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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wulf Ratbane" data-source="post: 4215400" data-attributes="member: 94">It's not fishy, it's normal. It's a product of the "3-Tier" distribution system: publisher, distributor, retailer.WotC is not set up to sell 5 books to Fitz's Game Emporium. That is not an account that they have any interest in servicing. And WotC is entitled to offer whatever discount they want for purchases of a certain size. If they offer the discount, and you can meet the sales figures they want, you get the discount. There's no favoritism. They have tens of thousands of books they need to sell. So they are happy to sell 1000 books at a time to Amazon. Amazon gets their books at the wholesale price. They sell them for a very small profit and make their money in quantity. There is nobody down-tier from Amazon. They are distributor and retailer, and YOU, the customer, benefit from that-- assuming all you are interested in is price.If Fitz wants to sell WotC books, he has to buy them from someone who can buy in quantities that WotC is interested in dealing with. That's the distributor-- Alliance, Diamond, Impressions, etc. The distributor sells 5 books each to 200 game stores the size of Fitz. Their business model is acting as a "bulk buying agent" to small game stores. They can place an order of hundreds of books.The distributor, however, is entitled to his own profit. He bought his books from WotC at (or very near) the same wholesale discount that Amazon received, and then he resells them to Fitz for another 5-10% of the cover price. And then Fitz marks the books up again to cover his profit, and sells them to you, the gamer. When all is said and done, Fitz probably gets his books from the distributor for about 40% off the cover price.When you buy a book in game store, the price you pay is covering profits for Fitz, for Fitz' distributor, and for WotC.Fitz knows this, of course-- or at least he should after being in business for 15 years. It's eminently fair to Fitz, to the distributors, and to WotC, and at the end of the day the power is right where it should be: in the hands of the customer. You'll decide where to spend your money. The companies who best serve your interests will succeed.</blockquote>

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