Is the Age of Hardcover Gluttony over?

[MadLordOfMilk]

Many of my early Battletech books, such as the excellent House books and early tech readouts, all used such pitiful glue that the pages are all now loose. I wish hard covered denoted quality glue, my copy of Unearthed Arcana (AD&D edition) has cracked in numerous places, whole chunks of the books slide in and out of the covers.

On the upside, if you take the book(s) to a print shop, you can probably get them re-bound pretty cheap. Obviously, chopping off the spine and re-binding it will change the "niceness" of the book, but if you use them enough it's worthwhile to keep them from totally falling apart. Obviously, if you're just sitting on the book for collection purposes, don't waste the money.

I used to say this about art myself. But I've really found myself liking the art in the Paizo books to the degree that I consider it a rather large pro to their materials.

While I really like the high production quality of the Pathfinder books, I'd prefer cheaper ones with lower production values. Quite frankly, I can't justify spending $50 on a book if I won't use it constantly. Core rulebook, sure. Supplement? Ouch.

 

[Mercurius]

Hardcovers are books. Softcovers are just tarted up magazines.

Would I buy something in hardcover for $30 I could get in softcover for $20?
Yes, please. In fact, I just replaced my GURPS Space Fourth Edition with a hardcover after a six month long wait to find it at a reasonable price.

Taking your question isolated from anything else, of course--or at least in general. But there are other factors. For example, would you rather have two $30 hardcovers or three $20 softcovers? Are you happy spending $30 on a book like Arcane Power which has a lot of filler crunch, aka stuff you don't absolutely need, especially if you have D&DI?

It also depends upon how much discretionary income you have, which varies widely. If you're a 12-year old kid with a $10/week allowance and without the luxury of a credit card to buy on Amazon, one hardcover a month almost maxes you out but for the same amount you could get two softcovers, or one softcover and one pack of miniatures.

For someone like myself with some but not a lot of income--as I said, about $150 a month for free spending, but with other interests other than RPGs--I might not buy every supplement even if they are cheaper softcovers, but I would at least consider it. One of the Power books for $30? Even $20 on Amazon? Nope. They're only useful for character generation and I would rather go with my current plan of subscribing to D&D Insider for a month, getting the updates, then un-subscribing for six+ months.

The bottom line is that WotC wants people to buy as much quantity of product as possible and if they are willing to sacrifice a touch of quality in terms of production, they will and they are. And, I think, they should.

So again, my recommendations to WotC would be:

Hardcovers - core rule books, special editions
Softcovers - splats, adventures, monster expansions
Box Sets - Starter sets, campaign guides, mega-adventures, "stuff"

 

[Umbran]

For example, would you rather have two $30 hardcovers or three $20 softcovers?

Number of books is not meaningful unless it is coupled with some assumption about the content of those books.

 

[Mercurius]

Number of books is not meaningful unless it is coupled with some assumption about the content of those books.

Of course, which is why I wrote "other factors", as in plural.

 

[jimmifett]

Yes, please. In fact, I just replaced my GURPS Space Fourth Edition with a hardcover after a six month long wait to find it at a reasonable price.

ooh! I've been meaning to pick that up for years! Saw it on the shelf, had my wallet out, and then noticed softcover, and sadly put it back. I keep forgetting to look for it in hardcover.

 

[dmccoy1693]

It comes down to this really, most gamers are collectors. In that sense, PDFs are less valuable to collect than any kind of hard copy. Soft cover are less valuable to collect than hard covers. Some gamers will pay more for the same thing in a hardback.

The problem comes in: is it still economical, is there still a sizable enough audience to justify the expense of the hardcover. IMO, we're pretty near the end of regular hardcover rpg books. Hardcover core books sure, but supplements are looking more and more like they're going to be softcover for quite some time.

 

[Holy Bovine]

I would like there to still be a mixture of both hardback and softcovers. I look at it this way - it all comes down to page count. For books over 250 pages I want it in hardcover. For anything else softcover is just fine thank you. I have a v1 Warhammer FRP book in softcover, 356 pages and not a loose page in sight. That binding is as solid today as the day i bought it! I also have a hardcover v1 WFRP book that has seen less use and has many loose pages. I would love to see every softcover book I have get that WFRP binding.

 

[occam]

Personally, I prefer hard covers. I started out as a kid with GURPS, and am now afraid to open half my soft covers lest pages fall out.

The GURPS softcovers had notoriously poor bindings, though; at least they did when I played it (in the early '90s). I would hope that WotC is getting the binding right on these new softcover products; the lay-flat binding tends to do very well over the long term, IME.

 

[Mercurius]

Worst binding of all time: AD&D Unearthed Arcana. Are there even copies out there that are intact?

 

[Stormonu]

Worst binding of all time: AD&D Unearthed Arcana. Are there even copies out there that are intact?

Mine's still in excellent shape (having lived 2 years in a school backpack and then the rest of it's life on a shelf). Unfortunately, my 1E DMG finally split in two, though I was lucky to get a near-mint replacement (but the pages are no longer colored in ).

I have to say that some of the changes I've seen in the formatting of hardcovers has been a good thing. As an example, I used to have the WEG 2E star wars hard cover, and it was thick with text; too dense for me to wrap my head around it and black & white pictures/illustrations that were either too dark or poor quality line art. When they put out the "revised & expanded" version, which was full color with lots of space and formatting that made it much easier to read, I jumped on it and still love it as my most favorite Star Wars rule book.