Rappan Athuk: Reloaded SOLD OUT by wide margin!!

[Cergorach]

*runs off to buy all 1000 copies and then burn 999 of them*

Limited edition, sure no prob. But no unlimited edition is a bit... 'strange' (insane is such a strong word)...

 

[freebfrost]

No reprint--it would be unfair to the folks that bought them

Wow! Just proves my point about the luxury items example. If you want an Enzo Ferrari, there's only 400 399 in the world. If you want RA:R, there's only 1000 in the world.

Gutsy perhaps, but very honorable.

 

[PatrickLawinger]

I guess a number of months ago Bill posted that it wouldn't be reprinted and 1,000 copies would be it. Necro plans to hold to that promise. Bill already came by to post that fact so no more to add.

Apologies to those that don't get a copy.

Patrick

 

[Ogrork the Mighty]

Amazon orders? Screw them...I support FLGS. Buy local.

If I'd known that was the attitude, I wouldn't have ordered from Amazon. :\

 

[Numion]

'Mismanagement'? As I recall, Clark himself posted and said that even by selling out the entire print run of 1,000, they were barely getting back more than it cost them to do this in the first place. Their forecast about selling out was absolutely spot on, and it's quite likely that the print run was determined by being optimal to what would make a profit. They knew exactly what they were doing.

Optimal number to print is the number of people that would buy it. How is it better to print 1000 if 1500 people would've bought it?

 

[mmadsen]

I personally think that it's INSANE to print gaming products in limited editions*. If more people want it, why not cater to them?

Because you don't know more people want it until after you've made your (largely fixed-cost) upfront investment and sold out of your first printing. How many copies do you print in your second run? What happens if you don't quite sell them all?

 

[johnsemlak]

If I'd known that was the attitude, I wouldn't have ordered from Amazon. :\

My understanding from following this situation is that the 'attitude' has no bearing on whether Amazon can get the product or not--it was stated earlier than Amazon is not being prevented from acquiring RAR. As I understand it's a simple case that there are only 1000 copies (and a significant portion being sold at Gen Con), and Amazon is too big to be able to make the effort to get a product like this--the total profit from it for Amazon (or any similar mass-market giant) is simply too small for them to make an effort (Harry Potter is much more important for them; even the D&D 3.5 PHB is much more on their radar). Smaller game shops (either Brick and Mortor or online) are able to target the product specifically and bag it.

Conversely, I think it's pointless to draw anti-Amazon conclusions from this. Amazon is a great service and it's obviously very popular among EN World posters, despite a few with strong sentiments otherwise. But Amazon has limitations, like anything else.

 

[johnsemlak]

Optimal number to print is the number of people that would buy it. How is it better to print 1000 if 1500 people would've bought it?

The trick is, knowing how many people will buy it before deciding on the print run. I'm sure many publishers would be willing to testify that if they could do this better their businesses would run much better.

It's easy to say now that it's sold out that NG/WW should have printed more.

Anyway, perhaps there were non-financial considerations on the print run as well.

 

[mmadsen]

Optimal number to print is the number of people that would buy it. How is it better to print 1000 if 1500 people would've bought it?

It's often much, much better to print 1000 if you estimate that 1500 will buy it, because your estimate is far from perfect.

If your margins are 10%, then printing too many copies is far, far worse than printing too few copies. On a $30 product with 10% margins, each copy too many costs you $27, while each copy too few only costs you $3 -- the profit you would have made. (If your margins are 50%, then printing too many is exactly as bad as printing too few.)

So the game is to estimate the probabilities of selling different amounts, to compute your per-unit cost of over-printing versus under-printing, and to choose your print run so that you maximize your expected profits.

 

[ShinHakkaider]

I personally think that it's INSANE to print gaming products in limited editions*. If more people want it, why not cater to them? This marketing strategy creates unwarranted elitism.

Agreed. Seriously though reading through this entire thread really makes me not want to buy anything from Necromancer Games again. It's not so much the attitude of the owners/employees (but that last post from Bill didnt help either) but the idea that people here are dictating WHERE I should buy product. My FLGS does NOTHING for me in the way of support, no discounts, no place to play, NOTHING. If I have an opportunity to get the product from somewhere else for less I will. End of Story.

Now I'm fairly certain that I'll be able to hunt down a copy but my only options shouldnt be Pre-order or hunt. If this is the modely that gaming companies are going to follow from now on I can pretty assure them that my money is going elsewhere.

And if they've sold out of product and have just broken even I wonder if the eventual sales of the PDF will factor into things. After all those of us who DIDNT pre-order and are unable to hunt down a copy, PDF will be the only option. I'm thinking that despite not having a physical copy of the product that the PDF wont be cheap. Theyre selling Wilderlands for close to $50 (actually $48) as a PDF. Even if theyve sold 10 of them over the past year that's still $480 of sales without having to pay any printing and shipping costs. I'd be unpleasantly surprised if they havent sold more than that. I doubt if theyre going to sell the RAR PDF for less than that and there's obviously more of a demand for RAR. So I'm a little leary about the cries of "just breaking even on this LE product" thing I'm hearing here. These guys have been in buisness since the beginnning of 3E while a lot of other companies arent, I'm pretty sure they know what they're doing and theyve factored the PDF sales into the equation.