Books pricing themselves out of reach?

[WildWeasel]

It's not that I can't afford it. I can, I just refuse to pay that much for something I can easily do without.

Welcome to the land of luxury items. Just because you don't _need_ a $50 RPG book or a $4,000 plasma HDTV doesn't mean that there aren't people who _want_ them. And the latter are buying them.

 

[philreed]

While some products are priced so high that I won't buy them (specifically, the scenario books for the Star Wars CMG), others could be raised in price and I would still buy them. As an example, the upcoming gadgets sourcebook is a softcover for something like $26 or $27. I'd easily pay $30-$32 for that same book in hardcover.

I think it's just a matter of taste for us all. If we're already interested in a product the price would have to get seriously out of line (as with the Star Wars CMG scenario books -- they're about $10 more than I would expect) for it to affect out buying habits.

 

[WildWeasel]

While some products are priced so high that I won't buy them (specifically, the scenario books for the Star Wars CMG), others could be raised in price and I would still buy them. As an example, the upcoming gadgets sourcebook is a softcover for something like $26 or $27. I'd easily pay $30-$32 for that same book in hardcover.

I think it's just a matter of taste for us all. If we're already interested in a product the price would have to get seriously out of line (as with the Star Wars CMG scenario books -- they're about $10 more than I would expect) for it to affect out buying habits.

This is a much better, and clearer, analysis and understanding. The dollar price isn't the only indicator of value. Solid! for d20 Modern is an $18 hardcover. It's also 64 pages with lackluster art and layout, relatively low word count, and at least some repeated material. Below $20, yes. Worth the money? Doubtful at best. Just like the SW CMG Mission books (though, as support for a collectible/miniatures game, they do perform a bit differently than RPG books).

Whereas I've paid $40-50 for things like Black Company and Arcana Evolved, and they have been great purchases, just chock full of stuff for me to use, be it wholecloth or stealing bits of it. And, more over, they are cheaper than trying to split them into smaller packages. AE wouldn't just be a pair of $25 hardcovers. So, while I may be getting fewer books, I'm getting more material. I just have to pay a bit more attention to exactly where I want to drop my gaming dollars.

And that's my problem, not the publishers.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Welcome to the land of luxury items. Just because you don't _need_ a $50 RPG book or a $4,000 plasma HDTV doesn't mean that there aren't people who _want_ them. And the latter are buying them.

And more power to them, but I ain't paying that much. Maybe I'm just cheap, but there you have it.

 

[JamesDJarvis]

When i was a youngster a D&D hardcover cost be the equivalnet of 30 to 60 comics. Theses days a hardcover costs the equivalent of 10 to 30 comics.

 

[Cergorach]

When i was a youngster a D&D hardcover cost be the equivalnet of 30 to 60 comics. Theses days a hardcover costs the equivalent of 10 to 30 comics.

That says more about the price of comics then anything else (and most probably your age ;-).

 

[Storm Raven]

Are RPG books pricing themselves out of the market? They pretty much already have, for me. They have for the lower class. They are beginning to, for the LMC (Lower Middle Class). And things will only get worse.

Just so you realize that you are not the target audience for game companies. No one selling luxury items targets the destitute as their primary customer base. At least no one who wants to stay in business. If they priced items to fit your budget, then they wouldn't last long as functioning commercial entities.

 

[WizarDru]

That says more about the price of comics then anything else (and most probably your age ;-).

Well, it's a little more complicated than that. What it really says is a lot more about paper prices, than anything else. The cost of paper skyrocketed in the late '90s, affecting things all across the board.

Further, comics' changing demographics mean that when I was 10, X-men was "Still only 25¢", while today it's $2.25. When I was a kid, it was cheap paper, while today it's on higher quality acid-free paper, many times glossy. And of course, comics has undergone a massive change in its distribution model (which many would say has lead to the comics industry's currently sorry state).

 

[SteveC]

To answer Joe's initial question, I'd say yes they are. At this point in my life I've been pretty successful, and have a decent disposable income. I have enough money to easily spend $50 to $100 a week on luxury items without affecting my savings and long-term goals at all.


