Flying off the shelves!

[Psion]

Basically, it's like this:
FLGS make it possible for small press companies to sell their books easily and readily, they provide a place to play and try out new games via demos, and with those demos can provide direct results of those demos to both publishers and distributors. FLGSs get much of their bread and butter sales from the mainstream products like the books WotC puts out.
When retailers lose those kind of sales they then don't have the extra money to carry small press books or in some cases they just give up on carrying RPGs altogether as they figure no one is going to buy them anyway.

If it's all about the small press, I am singularly unmoved. I don't find small press games especially compelling. If you want my reasons, I can expound, but otherwise suffice it to say that I don't care much.

That said, I find your line of thinking rather isolated. I don't think the small press gets hurt as much as you imply. Sure, they get less FLGS support because of the internet sales phenomenon. That said, the internet also makes it possible to spread the word about small press games wider. So yes, I think that if all gamers were to take what you consider to be the self-enlightened high ground and swear off wal-mart, small press games would have a better environment. But at the same time, I think you are stuck taking the bad with the good, but small press games aren't going anywhere.

 

[TalonComics]

I'd gladly buy my stuff at a FLGS if:

1) someone would open one here in town. The closest one to me right now is two hours away. The closest GOOD one is six hours away.

2) the FLGS offered the same discounts as Amazon. It's my money, and danged if I'll pay more somewhere just to support something (small press games) I probably won't ever buy.

hunter1828

1. There are plenty of game stores that have online stores as well. I'm one, heck there's probably at least a hundred. I've shipped internationally and at this point all 50 states.

2. What would be the point? Amazon is practically selling the books at cost just so they can get the sales. Amazon loses millions of dollars a year so they can pull that off. I would guess that their hope is to run all the other bookstores out so everyone has to buy through them.

It's not just small press you're supporting by shopping with specialty stores. You're supporting gaming as a whole. You're supporting the chance for a company to produce a cool, hot new product. You're supporting the chance for a kid to be awakened to excitement of role playing games. You're supporting a chance for players without games to find other players.

Believe me, I understand many gaming stores suck. It's part of the motivation that led me to open my own store. However, there are tons of great speciality stores online that also support gaming as a whole. This isn't a plea for my store but for our hobby. Don't let it get ground up in the machinations of massive discounters.

~Derek

 

[woodelf]

I guess I don't understand what the problem is with "massive discounting." I preordered my trio of 3.5 books off Amazon and saved around 30 bucks, I think. I can understand why a FLGS would rather have my business, but how is this bad for the hobby?

Do you listen to top-40 radio? Have you looked at the CD selection at WalMart? Are you aware of the vast difference in price between a top-40 CD at WalMart, and the same CD at your local music store, and how much mor eexpensive a non-mainstream CD is at yor ulocal music store?

Games risk going the way of popular music, only moreso because the whole market is smaller, due, not to massive discounting per se, but due to sales outlets that only cater to the largest-market tastes. The massive discounters take the bread-n-butter sales away from the local shop, and then the local shop folds, and you simply can't get the small-press/unusual items, because they don't sell enough to make them worth the time of the big-box store.

And it's not just non-D20 products, it's products from smaller-press d20 producers, too. So, if you've ever discovered a small, obscure game at your FLGS, think what the gaming world would be like without these small-press games.

Now, in fairness, the internet is actually helping level the field for the little guy, too--anybody cansell via RPGNow, or whatever, without needing to produce 10000 units and take returns. But what you lose is exposure. Search engines are great for finding what you already know you want. How do you find a new RPG that you've never heard of with Google? [Same complaint i have with axing the printed prereg book for GenCon: i specifically want to find games that i've never heard of, so how do i search for them? Not to mention, i want *new* people to play the games i'm running, and if they're new, they won't be looking for them. With a printed catalog, they might stumble across them. With a search engine, they likely won't.]

An analogy: i was listening to the local rock station a few weeks ago. I heard a song i liked, but didn't catch name or artist. But i noted the channel and the time, and when I went home, i checked their website. After a bit of effort, i finally found the "Playlist for the Week of X". It had 10 songs on it. IOW, not counting requests, they were playing a 10 song rotation for an entire week. Even if every one of those songs was one of my favorites, i wouldn't want that. Likewise, even if D&D3E were my favorite game, i wouldn't want it to be the only RPG on the market.

 

[woodelf]

Ok, so Wal mart, who knows nothing about the industry, decides to put the book on thier web page. They sell like hotcakes. Lets say they sell well enough for somebody at the top of take notice.

They think: "Hey! Why don't we put this stuff in our stores?"

