version discounted as if they were purchasing the combo right then. Which they effectively are since they already paid full price for the PDF.

Using DTRPG’s tools, we can create a discount link and send a message containing the link to every purchaser of the PDF. All this takes place within DTRPG’s system, so who gets the message is pretty automatic. BUT, as we have noted before and in the latest PDF product descriptions, the purchaser must allow messages from White Wolf and DTRPG in order for the messages with the discount link to get to them.

Here is a link to the account options:

http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/ account_contact_options.php? site=dtrpg

And the thing is- you have to have your settings set to receive messages BEFORE we send out the discount link message. It’s a single, mass email occurrence that we manually trigger that uses the DTRPG database to send to the PDF purchasers. The link doesn’t then fire off every time somebody changes their settings to allow messaging. And we simply don’t have the bandwidth to individually hand out discounts to each purchaser- I’d love us to have that sort of Customer Service Department someday, but right now we just can’t do that. Of course, Onyx Path and DTRPG are more than willing to work with purchasers if there’s an actual glitch in the data- we want folks to feel confident in getting the PDFs whenever they want and then to get these discounts and pick up the PoD books too.

Purchasers must also be careful to check their Spam filters too- sometimes messages from publishers get caught in those.

And of course the reason I’m mentioning all this is because of our recent blockbuster success with Blood & Smoke made us aware of the couple of folks who bought the PDF and never made sure their settings allowed messages from us about the PoD discount. We don’t want that to happen to you.

Finally, please be aware that this deal is only for people who purchased the PDF before the PoD was available- once both are on sale we don’t send out the discount if you only purchase the PDF.

So that’s the deal with the way we’re currently rolling out pretty much all of our games- hope you find it helpful!

Thanks!