The prices of games haven't made me change my buying plans for the things I really want one bit. I picked up the Black Company book a couple months ago at my FLGS for full retail and didn't think about it a bit (that's $45). What it has affected is the purchase of things that are borderline purchases for me, the kind of things I might think are interesting but will basically read and likely file away. It's pretty much cut those purchases out entirely.

What it means in the end is that you'd better somehow target me very specifically with an expensive product or I'm just not going to buy it. Once you put that into context with the fact that my tastes aren't universal (much as I wish they would be, sigh) a game company has to produce something that will have a very broad appeal if they make something past a certain price point.

The problem with that is that broadly appealing books lose an edge that can make them more interesting.

Oh, and I also have much higher expectations in terms of quality for a game that's $45 than one that's $20. One way to get me to never buy one of your products again is to charge $40+ for something and have bad art, bad production values and no editing. I'm pretty forgiving of a PDF or a low-cost product in this area but expensive products need to be well-produced.

I guess what I'm ultimately saying is, even if your product is priced "reasonably" given the cost of inflation, the cost of paper, and the cost of the tea in China, it doesn't necessarily mean it's priced at the point where the majority of gamers can and will afford it. Companies are having some success with producing "deluxe" rulebooks and charging premium prices for them, but I wonder how much of that is a one-time thing. I think a lot of gamers can and will purchase a deluxe book once in a blue moon, but I wonder how they'll do month in and month out. I'm getting the impression that RPGs are heading the way of some other marginal hobbies that are extremely expensive because they have such a small fan-base.

Ah, but PDFs and POD might ultimately be our redemption, I suppose, but this doesn't sound like a good long-term solution for a growing hobby.

Grumble, grumble, I suppost...that's what the Internet is for, though...

--Steve

 

[John Morrow]

To answer Joe's initial question, I'd say yes they are. At this point in my life I've been pretty successful, and have a decent disposable income. I have enough money to easily spend $50 to $100 a week on luxury items without affecting my savings and long-term goals at all.

The prices of games haven't made me change my buying plans for the things I really want one bit. [...] What it has affected is the purchase of things that are borderline purchases for me, the kind of things I might think are interesting but will basically read and likely file away. It's pretty much cut those purchases out entirely.

[...]

I guess what I'm ultimately saying is, even if your product is priced "reasonably" given the cost of inflation, the cost of paper, and the cost of the tea in China, it doesn't necessarily mean it's priced at the point where the majority of gamers can and will afford it. [...]

It think you talk about the real problem but them misidentify at the end. The problem isn't that gamers can't afford the games that are being published for $40-$50 or even the special editions that are being priced at $75 or more. Clearly, a lot of people do have the disposable income to make those kinds of purchases, as you plainly state that you do. The problem is that people won't spend that kind of money on something unless they really want it. And that people aren't willing to spend that sort of money on a lot of new releases means that they don't have any real burning desire to own those books.

What I think people are saying is that they are willing to toss away $19.95 on a book and not feel too bad if they are ripped off, just like they might spend $19.95 on a gadget advertized in one of those "Wait! That's not all!" commercials even if they don't really need it or don't expect it to work. That $20 is disposable in the sense of, "I don't care if I throw it away on something useless", not just in the sense of, "I can afford to spend this on something recreational because I need that money to eat and pay rent." People have the money to spend but simply choose to spend it on something that seems to be a better value proposition to them.

But I think the deeper and more important message here is that people view role-playing products like those $19.95 gadgets on TV. They don't expect too much. They don't necessarily expect to be satisfied. They think it's likely that they won't get their money's worth. And I think that might be the real problem here. Role-playing game companies could charge $50 a book if people felt they were getting their money's worth. But all too often, they simply don't. And this goes back to the idea of a role-playing game as an impulse purchase rather than something people really want. Is that really the best the industry can do? Hope that someone will drop $20-$30 on a book they don't really want or need as a gamble?