JoeGKushner said:
Unlike say most fiction though, outside of E-Bay, you'll never see these books go on sale. I just picked up the Jester in hardcover for less than I can buy it in paperback for example.
Big publishers "remainder" books that aren't selling to make room in their warehouses. That means that they often sell them at or below cost and don't make any money on them. Big publishers that sell millions of books can afford that sort of write-off.
JoeGKushner said:
Heck, even expensive coffee table books which run for $19.95 to $29.95 are half the price they first came out at.
Am I just nuts?
No. You just don't fully understand the economics of printing books. The short answer is that the more books you print, the cheaper they are to produce. Coffee table books have print runs that most role-playing game publishers could only dream of. If you really want a good comparison for the price of role-playing games, take a look at niche low-print run academic publications where you'll find plenty of books priced at $40, $80, or even $120. You can also look at the books published for other small niche hobbies. They are frequently quite expensive, too.
The fact that nobody is getting rich writing or selling role-playing books
should suggest that nobody is getting ripped off. If anything, a lot of role-playing game publishers go out of business because they aren't making enough money.
And, remember, they aren't in business as a charity. They do deserve to make some profit from their effort.
JoeGKushner said:
I mean, one of the old Necromancer adventuers went for like $12.95 at 96 pages a few years ago. The reprint, due to limited demand and what not, would be like $25 bones. And most 96 page books are around that price.
Consider inflation. When my father was a child, you could get a loaf of bread for $0.05. Does that mean that bakers are ripping people off because they no longer sell a loaf of bread for a nickel? The cost of paper and printing have gone up substantially since the 1970s for a variety of reasons (e.g., stricter environmental controls on paper production, higher labor costs, higher demand, better quality, etc.). Consider how much even mass market paperbacks have increased in cost since the late 1970s.
JoeGKushner said:
Not the publishers fault I imagine but outside of printing the books in Canada, I think we may get a little bit of a backlash of books not because people don't like or want the books, but simply can't afford 'em.
Printing books in Canada isn't as much of a bargain as it used to be since the US decided to let the dollar weaken to correct trade imbalance problems. That it's no longer as much of a bargain to print in Canada is part of that correction.
JoeGKushner said:
When you see role-playing game publishers and writers drive up to GenCon in a Bently covered with bling, you'll know you are being ripped off. Simply put, they are selling books at what they have to sell them for to make money and stay in business and they money they are making isn't that spectacular. The alternative isn't cheaper books but no books, because they'll be out of business. The only alternative is for role-playing to become mainstream enough that they sell books measured in the hundreds of thousands of copies rather than thousands of copies.
