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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ghostwind" data-source="post: 1147993" data-attributes="member: 3060">The problem with the whole 'prices are getting too high' argument is that gamers tend to compare everything to the core books when they were first released at $19.99. I cannot begin to say how many times I've heard, "Well, if the core books were hardcover and only cost $20, then there is no reason why this 96 page softcover can't be cheaper than that." In a nutshell, most gamers do not (nor have a desire to) understand the economics of publishing and what it really costs the publisher to produce that book. In a nutshell, other publishers cannot price a book at $19.99 and expect to make money at all. It's that simple. Given the current decline in the market, anything less than $24.99 will likely lose money. Certain ramifications of the d20 open gaming license are starting to come to light, especially in recent months. Over the past three years we've seen countless publishers enter the RPG market with their own d20 book(s). As gamers have already noted, this has resulted in a very diverse amount of material (and I'm not even addressing pdfs). So much material, in fact, that retailers do not even attempt to stock it all because they cannot afford to and their clientele does not purchase it all. So what's the result of this? d20 publishers are seeing HUGE drops in sales and especially in reorders. Publishers used to sell 3000 units of a particular title and are now seeing those numbers around 500 (or if they are really lucky, 1000). What does this mean? You are going to start seeing publishers fall by the waysides. Only those with successful sales and a substantial cash base are going to last for any length of time unless gamers quit complaining and start buying more. They also need to get their local retailer to only stock their favorite publishers rather than everything under the sun. Unless gamers really want to go back to the days when there was one publisher for D&D, they need to make a direct effort to purchase more of their favorite publishers' goods. If sales trends continue at the current rate of decline, I'd bet a whole paycheck that you won't see companies like Bastion, Mystic Eye, Necromancer, Privateer, Paradigm, Living Imagination, or possibly even Green Ronin or Fantasy Flight producing d20 material on a consistent basis a year from now.  The prices have to go up if these companies want to survive, but the sales also have to increase or it won't make one bit of difference. Gamers will be left with few choices regardless of what they want, plain and simple...</blockquote>

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