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<blockquote data-quote="Staffan" data-source="post: 6493011" data-attributes="member: 907">As I understand it, the Random House distribution deal was what dealt the killing blow to TSR - though perhaps it would be better seen as the (3e-style) artificial Con bonus that allowed them to go on longer, and then expired and pushed them right past the &quot;dying&quot; zone to &quot;dead.&quot; Here's what happened, as it was explained to me at the time: As TSR spiraled into insolvency, one of the things that kept them afloat was the book distribution deal with Random House. Since RH does mass market distribution, they get to return books - or worse, they get to destroy unsold books (or have bookstores destroy them) and have the publisher pay them for them. When TSR couldn't pay RH back, they accepted more books instead of actual money - but that just lead to a death spiral, and eventually RH said &quot;Sorry, your books aren't selling much anymore, we want cash instead.&quot; That was cash TSR didn't have, which lead to insolvency and game books/magazines being held up by a &quot;problem at the printer&quot; (the problem being that the printer wanted to actually get paid).So in one sense, Random House killed TSR, but it's likely that TSR would have fallen long before that had the RH deal not been in place.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Staffan, post: 6493011, member: 907"] As I understand it, the Random House distribution deal was what dealt the killing blow to TSR - though perhaps it would be better seen as the (3e-style) artificial Con bonus that allowed them to go on longer, and then expired and pushed them right past the "dying" zone to "dead." Here's what happened, as it was explained to me at the time: As TSR spiraled into insolvency, one of the things that kept them afloat was the book distribution deal with Random House. Since RH does mass market distribution, they get to return books - or worse, they get to destroy unsold books (or have bookstores destroy them) and have the publisher pay them for them. When TSR couldn't pay RH back, they accepted more books instead of actual money - but that just lead to a death spiral, and eventually RH said "Sorry, your books aren't selling much anymore, we want cash instead." That was cash TSR didn't have, which lead to insolvency and game books/magazines being held up by a "problem at the printer" (the problem being that the printer wanted to actually get paid). So in one sense, Random House killed TSR, but it's likely that TSR would have fallen long before that had the RH deal not been in place. [/QUOTE]

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