D&D beyond as of today i think is now owned by Wizards Of The Coast. So could the add a feature that we can import our physical books into the digital D&D Beyond format?
The planned aquisition of DDB by WOTC was announced today, but if you read the full press release, it still has various legal and regulatory hoops to go through,; WOTC does not yet own DDB, but will assuming everything goes to plan.
So now that it's official (granted legal acquisitions taking time to process) are there any new news in this?
No.
And even if they decided right now, immediately, that "yes, we'll do this" -- it'll still take months to implement. At earliest. It's not easy to put into place. They can't just press a button and magically it's in place. It's a logistical nightmare to implement reasonably and with minimal initial loss. And that's even without factoring the financial plans and getting legalities all squared up.
It'll be a long time before they'll make an announcement on this - and if they do there will not be any need to check these forums, there'd be banners, emails and front page notices about it. Also, it's unlikely they'll ever do it, and even if they do, it'll be a long time to put into place.
Check back in a year.
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Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond. Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ thisFAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
How come they can't have conversion? I have about... 300-450$ worth of books and I can't spend that money twice. It would be a really nice feature for this site. It's a great place, but if they added that, it'd be 2 times as awesome!!! :D
How come they can't have conversion? I have about... 300-450$ worth of books and I can't spend that money twice. It would be a really nice feature for this site. It's a great place, but if they added that, it'd be 2 times as awesome!!! :D
The simplest answer to why they might not ever offer conversion on previously purchased books: no unique codes to ensure one book only generates one online copy. Future books, if WotC decides to, can each easily have unique codes to allow free/discounted DnDBeyond access. But existing books don't have anything unique to identify one copy from another.
If all they used was the UPC, Bob could share his PHB UPC with his 2000 twitter followers and they'd all get it free.
WotC is likely not going to do anything resembling that.
If something comes in the future, it'll likely be a unique QR or a randomly generated coupon code printed in the physical copies. Hopefully done well enough that when you scratch the coating it doesn't ruin the code (we've all seen that...well, at least most people who've scratched a code coating off something have).
I do hope that WoTC adds this in the future. While I greatly value the convenience of digital editions, often I just want to sit down away from a screen and read a physical book. The D&D books are a large investment and being limited to a single format (unless you pay that investment twice) is frustrating.
While I appreciate that the digital and physical editions are different products, many other companies do this successfully. For instance, I've bought many medical textbooks over the years, many of these costing $200-$300+ each. The medical publishing companies love profits, yet most Medical texts now have unique single-use codes that provide free access to an enhanced digital edition (which contain many convenience features such as high resolution graphics, videos, reference hyperlinking, and interactive comprehension tests). These codes are printed on a scratch sticker inside the cover. This practice is prevalent in the industry, so there must be a strong incentive. The best platform is owned by Elsevier and, since it's implementation, I have almost exclusively bought Elsevier books.
I don't know if WoTC faces the same competitive pressures as the medical publishers, but offering free digital access would most likely push their book sales. That being said, there's probably better margins on the digital editions, so it might not make sense on their balance sheets. I'm sure it would generate a ton of good will, but the benefits of that are less tangible and don't clearly show up in the accounting. Also, companies like Amazon don't give you free access to the Kindle version when you but a physical book, so there's examples both ways. It is notable, however, that Amazon does generally charge less for the Kindle edition than they do for the same physical book. Amazon also doesn't own the copyright and physical book publishing platform for the Kindle books they sell, which would make it more logistically challenging, to say the least, for Amazon to offer this.
I guess that only time will tell which way WoTC decides to go.
I completely understand that there is a LOT of work and time and skill involved in the process of porting the content and items, etc. into this site. And that makes the versions on here much more powerful when linked to be used to create characters and encounters and such. Nonetheless it would be extremely helpful if there was SOME credit in the form of a significant discount like 40 or 50% given to anyone that has the physical book. That way there is compensation for the work done here and credit for the buyer who has already paid for the content in book form. And it is easy to provide proof of purchase; if you bought a book on Amazon, for instance, you can download the invoice in PDF format and send it.
No their is a possibility Wizards Of The Coast will buy DND Beyond, so physical to virtual could happen
Just because something is possible does not mean it is probable.
It is possible for the oil industry to turn a new leaf and reinvent themselves as green energy companies.
It is possible for consumers to realize turning physical products into digital products is not as cheap as they think it is, employees need to be compensated fairly for that task, customers have to pay for the convenience of digital products, and not every potential customer is a worth catering to.
