D&D General D&D Book Prices Are Going Up

WotC announced today that D&D books will be increasing in price this year.

Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants will be $59.99 as a preorder and $69.99 thereafter. These will apparently come as physical and digital bundles, so you won’t need to buy the D&D Beyond version separately.

This space is dedicated to communicating clearly and transparently with our players- even when the topic isn’t particularly fun. Since the release of the 2014 D&D core rulebooks, we’ve kept book prices stable. Unfortunately, with the cost of goods and shipping continually increasing, we’ve finally had to make the decision to increase the price of our new release print books. We're committed to creating high-quality products that deliver great value to our players and must increase our prices to accomplish that.

This will go into effect starting with Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants and new releases after Glory of the Giants. Digital pricing is unaffected by this MSRP (manufacturer's suggested retail price) increase, as digital products don’t need to be printed or shipped. The increase also doesn’t impact backlist titles. While we can’t promise that there will never be a change to the prices of digital products and backlist titles, we have no plans to increase either.

Players who purchase the Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants digital-physical bundle through Dungeons & Dragons store can get the bundle for $59.95 for the entire preorder window, which is consistent with our current digital-physical bundle pricing. After the preorder window closes, digital-physical bundle prices will go to $69.95.

 

[Warpiglet-7]

For me it’s going to come down to value as it has before the hike.

If the art direction does not impress I just can’t. Or if content is “thin” I don’t want to pay 40 much less 60.

I blow too much on minis but no longer have to be a completionist with the books. They are all not equally good.

If it’s a must have at 50 it will be a must have at 60. We shall see.

They of course have it worked out. They will lose some sales due to the increase. And they have calculated that impact vis a vis increased price per unit, to be sure…

 

[nevin]

Not surprising, but disappointing.

They wouldn't have to do it if there wasn't the vast precedence of Amazon and elsewhere that NEVER SELL THINGS FOR MSRP (and likely get a vast discount off of it).

So really, we FLGSs wind up the only ones stuck with MSRP, as we can't really make our margins without it. Meanwhile, in spite of the books printing $60+ on them (and our price being based on it), they'll be sold for ~$40 most of the time. Heck, sometimes Amazon sells the books for less than what we PAY for them from our distributors.

MSRP is something of a farce these days, which is why it's so darn high.

when amazon and other sellers sell for less than msrp they do it as loss leaders. Doesn't affect Hasbro's cut.

 

[nevin]

I still think they've missed the real money. a 10 dollar a month sub with access to everything,is like selling a book a year to everyone if you assume half of the money is maintenance on the web site. There are 13.5 million est DND players. if 1 million of them bought a sub that's 120 million dollars a year minus maintaining the server's and apps. Plus you have the Whales all together to buy the "cool" stuff like dice. the company only cleared 221 million last year. Imagine if they got that to 1/4 of all the players.

 

[delericho]

when amazon and other sellers sell for less than msrp they do it as loss leaders. Doesn't affect Hasbro's cut.

Not necessarily. Once you're as big as Amazon you have the clout to negotiate the price you buy these things at. So Amazon may well have negotiated such that Hasbro's cut is smaller on each unit that they sell.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Not necessarily. Once you're as big as Amazon you have the clout to negotiate the price you buy these things at. So Amazon may well have negotiated such that Hasbro's cut is smaller on each unit that they sell.

Plus a 34 cent charge for 'digital delivery'.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

when amazon and other sellers sell for less than msrp they do it as loss leaders. Doesn't affect Hasbro's cut.

I'm afraid that you didn't understand my post.

Here's how it works (I'll do it in USD to keep it simple):

With an MSRP of $59.95, a FLGS pays about $36. If we sell them at MSRP (and we probably will give a small discount here and there for preorders and/or regular customers, so there's no guarantee). Let's say we sell 20 copies (reasonable for a small store like mine): We make $479! (Less discounts, shipping costs, employee wages, etc).

