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Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

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Message: <blockquote data-quote="John Morrow" data-source="post: 2179354" data-attributes="member: 27012">This can all be very interesting but just bear in mind that book costs are not simply based on a price per page but also (sometimes substantial) fixed costs that a company has to recover whether they print 1 book or 1,000,000, and that cost gets divided over the print run.  Adding color increases the fixed costs because you need 4 times the number of printing plates and a larger make-ready on press because the plates have to be aligned to print properly and that wastes paper.  Thus if it costs $10,000 to pay writers, artists, the company's employees, the printing plates, the cover the press "make-ready" costs, etc. a single book would need to have $10,000 added to it's cost to recover that money (actually, closer to twice that after it goes through distribution), on top of the regular per unit cost.  If they print 1,000 books, that adds $10 to the cost of every unit (double that for the retail price increase).  If they print 5,000 books, it adds $2 to the cost (double for retail).  If they print 10,000 books, it adds $1.  At 20,000 books, it adds $0.50.  And so on.  At 1,000,000 copies, that cost almost disappears, though the fixed costs may increase a little if the print run runs on multiple presses, etc.And, of course, the fixed prices for paying employees and for office space get split over how many titles a company produces and depend on how many employees a company has, how much they are paid, etc.  And of course writing and artist costs depend on how well they pay for those things.I'm not saying that you can't evaluate value based on cost per page.  I'm simply trying to make people aware of the other side of that because most game companies are not simply picking prices arbitrarily.  They need to set a retail price at which they think they can make a profit.  If they aren't making a profit, then it's a hobby, not a job.</blockquote>

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