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.

 

[ad_hoc]

I am not convinced of this. I do think people were more forgiving of it than expected. But I also think peoples attitude towards WOTC has fundamentally shifted

Among a very very small vocal minority, sure.

.01% of the player base is still a lot of people but in the overall picture it is insignificant to D&D.

 

[Parmandur]

I am puzzled about this myself. I was one of the few people here enthusiastic about the Book of Many Things, but I find the idea of paying for a deck of cards I do not want to be a real turn-off. (And please, no one explain to me that I'm wrong to want what I want, and don't want what I don't want. You wouldn't enjoy me doing the same to you.)

Goosing an extremely niche product up to a sky-high price this way feels like a great way to discover what the market will and won't bear. I am guessing we will see lots of sales on the Book of Many Things bundle once it's clear that, oh, yeah, most people were iffy on this book even before it turned out to be one of the most expensive books on the 2023 publishing schedule.

I'm not going to say you are wrong to not want it, bur ni way WotC wasn't going to sell this without a deck.

I bet you let them use the restroom, too!

Let's not get crazy, @FitzTheRuke has a business to run, and time is money.

That brutal inflation rate of 20% we've all been working under.

Inflation since 2014 has been well inexcess of 20%

 

[Vaalingrade]

I bet you let them use the restroom, too!

Or let them go home after one of several incidents in which a robot unleashes bear mace on them.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

It's called "inflation" which has impacted the cost of materials and manufacturing. Not particularly surprising.

If it's also impacting the price of pure-digital copies (which have not become meaningfully more expensive to make), it's not really inflation, it's greedflation. But I don't know if it is, so will wait on that judgement until we know.

 

[Ruin Explorer]

I'm not going to say you are wrong to not want it, bur ni way WotC wasn't going to sell this without a deck.

It's some TSR-type thinking, frankly, on WotC's part. This sort of unnecessarily lavish deal is the boom before the bust, I fear.

 

[Parmandur]

If it's also impacting the price of pure-digital copies (which have not become meaningfully more expensive to make), it's not really inflation, it's greedflation. But I don't know if it is, so will wait on that judgement until we know.

No, WotC specified in the announcement that there is no change to Beyond pricing at all in the works.

 

[Parmandur]

It's some TSR-type thinking, frankly, on WotC's part. This sort of unnecessarily lavish deal is the boom before the bust, I fear.

Maybe, maybe not. We don't know the price of this set yet, but it may be very clever. The structure seems juat about identical to the Curse of Strahd Revamped box set, which may have sold somewhat well.

 

[Parmandur]

If it's also impacting the price of pure-digital copies (which have not become meaningfully more expensive to make), it's not really inflation, it's greedflation. But I don't know if it is, so will wait on that judgement until we know.

Just to be clear, this is what WotC said exactly about digital pricing:

"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."

 

[Ruin Explorer]

No, WotC specified in the announcement that there is no change to Beyond pricing at all in the works.

Hooray! Thanks for checking this/knowing this!

The structure seems juat about identical to the Curse of Strahd Revamped box set, which may have sold somewhat well.

Yeah but there's a very real difference between box-setting an adventure, box-setting a setting, and randomly box-setting a magic item sourcebook with a deck that you could easily simulate with a normal deck of cards. One bad decision won't kill D&D here, but a sufficient number? Long term it might.

Don't get me wrong, I love RPG trash, I still have my Mage: The Ascension tarot deck somewhere, but like, I don't think selling stuff like that really helped TSR or White Wolf in the longer-term.

 

[Oofta]

If it's also impacting the price of pure-digital copies (which have not become meaningfully more expensive to make), it's not really inflation, it's greedflation. But I don't know if it is, so will wait on that judgement until we know.

Inflation calculators are easy to find. Plug in the numbers yourself if you don't believe me, a $50 book adjusted for inflation would be $64.

The digital products haven't been for sale for long and DDB used to be a separate company. Wouldn't surprise me if they've been able to cut some costs to keep the price down.

It's actually quite surprising they haven't raised the prices before this. But sure. Beat the "evil corporation" drum. There are some great examples out there, I just don't see this as necessarily being one of them.