Then we start seeing D&D books popping up in Wal Mart stores.

This is where it gets good (and bad). The average American seems to have a state of mind that says "If Wal Mart sells it, it must be good."

Sales skyrocket. D&D becomes more mainstream. We get commercials paid for by someone other than GE. Roleplaying becomes more accepted and us gamers "come out of the closet". The D&D = Satanism myth is finally stomped out and we don't have to travel to the far corners of the earth to get our books. (For me, it is almost 40 miles to the FLGS.)

Are you familiar with WalMart and the music industry? A far more plausible result of WalMart stocking D&D books is that they become the majority consumer of WotC books--WotC is selling more D&D books to them than to all other markets combined. Which means that, much like WalMart in the music industry, or California in the textbook industry, they get to dictate the content. However, D&D is a bit too "edgy", not family-oriented enough for WalMart. They begin demanding changes. Like re-recorded rap albums with all the dirty words changed (not just bleeped out), we end up with a version of D&D that removes all the parts that some reasonable portion of mainstream culture (or WalMart's vision of what should be mainstream culture) objects to: it'd be D&D without clerics, without wizards, without demons or dragons, and probably without all those pesky complicated rules. A version of D&D that is a staple of sales in WalMart wouldn't likely be "D&D" any more.

 

[Felon]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Flying off the shelves!

It's based on sales figures.

More details please. When a person walks into an LGS and buys a gaming product, how are these sales figures able to measure how active he is in the online gaming community? Or are you referring only to some highly-specific sales figures, like those of ENWorld's? If so, that begs the question of how accurately those figures represent the "average" ENWorlder, who may well be directing his or her buying power elsewhere. Much as I hate to say it, I've never purchased anything from ENWorld.

We're more in tune with the third party publisher market here on EN World then the vast majority of people who plunk down their money for D&D and third party publisher products. We're also closer to the D&D design process here than others who are also outside of the actual industry. I think this community (myself included) forgets sometimes how much more information we access than the market as a whole. It's available to anyone, just by coming here (apparently), but those who are here actually are more aware of what material is available than those who do not.

Yes, we're more informed and more opinionated but neither of those things comprise a huge fundamental difference between myself and the other eight or so people who are in my gaming group. We go to the same movies together, eat the same junk food, discuss the same politics. I think I speak for them pretty well, thank ya very much.

Then again, if you're only looking at sales figures, then you're saying that in terms of representing the "average" gamer, the only similarities or differences of significance are those that concern how we spend our monies. Well, fair enough. Looking at things from that perspective, the first thing that occurs to me is that the position that you and Crothian are taking assumes that the informed, diehard gamers are living on a dead end street. We're just a small group of folks living in a vacum inbreeding with each other; we don't interact or disseminate information and opinions with the rest of the gaming community. Or maybe that the rest of the gaming community doesn't listen.

Whatever your working theory is, speaking for myself none of that's the case. Since I'm perceived as the most well-informed player in our group, the rest of them ask me all the time what I thought about some book they saw on the shelf at the LGS, or whether or not there's a book coming out about such-and-such, or whether or not the 3.5e books are just a money-making scam. Happens all the time, and I bet many others here could say the same. Out of touch with the average gamer? Hardly. We're not in separate camps.

Probably the main difference between myself and the less-diehard gamers is simply that they don't spend as much money on gaming products as I do. If anything, that difference increases the significance of ENWorlders as representatives of the gaming community. It certainly doesn't diminish it--especially if you're using sales figures as the basis of your assessment.

 

[Vocenoctum]

Eventually, I just figured if my FLGS can't meet my needs in any way - most particularly by providing the goods I wanted to spend my money on - then they didn't deserve my business.

I was joyful when they went out of business, though they came back somewhere after about four months.

Meanwhile, Amazon.com offered me the products I wanted, shipped when they said they would, provided free shipping to fix an order the time I got a defective book, etc.

So my choices: support a game store that has no business being in business and pay full price (which I gladly did for about a year until they got on my last friggin nerve), or go to Amazon and have a pleasant experience, good selection, prompt delivery and the best prices as well.

I'm sure most FLGS are run much better than that lame Gauntlet store was, but I don't even have another FLGS for over 100 miles.

My LGS is also a nightmare for me. They have shelves that are really deep bookcases. They put product on the very bottom shelf, face forward (not spine forward) and you can't see the cover without nearly lying on the floor. They don't offer any kind of discount.