Amazon probably pays ~$24 for each copy (I'm guessing here), but sells (let's say) 20,000: They charge ~$44 and make ~$400,000. If I price-matched, I'd get to make $160. On a purchase of $720.

I pay my employees more than Amazon does, but that's another story.

At any rate, I'm not here to whine about the realities of competing with a monster. It generally doesn't bother me and doesn't factor into my day. I just thought that some folks here might find the above interesting, for whatever that's worth.

 

[Jaeger]

Yea... no. Not the way costs work. Every order costs a relatively fixed price for WotC to process. An FLGS that orders ten books cost in resources almost the same as Amazon ordering 10,000 copies. And then WotC has to have somebody package up and individually ship those 10 books via UPS or such. Where as Amazon they just drop ship directly from the printer and send a whole truck of books.

Sure, the total cost of shipping 10 books is less than a truck load, but PER book, doing business with Amazon is much less expensive for WotC.

I said that they could "give FLGS the same price per unit." if they wanted to.

D&D does a 100m+ a year. Given their profit margins they could easily absorb the cost of having their warehouse vendor ship multiple orders. (The FLGS would pay the shipping costs like they always do anyway.)

Would they make as much per unit when they ship to a FLGS? No.

Would they still be profitable anyway due to their massive print runs? Yes.

Would they gain Massive goodwill within the hobby by doing so? Hell Yes.

Wotc chooses not to. They choose to squeeze.

 

[Oofta]

I said that they could "give FLGS the same price per unit." if they wanted to.

D&D does a 100m+ a year. Given their profit margins they could easily absorb the cost of having their warehouse vendor ship multiple orders. (The FLGS would pay the shipping costs like they always do anyway.)

Would they make as much per unit when they ship to a FLGS? No.

Would they still be profitable anyway due to their massive print runs? Yes.

Would they gain Massive goodwill within the hobby by doing so? Hell Yes.

Wotc chooses not to. They choose to squeeze.

Would they gain much good will? The store owners would appreciate it, but they're a pretty small slice of the pie.

In addition, there's a lot more overhead dealing with hundreds of small customers versus one giant behemoth. Shipping to Amazon? Send a few hundred books. Shipping to an FLGS? Send a half dozen, meaning that per unit your shipping and handling is significantly higher. Throw in account tracking and customer support.

I have no way of knowing margins here. Even assuming they make slightly less per unit selling to Amazon, the net income may not be much higher for FLGSes.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I said that they could "give FLGS the same price per unit." if they wanted to.

That's actually a pretty good idea. It wasn't possible back when us FLGSs were responsible for the larger portion of their sales, but now that we're a drop-in-the-bucket, it wouldn't really hurt them much to give us a bigger discount.

IF they consider us important to their market (and they really should; myself I'm responsible for teaching a few thousand people to play D&D, with however many they went on to teach added to that) they should be trying to help us to stick around.

I mean, I'm not in any danger ATM of not sticking around, but everything that makes it easier is (naturally) a good thing, and much appreciated.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Would they gain much good will? The store owners would appreciate it, but they're a pretty small slice of the pie.

In addition, there's a lot more overhead dealing with hundreds of small customers versus one giant behemoth. Shipping to Amazon? Send a few hundred books. Shipping to an FLGS? Send a half dozen, meaning that per unit your shipping and handling is significantly higher. Throw in account tracking and customer support.

WotC doesn't do most of their distribution, though, AFAIK. They wouldn't have to "send half a dozen" books to very many retailers, they'd have to send a few thousand each to a dozen distributors, at a larger discount, with the promise to pass it on.

I have no way of knowing margins here. Even assuming they make slightly less per unit selling to Amazon, the net income may not be much higher for FLGSes.

It might not be. They certainly sell directly to Amazon, whereas they sell to distributors who sell to us, taking a cut. (I don't know what a distributor's margin is, but I suspect that it's not great). Still, I doubt that it would be impossible for them to do.