D&D General D&D Book Prices Are Going Up

WotC announced today that D&D books will be increasing in price this year.

Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants will be $59.99 as a preorder and $69.99 thereafter. These will apparently come as physical and digital bundles, so you won’t need to buy the D&D Beyond version separately.

This space is dedicated to communicating clearly and transparently with our players- even when the topic isn’t particularly fun. Since the release of the 2014 D&D core rulebooks, we’ve kept book prices stable. Unfortunately, with the cost of goods and shipping continually increasing, we’ve finally had to make the decision to increase the price of our new release print books. We're committed to creating high-quality products that deliver great value to our players and must increase our prices to accomplish that.

This will go into effect starting with Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants and new releases after Glory of the Giants. Digital pricing is unaffected by this MSRP (manufacturer's suggested retail price) increase, as digital products don’t need to be printed or shipped. The increase also doesn’t impact backlist titles. While we can’t promise that there will never be a change to the prices of digital products and backlist titles, we have no plans to increase either.

Players who purchase the Bigby Presents: Glory of the Giants digital-physical bundle through Dungeons & Dragons store can get the bundle for $59.95 for the entire preorder window, which is consistent with our current digital-physical bundle pricing. After the preorder window closes, digital-physical bundle prices will go to $69.95.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Interesting question: the Spelljammer product MSRPd for $70, I believe, because of the fancy format. Given that the Planescape product is in the same format, how much are they planning to charge for that?

Hopefully the same, as that price-point (and bad reviews) essentially killed the Spelljammer "book". (Though they have suggested that the Planescape books will be bigger - so perhaps there's another hike in the works).

Hence my confusion over slip cases, three books, and a DM screen. Give me that dang book, not all that extra stuff that raises their cost.

I think that was done to test the new price-point while adding "value" (dubious value, but I suspect they wanted to razzle-dazzle and see how savvy their base is).

I don't know how successful Spelljammer was by their metrics, but it was a pretty serious flop by mine. (And I'm actually running it, so it's not like I'm some kind of "hater".)

 

[Demetrios1453]

More info on pricing, and all sorts of other stuff on the 2023 releases, here:

https://www.enworld.org/index.php?threads/697892/

 

[Retreater]

With the low quality paper, substandard binding, and middling amount of content, WotC's books aren't worth half that.
It's not like they're barely breaking even on selling these. It takes less than $4 to print one of these.

 

[Oofta]

With the low quality paper, substandard binding, and middling amount of content, WotC's books aren't worth half that.
It's not like they're barely breaking even on selling these. It takes less than $4 to print one of these.

They will replace any defective product for free. As far as the cost of printing, I don't know where you get that number from but the physical printing is just a tiny part of the overall cost. Besides, they're a company and in order to survive they have to make a profit. D&D is still one of the cheapest hobbies out there.

 

[Deset Gled]

With the low quality paper, substandard binding, and middling amount of content, WotC's books aren't worth half that.
It's not like they're barely breaking even on selling these. It takes less than $4 to print one of these.

Citation needed.

 

[Vaalingrade]

So the employees will all be getting pay raises commiserate to inflation and the increased cost of living, or else the higher ups will not be getting more money and larger bonuses because this price change is to balance out inflation so there's no increased revenue from, right?

Hahahaha, man, I crack myself up sometimes.

 

[SteveC]

With the low quality paper, substandard binding, and middling amount of content, WotC's books aren't worth half that.
It's not like they're barely breaking even on selling these. It takes less than $4 to print one of these.

Entirely agree with this. I still purchase books (Cities Without Number is my latest purchase) and the quality of WotC's books is just terrible. If you're going to charge a premium price (and this is that) then give me high quality paper and bindings. That's doubly true with the size of the print runs WotC does in comparison to the competition.

This puts it comfortably outside of where I'd purchase it on a whim. I expect that the 6E PHB will be digital only for me at this rate.

 

[Retreater]

Citation needed.

Stephen Glicker, owner of Battlezoo. I can't remember the specific 3 hour podcast he said it in, but it's one of them.

 

[Parmandur]

That's good. I haven't been able to find the actual information on it yet. Distributors are increasingly slow at posting information relative to online hype (and Amazon!)

So if it's $60 USD, which is more reasonable, if unfortunate, that would be ~$80 CAD. While that seems terribly expensive to me ($65 was already pretty steep), it's not totally insane.

$59.95 is the preorder price on Amazon for the physical book (for now). That's behind inflation, really, $49.95 USD in 2014 would be $63 as of last month.

 

[Micah Sweet]

They will replace any defective product for free. As far as the cost of printing, I don't know where you get that number from but the physical printing is just a tiny part of the overall cost. Besides, they're a company and in order to survive they have to make a profit. D&D is still one of the cheapest hobbies out there.

Yeah, I'm sure Hasbro has been running at a loss for years...