WotC has already announced that their parent company (Hasbro) is purchasing D&D Beyond for $146.3M. It looks like that's a done deal. Who knows if they'll be giving access to the digital content with physical books in the future. Yes the digital content is time consuming to make but other industries already do this, likely because it boosts their overall sales.
For all we know, Hasbro could go a completely different direction and include all the source material in the subscription price and jack the monthly cost up. WoTC and D&D have, apparently, become a major part of Hasbro's revenue. They'll find the best way to monetize D&D beyond. Maybe they'll decide bundling the digital and physical books is the best way to go, maybe not. I'm not a marketing strategist.
WotC has already announced that their parent company (Hasbro) is purchasing D&D Beyond for $146.3M. It looks like that's a done deal. Who knows if they'll be giving access to the digital content with physical books in the future. Yes the digital content is time consuming to make but other industries already do this, likely because it boosts their overall sales.
For all we know, Hasbro could go a completely different direction and include all the source material in the subscription price and jack the monthly cost up. WoTC and D&D have, apparently, become a major part of Hasbro's revenue. They'll find the best way to monetize D&D beyond. Maybe they'll decide bundling the digital and physical books is the best way to go, maybe not. I'm not a marketing strategist.
What some people keep failing to understand is that other industries generally do NOT do this. Bundling physical and digital products is NOT the norm, and they are usually sold separately. For every bundled product you can find, you can find dozens or hundreds of them not being bundled.
WotC has already announced that their parent company (Hasbro) is purchasing D&D Beyond for $146.3M. It looks like that's a done deal. Who knows if they'll be giving access to the digital content with physical books in the future. Yes the digital content is time consuming to make but other industries already do this, likely because it boosts their overall sales.
For all we know, Hasbro could go a completely different direction and include all the source material in the subscription price and jack the monthly cost up. WoTC and D&D have, apparently, become a major part of Hasbro's revenue. They'll find the best way to monetize D&D beyond. Maybe they'll decide bundling the digital and physical books is the best way to go, maybe not. I'm not a marketing strategist.
What some people keep failing to understand is that other industries generally do NOT do this. Bundling physical and digital products is NOT the norm, and they are usually sold separately. For every bundled product you can find, you can find dozens or hundreds of them not being bundled.
I'm not sure why you would think that I don't understand this. It's true that most products don't do this. Some people have made the comparison to buying from your local bookstore and expecting Amazon to give you the Kindle version for free, that may have been the case, but it's no longer accurate now that Hasbro owns both the D&D Beyond digital platform and the copyrights to the content in the physical books. They're now structured more like the text book publishers that do this regularly.
With nearly all medical text books I can buy a physical text book from my local bookstore and have access to the digital version of that book on the publishers digital platform via a unique code printed under a scratch off sticker. Hasbro could now easily do this if they wanted. D&D Beyond even has the "Redeem a Key" infrastructure built already. However, if they want to do it is a different question.
To be clear, the text book publishers that bundle these products definitely don't do it for altruistic reasons. They want to boost profits and this is likely a value-add feature that they've tracked an come to the conclusion that it helps them sell more books and boost their overall revenues. I don't know if this model would work for WoTC, but it would make a lot of their customers happy and, while less tangible, there's monetary value to that. I don't know what proportion of their sales are physical versus digital, but I also wouldn't be very surprised if they started bundling the digital and physical books in order to drive more people to the online platform. D&D beyond is, after all, much easier to use, and it will have much higher profit margins for WoTC given that they're now able to sell the digital products direct to consumers with no production or physical distribution costs. They also get to benefit from subscription fees on top of content purchases. I'm sure they'd love to convert as many pen and paper players to digital as possible.
WoTC has had huge success with their digital adaptations of MtG and I wouldn't be surprised if they try to replicate that with D&D. In fact, I'd bet that they'll try to acquire Roll20 or some other VTT next and began work to merge it with D&D Beyond to create a unified digital platform. That would certainly increase their subscription base and they could also then rake in the profits from selling digital map packs, unique player tokens, animated spell effects, and other assets in addition to the source and adventure book contents.
Willio_S, if WotC/D&D Beyond offered gaining access to digital copies from owning physical ones, as mentioned numerous times previously, they would be giving away all the coding they put time, money, and effort into to make using that content more convenient in the website for free and would no longer make nearly as much money that they could use to further improve an already amazing resource.
With nearly all medical text books I can buy a physical text book from my local bookstore and have access to the digital version of that book on the publishers digital platform via a unique code printed under a scratch off sticker. Hasbro could now easily do this if they wanted. D&D Beyond even has the "Redeem a Key" infrastructure built already. However, if they want to do it is a different question.
