Death of the LGS

[Edena_of_Neith]

I believe in sympathy. Sympathy doesn't help the person or industry you sympathize with, or even necessarily generate goodwill, but I still believe in it.

I sympathize with FLGS (or LGS, or whatever.) If they are going out of business, I sympathize.
I sympathize with a lot of our Hobby that has suffered and/or disappeared altogether.

Adversary has hurt us badly. We must face all the troubles of life, and now economy realities and competition from other pastimes has dwindled our Hobby.
Indeed, I have compared what has happened to the tabletop D&D industry, to Tolkien's Battle of Unnumbered Tears, as a metaphor. So many things lost, so much pain, so much loss, that no one tale or song can contain all the grief.

But we are still here, and the Hobby is still here. If the metaphor is extended, we still have hope. Gondolin still stands. Nargothrond is hidden. Doriath is defended. Ulmo aids us. It is not the end.

Blaming or demonizing or attacking FLGS (or even LGS) will do nothing to help our situation. It is more like the beginning of enacting out the Tale of Turin Turambar. Why go that way? There is hope for the future, for our Hobby, for D&D. People have lost hope, but I still see hope. Our tabletop D&D Hobby will have another golden age. We will endure.

 

[Corjay]

Thank you, Gandolf.

Hey, can you make a beautiful willing maiden appear before me? Naked and glistening, preferably.

Oh, and no STD's.

 

[Edena_of_Neith]

LOL. I present thee with Luthien the Fair, the most beautiful maid who ever walked within the confines of Arda. : )

-

(views the above post, and sighs)

And, if everyone wants to enact the Tale of Turin Turambar, metaphorically, we can do that too.

I spoke of sympathy.
The Adversary does not grant sympathy, that's for sure. That Adversary is not a Dark Lord in Angband, but it is every bit as relentless and terrible as Morgoth ever was. Such is the nature of Economic Reality.

 

[JDJblatherings]

Stores and extras-

Years back I was a co-owner of a comic shop, our best selling items were these rather good lollipops we sold for 35 cents each or 3 for a dollar. Maybe we'd have done better business as a candy shop/comic rack. Special orders ,even with our generous discount, were also profitable but we got the money first.

 

[Belen]

Can you provide some examples? I'm not a huge supporter of conglomerate-shopping, but I'm having a hard time accepting that retailers like Walmart or Target raise their median prices above what smaller, independent retailers used to charge in the same market.

Jiffylube: The started out undercutting oil changes. The second they came to dominate the market, the prices rose dramatically.

 

[jdrakeh]

Jiffylube: The started out undercutting oil changes. The second they came to dominate the market, the prices rose dramatically.

Really? Here, Jiffylube still charges considerably less than most independently owened shops.

 

[Raven Crowking]

What's happening with music pricing models in light of the disappearance of independent music retailers?

Prices rose significantly, then dropped due to the "piracy" (file sharing) models that arose in direct response to those rising prices. The music industry also managed to get the government to give it a "tax" on all blank CD sales so that it could maintain its profit (a policy that allows for hidden pricing, btw). Currently there is a move by the US-led entertainment industry to squash file sharing in those countries where it is legal. If this succeeds, the prices will again go up.

It is a pretty iron-clad law of economics that prices will rise as far as the market will bear. The existance of significant and diverse sources of competition acts as a counter to rising prices. This is easily illustrated by gas stations, where the raise in price at one station causes all stations in a city to go up, and where gas prices rise at the start of long weekends or holidays. When there are only a few suppliers of a given product, they can (either directly or indirectly) work together without fear of being significantly undercut. This is exactly how gas retailers work.

In the case of movie theaters, as theaters in North America amalgamated, prices rose significantly. The rise of DVDs, though, supplimented by the rise of file sharing, has worked to bring the cost of going to the movies back down. The market will not bear the cost of a high ticket price unless there is a significant advantage to that price over other distribution methods. Again, the short-term solution is to lower ticket prices, but the long-term solution is to target other distribution methods so that ticket prices can go up again.

It is not "evil" to undercut your competition and drive them out of business, but it would be foolish indeed to then minimize your profit by leaving your prices low. And it would be foolish indeed to imagine that anyone, anywhere, is going to do so. Simply put, the buck you save today might well cost you ten bucks tomorrow.


RC


EDIT: Another example: I recently bought a used vehicle and had to get a safety certificate. I went to Canadian Tire, and I was given an estimate of $1400 to get the certificate. I declined, and had to pay nearly $80 for doing so. Two days later, through sheer luck, I found a much better mechanic who completed all work for $625 and certified the vehicle to boot.

There was a time, when Canadian Tire was just starting out, when its prices and "Canadian Tire money" offered a significant savings. Now, Canadian Tire is the market leader in Canada, and no amount of Canadian Tire money is worth paying an extra $777....assuming that they don't go over estimate.

 

[redcard]

One of my former gamestores up north does the 1/2 food 1/4 gamestore 1/4 table thing that was mentioned above. (Or used to, I don't know if they're still around.) Something to note about that..

If you do that, depending on what you serve and how you serve it, you run a chance of having to be audited by the Department of Health. In some places, you might be zoned as a restaurant. Just a little note on that.. it opens up new costs that you might not anticipate.

 

[JDJblatherings]

While its true that older folks earn more money, I'll stand by my assertion.

The "controls more wealth" language came from statistical analysis of spending habits, and the key language was "direct or indirect control" of wealth.

While Gen Y still hasn't fully entered the job market, they are already making a measurable shift in patterns of consumption completely out of proportion to their actual incomes.

You certainly want to sell to Gen Y if you are merchant, no doubt there. Catering to that crowd is certainly the way to go and a shop should cater to them in any way it sanely can. Eventually credit card debt will catch up with them. You can't keep consuming out of proportion to actual income for too long. Eventually mom and dad will not be subsidize
their buying habits.

 

[Raven Crowking]

It isn't only B&N's fault, it also has to do with publishing houses and the erasing of the "mid-range" book. All publishers want to put out now is best-sellers and new authors, as well as the usual classics (read: perennial sellers). The profit margin on the mid-range authors is just too slim.

When you are a publisher, and you are dealing with corporate congolomerates that require you to buy back all unsold stock, you might well want to ensure that you publish nothing that you are unsure will sell well. The corporate bookstores put the onus of risk squarely on the publishers (it used to be spread around in the independent bookstore model), putting a significant squeeze on them. For small publishers, that squeeze might be enough to close their doors entirely.

The print-on-demand model allows for some chances to be taken by smaller publishers, but even this is somewhat problematic. In the old days (as with the comic industry now), a publisher would solicit books and then base the print run on the amount of preorders. The risk of nobody wanting League of Ordinary Gentlemen #1 is thus spread among many, none of whom take too serious a hit from unsold copies. Since this is done before the printing plates are set up, the publisher undergoes relatively little risk.

(This is also, btw, why pre-orders for Ptolus were so important to Monte Cook.)

OTOH, with small-publisher POD, the plates are set up before the work is ordered, and there is no way to determine what the actual print run will be. This means there is an upfront cost with no surety of sales afterwords. At least, in this model, there isn't unsold stock that the publisher is responsible for buying back....but neither is there stock in the bookstore where it might be discovered through random perusal.

So, yes, the corporate bookstore buyback model does directly influence publishers, and is largely responsible for the shrinking midlist.


RC