Amazon.com no more for game purchases: Hypothetical...

[cybertalus]

I'm only buying WotC products at this point (and mostly FR books at that), but if they disappeared off Amazon, I'd just roll my gaming budget over into CDs and DVDs and order them from Amazon instead of the gaming books.

I like Amazon a lot, and not just for their discounts (although I won't deny that is a big part of the appeal). If I get to a point where I'm buying non-WotC products again, the ones that I can get through Amazon (even if there's little or no discount) are the ones I'll be far more likely to buy.

 

[johnsemlak]

So RAR and Ptlous aren't going through Amazon.com and presumably Buy.com and other online bits.

What if other books went that rotue and even the standards like the Book of Eldritch Might, etc... were no longer being sold by Amazon.com or other online discounters. Or being sold, but with no discount?

Would you pay full price for RPGs?

Would you start hunting down e-bay more?

If there were no Amazon or Buy.com I'd probably switch to FRPGames.com, EN World Game store, etc. It's not just price to me--I do most of my ordering online.

Ebay would also be considered.

 

[Barak]

I'm annoyed with the pro-LGs, anti-Amazon attitude of the industry as is, for the most part, so if it got worse, I dunno.

 

[Land Outcast]

I do ALL of my ordering online... no other way of getting them in my country.
BTW: Ptolus is available at amazon... just checked

 

[trancejeremy]

In my experience, Amazon.com has really only been good about WOTC products. They are pretty bad with small press stuff, and everything else is sort of hit & miss.

So I stopped trying to use them ages ago. (Except whenever they have a big sale on WOTC stuff, like the Menance Manual for $10 a couple years ago).

 

[Nadaka]

at least you guys have a FLGS. My nearest FLGS* is 130 miles away and the building is rapidly aproaching condemned status since hurricane Katrina.

*THe BaM and B&N have some RPG stuff, but not the 3rd party or new stuff. And all the other "gaming" stores in the area are exclusive to collectable card games, miniature war gaming, or gurps.

 

[Aaron L]

I have no local game store, and the closest waldenbooks it an hour drive away. If I couldnt get game books on Amazon I wouldnt get game books.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I already do pay full price (sort of) for RPGs- call it enlightened self-interest.

I've talked to enough FLGS owner/operators to know that many of the major online retailers are selling product for less than the FLGSs are paying per unit to acquire stock. This undercutting hurts the locals. So I pay a little more to help keep my local store open.

Are online retailers bad? No- they definitely serve a purpose. Unlike people living in smaller metropolitan areas, I have access to probably 4 FLGSs I'll deal with on a regular basis in the Dallas/Fort Worth area, one of which is a local chain with 8 locations. OTOH, when I lived in Manhattan, KS, I had to drive to Topeka, Wichita, or Kansas City (basically 1-2 hours drive to get there) to get any game material beyond the basic books, a few Ral Partha, Grenadine or Heritage minis, and a couple of the TSR or Judge's guild adventures.

But the fact that the online retailers are given advantageous wholesale prices (relative to the FLGSs) and have so much more marketing power is definitely killer. I mentioned having 4 FLGSs that I frequent? There used to be 7, and more than one had multiple locations- all have shut down since the rise of online retailers. All but one cited customer testimony that they were losing sales to the lower online prices.

 

[mhacdebhandia]

Even though I live in Sydney, I buy quite a few things from Amazon.com.

One reason is that I live about forty-five minutes to an hour north of Sydney proper, in the North Shore suburbs, and there are no local gaming stores, friendly or otherwise. There is a Borders in Macquarie Center at North Ryde, and their prices are comparable to a local gaming store, but that's not saying much - prices in Australia do not fluctuate with the weakening of the U.S. dollar and the relative strengthening of our own currency. So I can either make a short drive to Borders, or a very long drive to an actual gaming store, but either way I pay high prices. As it happens, the cheapest of the three gaming stores in Sydney is also run by scumbags, so I won't shop there.

Prime example: Monster Manual IV costs US$34.95 retail. That's about A$46.95. Napoleon's Military Bookshop, the gaming store I used to go to because my friend worked there, is presently advertising it on their website for A$60. With Amazon standard international shipping to my home in Sydney, I can get the damn thing for US$34.00, or about A$45. I just don't see the sense in buying from a local store - even if I could get the book shipped free by Napoleon's (which I can't), much less when you consider the incredibly high cost of petrol (Americans have nothing to complain about, trust me) for the two-hour roundtrip and the cost of parking even at cheap city rates on a weekend.

I can go to Borders, sure, it's only a fifteen-minute drive away, but I'm still going to pay high-ish prices, and at that point I'm not supporting a local gaming store - I'm supporting a huge foreign corporation, just like Amazon. Not that Napoleon's Military Bookshop is a gaming store in the "community resource" sense, and the other store I would shop at - The Tin Soldier - is only just beginning to consider things like hosting gaming.

The other reason I shop through Amazon is that my fiancee lives in California, and we visit each other regularly - so I can skip the extra cost of international mail and get everything sent to her apartment on free Super-Saver shipping, and just get one or the other of us to bring it to Sydney.

If the games I wanted weren't available through Amazon, I would turn to PDF purchases more often - I already own a few True20 products on PDF, for instance, because I don't care about having a hardcopy of those games enough to even go through Amazon, much less a more expensive or less-convenient option. There are quite a few Wizards of the Coast books I would be content to own on PDF, though not at the full price and not from DriveThru RPG in any case until they start accepting American Express.

 

[JustaPlayer]

Supporting FLGS is cool and all, but its a business and I am not that a loyal a customer to any business... just me though

I agree with this. I tend to buy very little from my FLGS, and it's owned by one of my best friends. I don't spend much time at all at the store any more so I don't feel as bad as I use to about it.