I keep seeing medical text books as a valid argument for why Hasbro/WoTC could, or even should, include digital access to this online tool with the purchase of physical copies. Isn't the price range of most medical textbooks in the several hundred dollar range? For that kind of price range I would expect some digital or online tool to be provided. Do you want to pay three figures for a D&D book just so it includes a code to use dndbeyond for free?
The planned aquisition of DDB by WOTC was announced today, but if you read the full press release, it still has various legal and regulatory hoops to go through,; WOTC does not yet own DDB, but will assuming everything goes to plan.
Trying to Decide if DDB is for you? A few helpful threads: A Buyer's Guide to DDB; What I/We Bought and Why; How some DMs use DDB; A Newer Thread on Using DDB to Play
Helpful threads on other topics: Homebrew FAQ by IamSposta; Accessing Content by ConalTheGreat;
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So now that it's official (granted legal acquisitions taking time to process) are there any new news in this?
No.
And even if they decided right now, immediately, that "yes, we'll do this" -- it'll still take months to implement. At earliest. It's not easy to put into place. They can't just press a button and magically it's in place. It's a logistical nightmare to implement reasonably and with minimal initial loss. And that's even without factoring the financial plans and getting legalities all squared up.
It'll be a long time before they'll make an announcement on this - and if they do there will not be any need to check these forums, there'd be banners, emails and front page notices about it. Also, it's unlikely they'll ever do it, and even if they do, it'll be a long time to put into place.
Check back in a year.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
How come they can't have conversion? I have about... 300-450$ worth of books and I can't spend that money twice. It would be a really nice feature for this site. It's a great place, but if they added that, it'd be 2 times as awesome!!! :D
See the comment above yours.
The simplest answer to why they might not ever offer conversion on previously purchased books: no unique codes to ensure one book only generates one online copy. Future books, if WotC decides to, can each easily have unique codes to allow free/discounted DnDBeyond access. But existing books don't have anything unique to identify one copy from another.
If all they used was the UPC, Bob could share his PHB UPC with his 2000 twitter followers and they'd all get it free.
WotC is likely not going to do anything resembling that.
If something comes in the future, it'll likely be a unique QR or a randomly generated coupon code printed in the physical copies. Hopefully done well enough that when you scratch the coating it doesn't ruin the code (we've all seen that...well, at least most people who've scratched a code coating off something have).
Mate, the could use sn of the inside book ;) they wont do that cuz this way more money flying in ;)
the books don't have unique serial numbers
I do hope that WoTC adds this in the future. While I greatly value the convenience of digital editions, often I just want to sit down away from a screen and read a physical book. The D&D books are a large investment and being limited to a single format (unless you pay that investment twice) is frustrating.
While I appreciate that the digital and physical editions are different products, many other companies do this successfully. For instance, I've bought many medical textbooks over the years, many of these costing $200-$300+ each. The medical publishing companies love profits, yet most Medical texts now have unique single-use codes that provide free access to an enhanced digital edition (which contain many convenience features such as high resolution graphics, videos, reference hyperlinking, and interactive comprehension tests). These codes are printed on a scratch sticker inside the cover. This practice is prevalent in the industry, so there must be a strong incentive. The best platform is owned by Elsevier and, since it's implementation, I have almost exclusively bought Elsevier books.
I don't know if WoTC faces the same competitive pressures as the medical publishers, but offering free digital access would most likely push their book sales. That being said, there's probably better margins on the digital editions, so it might not make sense on their balance sheets. I'm sure it would generate a ton of good will, but the benefits of that are less tangible and don't clearly show up in the accounting. Also, companies like Amazon don't give you free access to the Kindle version when you but a physical book, so there's examples both ways. It is notable, however, that Amazon does generally charge less for the Kindle edition than they do for the same physical book. Amazon also doesn't own the copyright and physical book publishing platform for the Kindle books they sell, which would make it more logistically challenging, to say the least, for Amazon to offer this.
I guess that only time will tell which way WoTC decides to go.
I completely understand that there is a LOT of work and time and skill involved in the process of porting the content and items, etc. into this site. And that makes the versions on here much more powerful when linked to be used to create characters and encounters and such. Nonetheless it would be extremely helpful if there was SOME credit in the form of a significant discount like 40 or 50% given to anyone that has the physical book. That way there is compensation for the work done here and credit for the buyer who has already paid for the content in book form. And it is easy to provide proof of purchase; if you bought a book on Amazon, for instance, you can download the invoice in PDF format and send it.
