4e & Internet Sales

[pawsplay]

I don't buy 4e products.

 

[Starglim]

WotC books from the local game store so far. When it comes to physical books, Amazon is a source for rare and otherwise unavailable items only for me. A lot of third party PDFs, obviously online.

 

[mach1.9pants]

I've bought every 4e book from Amazon so far. I don't see a reason not to as the closest store to me is like 60 miles away.

I dream of having a FLGS within 60 miles! Yep Amazon for me, even though I am in NZ because:
1. In NZ books are just plain more expensive, all types
2. DnD is even more overpriced than every day books here
3. No local store by any definition of the word local
4. Even NZ GS and NZ based internet book stores are more expensive, by a big margin, than shipping to NZ from US. I could get them priority shipped from the US for a similar price.

The only thing (apart from me mates and blasting around in a jet) from the UK is the cheap bookstores and amazon.co.uk

 

[Jhaelen]

Other

I had been a FLGS customer out of conviction, but several years ago the trend became too obvious: The 'F' was being dropped, and the selection in the shop(s) becam so meager that they served as mail order stations anyway.

So when I found Dragonworld.de, I started to shift my busness over to them, until I ordered everything from them. NB: Dragonworld's prices are in most cases mutch better than those at Amazon.de.

That could have been my story

These days I order all of my roleplaying stuff from Dragonworld.

And while a new (F)LGS has opened in my area they simply don't stock the things I am interested in and their prices aren't competetive.

 

[Agamon]

I don't buy any 4e stuff online (that double-neg is a typo, right?). WFRP. M&M, SWSE, and pretty much any other game I get books for, yeah, it'd be in the 75+% online. The amount I play those games (little to not at all), I can't justify the cost. D&D, I have no prob getting from the FLGS.

Mind you, I don't buy crunch-heavy splats (my books are PHB, DMG, MM, FRCG, and Draconomicon), but I do have a a DDI sub...

 

[catsclaw227]

I pay for the free 2-day shipping from Amazon yearly, and so between that and Amazon so heavily discounting the retail prices, there's really no way to compete with them unless I buy something spur of the moment while at the local comic shop (impulse buys from a shelf are easier than having to actively browse amazon listings).

This. And I have bought all my 4e books via Amazon. Core gift set (and 4 PHBs for my gaming group - my early xmas gift to them), as well as AV, MP, H1-3, P1, FRPG, FRCG, Scepter.

 

[Zil]

Other: I don't buy 4E products.

You could also have selected the I don't buy 4E from Internet sources since that would also technically be correct. However, it would probably skew the intent of the poll.

I also picked other because I'm in a similar boat. Since the core books, I haven't purchased a single 4E product, via the Internet or otherwise.

However, if you look at where I currently purchase all RPG material, it has shifted over the last year to being 90% on-line. This is a big change from the 3.5/3E days when I easily purchased 85% to 90% of my 3.x material from the local FLGS. In my case, the main reason for the shift is because the two FLGS I used to buy from (and buy a lot from) went under. The only remaining FLGS specializes in board games and hardly carries any D&D - certainly nothing new or that I don't already have.

The other factor in my case is that although I no longer buy the current official version of D&D, I do still probably spend about as much as I ever did in the past on RPG materials but now that has mostly shifted to the various Paizo subscriptions.

One big drop in my spending has been miniatures. I've sunk many thousands into my D&D mini collection but at some point I decided that (a) the quality seemed to be going downhill, (b) I was tired of getting hundreds of minis I didn't really want and (c) I wasn't at all interested in the newer 4E minis and 4E stat cards. But I digress.

 

[Quantarum]

I hit the 50% mark. I'm weary of buying books without a chance to peruse them. Any trip to a book store might yield one to five purchases but I can browse Amazon for a couple of hours and buy nothing.

-Q.

 

[catsclaw227]

I hit the 50% mark. I'm weary of buying books without a chance to peruse them. Any trip to a book store might yield one to five purchases but I can browse Amazon for a couple of hours and buy nothing.

For me, if I happen to be at Barnes & Noble or Boarders browsing around, I might buy a paperback, but if I see a D&D book, I'll look at it, and then buy it from Amazon. Heck, the difference in price generally will have paid for that paperback.

 

[Slider Wade]

I've got a local gaming store, but it isn't very friendly. Unless its a 4E book that I am absolutely hyped up about and I need instant gratification I don't buy online. However, since I need to call the store to tell them to order the book so that I can buy it on its release date, they never have anything in stock on its release date.

My store was a month and a half late in stocking Adventurer's Vault!

If they weren't so incompetent I'd gladly pay retail value for all my gaming books.