I'm off wed and Sunday. They get shipments on Thursday. If a new book is coming out, they will hold it for Thursday night. Come Friday morning it's on the shelf. They won't accept prepayment to hold the item. Therefor, I can't get most new items, since they usually order very few. (Sometimes not even enough to cover those they've already got "on hold" since they figure some of those people won't show up.)

They are very uninformed. They lack even the most basic information which I can get on the internet. I tried for months to get Secret College of Necromancy, with 4 excuses and no help. I ordered it from Stiggybaby's and got it the following week.

I will not frequent that store. I have given them my opnion before, and they don't seem to care.

That said, I've purchased plenty of stuff from Waldenbooks or BDaltons. I've ordered stuff from them as well, since then I can examine the book before I buy. If I know I want an item, I order it online. If I am not sure, I will look at it in the store.

In my business, I do not appreciate when people use my store as a testing grounds for products, then buy it from elsewhere. ("my favorite store doesn't stock X, but you do, so I came here to see it and figure out if I want to order it.") Because of that, if I decide to buy something based on having looked it over, I'll buy it at that location, even if it's cheaper elsewhere.

And, Talon, it's kind of amusing that you're offering 25% off the preorder for 3.5e in the sigline attached to posts decrying discounted internet orders.

 

[Vocenoctum]

Re: Re: Re: Re: Flying off the shelves!

It's based on sales figures. We're more in tune with the third party publisher market here on EN World then the vast majority of people who plunk down their money for D&D and third party publisher products. We're also closer to the D&D design process here than others who are also outside of the actual industry. I think this community (myself included) forgets sometimes how much more information we access than the market as a whole. It's available to anyone, just by coming here (apparently), but those who are here actually are more aware of what material is available than those who do not.

I remember fondly the days when I'd visit the (ns)F(ns)LGS twice a month. Going to the shelves and seeing a new book was exciting, it was fun going there and not knowing what you'd find.

The internet kind of removes that. An announcement carries some initial excitement, but it's motnsh before you see the product. When you eventually DO see the product, you've already read so many excerpts and news about it, it's gotten a bit boring...

I almost miss being uninformed

 

[TalonComics]

My LGS is also a nightmare for me. They have shelves that are really deep bookcases. They put product on the very bottom shelf, face forward (not spine forward) and you can't see the cover without nearly lying on the floor. They don't offer any kind of discount.

I'm off wed and Sunday. They get shipments on Thursday. If a new book is coming out, they will hold it for Thursday night. Come Friday morning it's on the shelf. They won't accept prepayment to hold the item. Therefor, I can't get most new items, since they usually order very few. (Sometimes not even enough to cover those they've already got "on hold" since they figure some of those people won't show up.)

They are very uninformed. They lack even the most basic information which I can get on the internet. I tried for months to get Secret College of Necromancy, with 4 excuses and no help. I ordered it from Stiggybaby's and got it the following week.

I will not frequent that store. I have given them my opnion before, and they don't seem to care.

That said, I've purchased plenty of stuff from Waldenbooks or BDaltons. I've ordered stuff from them as well, since then I can examine the book before I buy. If I know I want an item, I order it online. If I am not sure, I will look at it in the store.

In my business, I do not appreciate when people use my store as a testing grounds for products, then buy it from elsewhere. ("my favorite store doesn't stock X, but you do, so I came here to see it and figure out if I want to order it.") Because of that, if I decide to buy something based on having looked it over, I'll buy it at that location, even if it's cheaper elsewhere.

And, Talon, it's kind of amusing that you're offering 25% off the preorder for 3.5e in the sigline attached to posts decrying discounted internet orders.

First off, the store you described sounds like it sucks. I've never understood a retailer who turns down special orders or isn't willing to take a deposit to hold books. That's stupid. Heck, for people I know I'll hold books without deposits as long as it isn't outrageously expensive.

As for my comments regarding discounting I am referring to massive discounters like Wal-Mart, Amazon and Buy.com. 40% off is *very* close to cost. As for my discount I can still discount these books at 25% off and make some money. After all, that's part of the point to be a business. 25% off isn't an easy discount for me to do but for this occasion I'm doing it.

~D

 

[Vpenman]

Shortly after the Core Rules 2.0 Expansion was released, it reached #45 on the Amazon best selling books (not software) list.

Victor

 

[Angcuru]

Hmmph. No FLGS that I know of around here. BS5 and I used to hang out at the local WotC venue over at the local mall, that they have long since gotten rid of the gaming tables in the back and adopted a "Come in, buy something, get out." Attitude. In any case, whenever I need to see something about a D&D book, I call up BS5, since he is a living library of gaming books.

BTW, what's #1 on the Amazon list, anyway?