Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Yair" data-source="post: 2179164" data-attributes="member: 10913">I've spent the last few hours piecing together and mulling over a cost/page spreadsheet for some books. Of course the list of books is completely arbitrary (books I like or wanted to see how they fair), and this statistic doesn't say much, but still I thought it might interest others. So I attach the files, and here is what I saw in it...(There are probably errors in it, feel free to correct me...)First, just to give a scale, hardbound books range in price from 0.12 $/page (Arcana Evolved, Infernum, World's Largest Dungeon, and The Penumbra Fantasy Bestiary) to around 0.21 (Mastering Iron Lore), ignoring the old splatbooks (Sword and Fist at the outragous 0.3). Large books cost more than small books, of course (WLD at 0.12 not including colorful huge maps has 840 pages!), but it doesn't determine much - for example, Infernum at 0.12 has 240 pages, while Denziens of Avandu at 0.18 has 224 pages. The industry standard seems to be around 0.16 or 0.15.Softcovers are smaller and usually more expensive (per page). They range from 0.13 (Blue Rose and Heroes of High Favor: Elves) to 0.23 (the Encyclopaedia Arcane series), just a bit more expensive. The main difference is that the typical softcover's price is set at the higher part of this range, at around 0.18 or 0.19.PDFs vary widely in costs, far more than printed products. They range from 0.05 (which I was delighted to see was Murchad's Legacy Campaign Setting - the setting I'm using now  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> ) to, say, 0.39 (Grim Tales: Gamemastering; and worth every penny). The typical PDF should have a price of 0.11/page, but really I don't know if that's truly typical. It seems the cheaper ones hover around 0.07 (including such gems as Arcana Evolved, Oathbound, Iron Lore, all the XRP products, Advanced Bestiary, Blue Rose, and Infernum), but you can find ones at higher and higher costs. I'd say a PDF starts getting expensive at 0.14 or so, and the expensive ones usually hover at around 0.2. The costs (per page) of pdfs are sometiems cheaper than the costs for print products, but (especially for small pdfs) they are sometimes actually more expensive.The most efficient way to spend you money (in the $/page sense) is to purchase the cheaper PDFs. These contain excellent products, including Arcana Evolved, Oathbound, A Magical Society: Beast Builder, Ecology & Culture, and Western Europe, Advanced Bestiary, and Blue Rose. Going up the price will allow the purchase of more and more PDFs, until the 0.12 mark is reached where books become available, interposed with the more expensive PDFs. This continues all the way, except for the most expensive PDFs that stand out above the print products (Grim Tales: Gamemastering 0.39, Grim Tales: Creature Creation 0.5 [not fair, as it includes an excel file], and My Thoughts on Writing and Publishing Short PDFs 1.25 [not really for players]).The AMAZING purchases are the cheap PDFs, plus the cheap books which include Arcana Evolved, Infernum, Penumbra Fantasy Bestiary, The Book of the Righteous, Necropolis, Fiend Folio, Heroes of High Favor: Elves, and Blue Rose. Other cheap books inlcude Tetament, Book of the Planes, Draconomicon, Dungeon Master's Guide II (and probably other WotC products), The Black Company Campaign Setting, and the Advanced Bestiary. That's an impressive list of quality products, you don't need to sacrifice quality to be cheap.Conversely, the most "wasteful" products are expensive pdfs, which are usually the short ones, and expensive books. The pdfs include short Ronnin Arts or Bad Axe Games pdfs, The Andwan Legacy adventure (which I've just bought  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f631.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":o" title="Eek!    :o"  data-smilie="9"data-shortname=":o" /> ), and EN Arsenal: Spiked Chain. The books involve short softcovers sadly including The Assasin's/Psychic's/Unholy Warrior Handbook series (0.21 to 0.23), and the Encyclopedia Arcana series (0.23) (and stay away from WotC adventures, they're REALLY expensive!). Amongst the hardbacks, sadly the excellent X & Y of Atlas Games (Love & War, etc.) is at 0.19 and Mastering Iron Lore is at 0.21 (and again WotC trumps it all with an old Sword & Fist at 0.3). It seems to "save money" you'd want to avoid short softbacks or short pdfs. (Not exactly a major revelation, but hey). And even more so avoid certain WotC lines/books (ahem).Sizing up my favorite companies and products... well, it is a mess.The World's Largest Dungeon is a steal at it's price, that much is a given (0.12 not including the maps!).Atlas Games gives another great bargain with The Penumbra Fantasy Bestiary (0.12), but also the boasts the very expensive Dynasties & Demagouges et al (0.19). At least it's PDFs are cheap. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />Bad Axe Games seems to offer excellent prices, except for their short PDFs. The cost of Creature Creation is exceptionally abhorrant (0.5), exceeding everything in the market; I'm sure it is very good but the cost!. No wonder I was delaying it's purchase.Bastion Press offers cheap PDFs, especially Oathbound. (If it wasn't for Oathbound: The New Generation or whatever they call their revised book, I would have downloaded one long ago.)EN Publishing's PDFs are expensive (that ones that interst me, anyways). The EN Arsenal line in particular looks exceedingly expensive (0.28).Goodman Games' books (as pdfs) sit at 0.14, also slightly expensive. I'm not sure if that includes their adventures. Green Ronin (my absolture favorite publisher) ranges from cheap to expensive, the whole gamut. Amazingly, some of my Most Wanted are actually cheap (Blue Rose 0.13, Testament 0.14, Advanced Bestiary 0.14, The Book of the Righteous 0.13), but others on that list are expensive  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f641.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":(" title="Frown    :("  data-smilie="3"data-shortname=":(" />  Their PDFs are cheap, however, which may be a good way to pick those things up (I'm still waiting for a Plot & Poison PDF).Iron Circle Games are expensive. Well, I suppose high quality and high production values coupled to a small selling cycle will do that to you.... Malhavoc Press is interesting. I think Monte is selling the "core" products for cheap (Arcana Evolved 0.12, Iron Lore 0.15), and charging extra for the peripherals (Mastering Iron Lore 0.21, The Book of Rougish Luck 0.21). Anyways, his PDFs are dirt cheap (and he's the leading PDF publisher! Guys, follow his lead! Please?).Mongoose Publishing has decent prices, well except for the expensive Encyclopeadia Arcane line (curse that short softback format). Their PDFs, unfortunately, are not sold at a considerable discount so even an average cost book (The Quintessential Wizard 0.16) comes out as a fairly expensive PDF (0.12).Much the same can be said for Necromancer Games (with short adventures like Aberrations replacing the EA line), but here the discount on PDFs is more significant so at least their large books are well prices (Necropolis 228 pages, 0.13 or 0.07 as pdf).The Andwan Legacy is expensive (0.23, for a pdf). Hmph.Parent's Basement Games is dirt cheap (0.05) <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Ronin Arts is expensive. Well, they publish short pdfs so it goes with that. But I was surprised at how much: for example Planar Factions sells at 0.09, a single faction sells at 0.16 (that's what you pay WotC for a typical harback!), and the fairly large Iconic Bestiary (27 pages) sells at 0.22. Of course the most expensive is Philip Reed's "My Thoughts on Writing and Publishing Short PDFs" for a staggering 1.25; given that he sells content at the cost/word of WotC products, and apparently sells quite a lot of them, I'm not surprised his thoughts on the matter are valuable.Wizards of the Coast sells for a wide assortment of prices, but generally new hardbacks seem to go at 0.16, sometimes 0.14 - excellent, considering their production value and the top talent they often involve.Last but not least, Expeditious Retreat Press sells their excellent PDFs at very low prices. I would almost suggest raising prices, but looking at Monte's products I think they are actually priced right.So, that was long. I hope someone finds it interesting. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /> Yair</blockquote>

Verification