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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Owen K.C. Stephens" data-source="post: 8067734" data-attributes="member: 3190">I can!The "classic" three-tiered tabletop game distribution model works like this.A game company makes a product. They sell it to distributors at a discount. This may be as much as a 65% discount. The distributor then sells it to retailers, and a lesser discount (perhaps 45% off). The distributor makes thier money in that margin. (The exact discounts vary on a whole slew of factors)When Amazon sells a product at 50-60% off, they are selling it at a price so cheap, a retailer CAN'T match the price. That is literally less than they can buy it from the distributor.The theory of a "hole in distribution" is that either a company is selling directly to Amazon (which WotC does IIRC, and Paizo does not) for less than they sell to distributors (these terms are normally secret), or a distributor is selling things to Amazon for a bigger discount than they offer retailers. It's a "hole in the buck" kind of thing -- product is leaking out in ways the classic model says it shouldn;t.And if retailers don't know where that hole is, they don't know who to apply pressure to in order to get the same deal for themselves, so they can compete.</blockquote>