Rule of Three 7/18/11

[UngainlyTitan]

I don't have a LGS, F or no.

Neither do I.

 

[erleni]

I don't have an FLGS here too. And getting manuals here in Italy is an issue if you can't order them from Amazon or similar e-shops.

 

[hexgrid]

n addition, what is WoTC going to do with brick retailers who sell online, some of them at 20% or more? Tell them they can't with this release?

Why would they do that? They just said it wouldn't be at "huge outlets," not that hobby/game stores can't sell it online.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Why would they do that? They just said it wouldn't be at "huge outlets," not that hobby/game stores can't sell it online.

I agree. I think hobby stores will be able to sell them

Unfortunately Troll and Toad is asking 42 dollars to ship a 30 odd dollar book.

Which is of course insane. But T&T has trouble with their shipping IMHO. WE have discussed it before, but never had a good resolution.

When you can get 30 fortune cards shipped for 1.99 to Japan, but adding a single 5 cent MTG card jumps it up to 30 bucks, there is a problem.

Anyone know a good place to buy the book from?

 

[JoeGKushner]

Why would they do that? They just said it wouldn't be at "huge outlets," not that hobby/game stores can't sell it online.

?

Why would they stop huge outlets from selling it in the first place.

Because supposedly it cuts into brick and mortar store sales.

So what happens when the brick and mortar stores sell it online and do so at a discount?

That will cut out the stores that don't.

Unless I'm just looking at it from a weird angle.

Kinda reminds me of the Warhammer thing. "No one can use our images or stock numbers online!"

Hasn't stopped the Warstore from selling the out of it. You just have to work around GW's own system.

Brilliant! Make the customer work harder to buy your product.

Ugh.

 

[Fiery_Dragon]

It could be a matter of the print run dictating the distribution rather than the other way around.

WotC Planner: "How many copies of MME do we expect to sell?"

Data Dude: "Trending factors says 7,000. With this kind of product, many will just get the info from DDi"

WotC Planner: "If we go with normal release, how many do we have to print?"

Data Dude: "Amazon wants to order 10,000 for the stores and online. They'll sell 3000, but we don't get a shelf presence for anything under 10K. With everyone else factored in, we'd have to print 25,000 to meet initial ship-out."

WotC: "What if we just hit the hobby trade on this one?"

Data Dude: "We could print 8,000 and probably see only 10% as fulfillment stock..."

WotC: "Sounds like the plan..."

OR - "Wow, after Borders closes, our cashflow is tight. I don't know that we have the liquidity to pay for a print run of 50,000 right now... anyway to scale that back for the next six months...?"

of something like that.

 

[caudor]

Jeez. Why don't they just print 10 copies and sell lottery tickets to win each book. Oh, that's right, maybe they don't have enough cash flow to print that many lottery tickets. Of course, I'm joking.

On a more serious note, I do worry about D&D now days. Perhaps if they offered something like...pdfs...anyone willing to pay the price WotC wanted could get one, even if they lived far far from the nearest game shop.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Well, I know that if the product is not available for me to buy I am not going too far out of my way to buy it. I'd like to see WOTC seem to care about my money by offering things I not only want to buy but can also purchase.

 

[JoeGKushner]

Fiery Dragon, I have to say, if that's WoTC reasoning, and they still don't do PDFs to generate cash, the people running that boat have rammed it into the carcass of the Titanic and are quickly sinking ontop of it.

"Is there any way to raise cash revenues?"

"I hear about these things like PDFs..."

"He's a pirate! Feed him to the sharks!"

You want to create multiple streams of revenue using the same material, not create constraints to getting the product out to the customer.

 

[Mummolus]

To be honest, I'm one of those who will just get the info from DDI.

I don't have either Adventurer's Vault and won't buy MME. I shell out for most of the published adventures, even ones I'm not likely to use, because I enjoy going through them and seeing the plot hooks and such. I do the same for Monster products (manual, vault, whatever), but I see no reason to do so for magic items. There's not enough flavor connected to them for me to enjoy reading them in their own right.