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.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

Ok.

Look at my post. Note all the times I said anything about just 'raising prices' instead of taking advantage of the current chaos,

This spike is, to me, just like the egg price spike. Opportunists that got half an excuse and took a big fat chunk.

You want me to accept inflation as a reason to increase prices, show me the commiserate across the board pay rises for the workers, execs taking cuts and shareholders eating it.

Right. But why is this is 'just like the egg price spike'? Do you have any proof? Or just gut feeling? This sounds to me like you and @ShadowDenizen have a strong distrust of corporations in general (not unreasonable). What is unreasonable is to blast that distrust constantly, whether there are grounds to or not. It makes it harder for others to take you seriously when you do have an actual point.

 

[Older Beholder]

nvm

 

[ad_hoc]

I'm not vilifying them. (At least not more than any other large company.)

I'm saying they should take the opinion of their customers (who make them.millions if not billions of dollars each year) into account when determining WHEN or IF to raise prices.

Raising prices now after all the disastrous PR this year seems tone-deaf to me. (YMMV of course.)

They could also consider not having a 3-book buy-in to play? They're getting ALOT of press/publicity right now, but what percentage of potential new players ate turned off by the 3-book buy-in to DM?

And again, the concept of moving to digital is plain, and makes sense for them, so if the push is fir that, where they can monetize the character-builder and DDB to the sky, why not cut a break on the physical books for the collectors? (Not even saying "Reduce Prices" [that will never happen] just don't increase by a full 20%)?

It wasn't actually disastrous though.

D&D still grew by leaps and bounds in Q1 2023.

The controversies had virtually no impact.

They aren't worried about other RPG companies being competitors. They're all too small to matter.

If they sell 50 million books at $10 more per book that is $500 million dollars. They don't get all of that but that is quite a lot of money to miss out on.

The sales from current players are probably going to be reduced by 5% or less (surely not more than 10%). Even for bringing new people into the game it probably won't make a big difference. New players are mostly being introduced by friends so they already know if they are going to like the game before buying.

 

[Velderan]

Every big company taking advantage of chaos around inflation is the bad guy regardless of whether we've grown in unhealthy parasocial relationship with them or not.

The problem is some companies aren't far enough in the chain to be the ones benefitting the way you're implying. WotC, despite their buying power as a large publisher, is at the mercy of price increases in areas such as shipping or oil and gas that they have little to no control over.

Could they charge less and make less profit? I mean sure, but why hold them to a standard we're not holding anyone else to as @Clint_L pointed out. It's not like they're price squeezing on some essential goods here anyhow. If you find the price increase to be something you can't afford, don't buy the books.

 

[Oofta]

I'm not vilifying them. (At least not more than any other large company.)

I'm saying they should take the opinion of their customers (who make them.millions if not billions of dollars each year) into account when determining WHEN or IF to raise prices.

Raising prices now after all the disastrous PR this year seems tone-deaf to me. (YMMV of course.)

They could also consider not having a 3-book buy-in to play? They're getting ALOT of press/publicity right now, but what percentage of potential new players ate turned off by the 3-book buy-in to DM?

And again, the concept of moving to digital is plain, and makes sense for them, so if the push is fir that, where they can monetize the character-builder and DDB to the sky, why not cut a break on the physical books for the collectors? (Not even saying "Reduce Prices" [that will never happen] just don't increase by a full 20%)?

Only a fraction of their customers know about the OGL issues. Of that fraction only a fraction were not satisfied with the final result. Of that fraction, only a fraction refuse to move on after half a year. Nobody is ever happy about a price increases whenever they happen but unless there is technology that lowers the cost of production it's inevitable.

P.S. the main reason eggs were expensive for a period of time (they've gone back down) was because of a shortage of eggs caused by millions of hens being killed because of the bird flu. Throw in rising fuel prices and feed costs [article here]. Not everything is a conspiracy.

 

[Vaalingrade]

Right. But why is this is 'just like the egg price spike'? Do you have any proof? Or just gut feeling? This sounds to me like you and @ShadowDenizen have a strong distrust of corporations in general (not unreasonable). What is unreasonable is to blast that distrust constantly, whether there are grounds to or not. It makes it harder for others to take you seriously when you do have an actual point.

'Constantly'.

This thread was dormant since May when dude necro'd it.

 

[Ulorian - Agent of Chaos]

'Constantly'.

This thread was dormant since May when dude necro'd it.

The post of yours that I responded too happened 9 hours ago.