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.

 

[MGibster]

This is outrageous! Okay, I've got that internet rage out of my system. I don't know about anyone else, but when I play a game as frequently as I play D&D, I'm getting a lot of value out of those books.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Very fair given shipping and paper costs right now.

Gotta keep those "record profits" going into Q4, amirite?

 

[Zaukrie]

SEVENTY. Oh my. I'm a Canadian with a FLGS. That's like $95-100. From $65. That's HUGE.

That's the digital / physical bundle price.....

 

[Zaukrie]

Gotta keep those "record profits" going into Q4, amirite?

Look, they are a business. They haven't raised prices in 9 years, despite large increases in paper and shipping costs. You really expect them to just eat that?

 

[LuisCarlos17f]

Sadly I am not surprised at all. But we should remember there are other games whose books give more page with the same prize.

And in my nation the adquisitive level is lower, worse in the last years.

 

[mcmillan]

Also I think that's wrong. The book is $60 as part of the bundle, but the actual MSRP is $70.

The bundle is at $60 now, but will increase to $70 later. Based on the Amazon page the new MSRP is looking to be $60

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Look, they are a business. They haven't raised prices in 9 years, despite large increases in paper and shipping costs. You really expect them to just eat that?

Nah. It's been inevitable. They just have to be very careful about it. I have 30 years experience selling these things, and if you just jack the price too quickly (as WotC has done with MtG) then you seriously damage the sales-flow, and don't actually benefit much from your price increase. They MIGHT be able to make that work out fine FOR THEM if people continue to switch to their (much more profitable) digital version, but they could seriously damage print here.

 

[Oofta]

They've stated that the new books will have more content which means a higher page count. Of course I'd rather that they never increased prices, but the price per book was bound to increase at some point. It's kind of like people that complain that AAA video games don't cost $50 like they used to.

The most heavily discounted books were published nearly a decade ago and we're only paying for the paper and print costs. Things like surveys, the authors, editors, cultural sensitivity consultants and so on all need to be paid. They established the price for the PHB 9 years ago, so just going by general inflation that PHB that had a retail value of $50 would now be sold for $64.

In addition the price posted in the article is for a digital-physical bundle, so it's not a direct comparison.

 

[Zaukrie]

Nah. It's been inevitable. They just have to be very careful about it. I have 30 years experience selling these things, and if you just jack the price too quickly (as WotC has done with MtG) then you seriously damage the sales-flow, and don't actually benefit much from your price increase. They MIGHT be able to make that work out fine FOR THEM if people continue to switch to their (much more profitable) digital version, but they could seriously damage print here.

I admit, I agree that I don't know how high they can really go here......I'd think we are near the tipping point for print, but I've thought that before.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

That's the digital / physical bundle price.....

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.