Monday, June 29, 2009

The Future of the FLGS?

It's a sad fact of life that most Friendly Local Gaming Stores suffer from the same disadvantages and dangers that any "mom and pop" store suffers from, and in an Internet age where a lot of indie and small press game companies are going almost exclusively PDF, the age when you could walk into a game store, pick up a small press RPG product, and flip through it before deciding whether or not to spend your money is rapidly disappearing.

Or is it?

My good friend and savvy Internet sleuth Masakari found this link on boston.com for me today. While an awesome idea for all small bookstores out there, I can also see this as being very cool for one's FLGS. Being attached to various PDF vendors, a savvy FLGS manager could print a "display copy" of some of the more popular products for buyers to come by and get some hands-on experience with, and if someone wants to buy the product, five minutes later they've got a printed and bound paperback copy in their hands.



This is probably not the perfect solution for this problem, but it does tell me that there is a solution somewhere out there in the next five years or so. Once in-store POD becomes an affordable possibility for any FLGS that isn't struggling to keep it's nose above the waterline, I think we'll see the PDF movement - already going fairly strong compared to where it was a couple of years ago - ramp up by orders of magnitude.

Any thoughts?

1 comment:

Timeshadows said...

It certainly is a nice idea, and for those than can afford one, it may make additional revenue.