Short answer, it’s never gonna happen. Get over it.
Creating Epic Boons on DDB
DDB Buyers' Guide
Hardcovers, DDB & You
Content Troubleshooting
:(
yeah but then people would fake having the book
No their is a possibility Wizards Of The Coast will buy DND Beyond, so physical to virtual could happen
Just because something is possible does not mean it is probable.
It is possible for the oil industry to turn a new leaf and reinvent themselves as green energy companies.
It is possible for consumers to realize turning physical products into digital products is not as cheap as they think it is, employees need to be compensated fairly for that task, customers have to pay for the convenience of digital products, and not every potential customer is a worth catering to.
Check Licenses and Resync Entitlements: < https://www.dndbeyond.com/account/licenses >
Running the Game by Matt Colville; Introduction: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8 >
D&D with High School Students by Bill Allen; Season 1 Episode 1: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52NJTUDokyk&t >
WotC has already announced that their parent company (Hasbro) is purchasing D&D Beyond for $146.3M. It looks like that's a done deal. Who knows if they'll be giving access to the digital content with physical books in the future. Yes the digital content is time consuming to make but other industries already do this, likely because it boosts their overall sales.
For all we know, Hasbro could go a completely different direction and include all the source material in the subscription price and jack the monthly cost up. WoTC and D&D have, apparently, become a major part of Hasbro's revenue. They'll find the best way to monetize D&D beyond. Maybe they'll decide bundling the digital and physical books is the best way to go, maybe not. I'm not a marketing strategist.
What some people keep failing to understand is that other industries generally do NOT do this. Bundling physical and digital products is NOT the norm, and they are usually sold separately. For every bundled product you can find, you can find dozens or hundreds of them not being bundled.
Check Licenses and Resync Entitlements: < https://www.dndbeyond.com/account/licenses >
Running the Game by Matt Colville; Introduction: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e-YZvLUXcR8 >
D&D with High School Students by Bill Allen; Season 1 Episode 1: < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52NJTUDokyk&t >
I'm not sure why you would think that I don't understand this. It's true that most products don't do this. Some people have made the comparison to buying from your local bookstore and expecting Amazon to give you the Kindle version for free, that may have been the case, but it's no longer accurate now that Hasbro owns both the D&D Beyond digital platform and the copyrights to the content in the physical books. They're now structured more like the text book publishers that do this regularly.
With nearly all medical text books I can buy a physical text book from my local bookstore and have access to the digital version of that book on the publishers digital platform via a unique code printed under a scratch off sticker. Hasbro could now easily do this if they wanted. D&D Beyond even has the "Redeem a Key" infrastructure built already. However, if they want to do it is a different question.
To be clear, the text book publishers that bundle these products definitely don't do it for altruistic reasons. They want to boost profits and this is likely a value-add feature that they've tracked an come to the conclusion that it helps them sell more books and boost their overall revenues. I don't know if this model would work for WoTC, but it would make a lot of their customers happy and, while less tangible, there's monetary value to that. I don't know what proportion of their sales are physical versus digital, but I also wouldn't be very surprised if they started bundling the digital and physical books in order to drive more people to the online platform. D&D beyond is, after all, much easier to use, and it will have much higher profit margins for WoTC given that they're now able to sell the digital products direct to consumers with no production or physical distribution costs. They also get to benefit from subscription fees on top of content purchases. I'm sure they'd love to convert as many pen and paper players to digital as possible.
WoTC has had huge success with their digital adaptations of MtG and I wouldn't be surprised if they try to replicate that with D&D. In fact, I'd bet that they'll try to acquire Roll20 or some other VTT next and began work to merge it with D&D Beyond to create a unified digital platform. That would certainly increase their subscription base and they could also then rake in the profits from selling digital map packs, unique player tokens, animated spell effects, and other assets in addition to the source and adventure book contents.
Willio_S, if WotC/D&D Beyond offered gaining access to digital copies from owning physical ones, as mentioned numerous times previously, they would be giving away all the coding they put time, money, and effort into to make using that content more convenient in the website for free and would no longer make nearly as much money that they could use to further improve an already amazing resource.
I keep seeing medical text books as a valid argument for why Hasbro/WoTC could, or even should, include digital access to this online tool with the purchase of physical copies. Isn't the price range of most medical textbooks in the several hundred dollar range? For that kind of price range I would expect some digital or online tool to be provided. Do you want to pay three figures for a D&D book just so it includes a code to use dndbeyond for free?
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