A large-scale print run is a very in-depth process that requires many people to coordinate well in advance. With print runs, they would have to guess how well the book would sell, and order a large number of copies. This is not only cheaper for them, but also has benefits for consumers, and for their development process due to the flexibility of digital publishing. Their FAQ explains that because of a decline in traditional printing, they've moved towards digital and print-on-demand formats instead.

From the looks of it, all of them have been very successful.

They've even been doing regular kickstarter campaigns for high-quality deluxe versions of their new releases. They've simply moved from brick and mortar to digital and print-on-demand format. They are currently publishing under the banner of Onyx Path Publishing, a company formed by White Wolf Creative Director Rich Thomas. But it does discourage more new product generation.Ĭhalking the reduced focus on RPGs up to piracy is the usual 'talking without any data to back it up ' usually one requires proof of an unsupported assertion rather than having to gather proof it's false. Now, for White Wolf having PDF sales makes sense especially for the 'long tail' of their huge back catalogue, where they make recurring sales at practically zero incremental cost to themselves. Looking around for publishers that are transparent with their numbers, Evil Hat reports that the two DFRPG corebooks in Q3 2012 sold 1112 physical and 282 PDF copies. 'Nowadays virtual sells as much as print' is also false. (Not coincidentally, there's a 70% difference between the two prices, a number often cited as how much the printing cost of a product is.) Evil Hat Games releases their numbers too and they also note they make more money per print copy. Some may - but for example Posthuman Studios at their seminar last Gen Con was asked directly 'is it better for you for me to buy your books in PDF or print' and the answer was 'we actually get a higher margin off print.' Eclipse Phase, $15 PDF $49.99 print. 'Publishers make better profit with PDF' is not true. PDF is a great alternate channel but more of the world is offline than we give it credit for nowadays. Print has wider distribution, more people buy print if you are publishing PDF only you can expect a fraction of the sales you would in print. If piracy was their big problem, you'd think they'd move to print and away from PDF! Not that either print or watermarking is any impediment at all to piracy (see: any torrent site). And they are doing less print publishing and more PDF - which is always going to be less successful regardless of piracy, given that the average gamer still buys books. White Wolf's focus has moved to MMOs and is less on RPGs now (like at many companies, sadly).

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