Sheesh this is getting expensive!!

[Keeper of Secrets]

Actually I sympathzie with KevinS. I remember this argument coming up on some other boards regarding Games Workshop cracking down on 'Internet Sales' because the store owners were upset at Internet Stores selling the GW minis at 20-30% off, killing the brick and mortar guy.

On one hand I can sympathize with the consumer - Get it cheaper elsewhere. On the other hand, and like I said, this may fall on deaf ears, but the brick and mortar guy has been good to you (hopefully) for a lot of years, (in theory) lets you play there, and has helped promote the hobby that you love.

I know it is hard to argue with cheaper, but at the very least continue to support the FLGS even if it is to buy some dice, buy some products that first come out or something like that. We NEED for the FLGS to be around.

 

[Raven Crowking]

This is just a quick note, but I hope you do realize that the "skyrocketing price of hardcovers" is due, in part, to online business?

In the old days, the publisher would place a solicitation and, from that solicitation, determine how much stock to produce. So all those FLGSs out there predetermined, to an extent, the size of a printing run, as well as decisions like cost, paper, ink, etc.

Leap ahead to today. An online restailer doesn't necessarily have to keep a storefront, so his costs go way down, increasing his ability to offer discounts. You would think that this would limit his risks sufficiently. But recently some very large retailers have forced publishers into the position of undertaking all of the risks involved. The publisher sends the retailer goods at significant discount, which, if they don't sell, can be returned to the publisher at the publisher's cost.

The publisher now has to maintain her profitability, and try to limit her risks. She does this by making the first printing plates permanent ones, so that she can make smaller print runs of the product, and continue to make those print runs as needed. This limits her risks, but increases her costs. The 100% return guarantee increases her risks. The higher discount for larger volume exposure (which has to be given even if sales are marginal) increases her cost.

In order to live long and prosper, she has to increase the cost of her product.

This trend then continues ad infinitum ad nauseum, and the cost of the books skyrockets.

And it isn't just RPG stuff and books. Businesspeople have learned that we, as human beings, don't think ahead very far. We don't tend to see these things as interconnected.

I want to buy product X. Product X costs $50, but a local bulk store can sell it to me for $30. The actual cost of the product to the smaller retailer is about $27.50, including shipping. This might seem to be a lot of mark-up, but it is actually not that much. In generally, you want to sell a product for twice what you paid for it if you want to stay in business. Otherwise, the costs of maintaining the selling location, plus trying to survive, will run you into the ground.

So, how does that bulk place survive?

Same as the online retailer. Some places go so far as to make the producer responsible for stocking and shelving products in their store, store displays, and an agreement to pay the superstore if the product does not sell as well as expected. They make very little off each item sold, but they accept almost no liability and they pay their employees something far below a living wage.

So, now the producers of those products are in the same boat as publishers. How do they reduce their costs and liabilities? Well, one of the easiest ways is to cut corners in production. Another is reducing wagers of employees, or the number of employees, or both. In real world terms, not including a regular cost of living increase for employees is a simple method of lowering effective pay without seeming to do so.

The kicker is that, as wages are reduced in an industry, Corporation Z, which does not deal with bulk supplier, can and probably will reduce its prices to "industry standard". This also affects wages in other industries....and as wages lower across the board, the need to save the extra couple of dollars becomes crucial. Suddenly, even if you were supporting local retailers before, your money lands in the pockets of the people who helped insure that the prices would go up, squeezed your FLGS out of being able to offer a real discount (which has become a lot rarer these days), and helped to lower your spending cash overall.

Nothing you can do about it, my friends. This is simply the direction in which we are moving.


RC

 

[Mystery Man]

Yeah, I really don't think so.

 

[DungeonmasterCal]

I don't have an FLGS in my town. There's a chain store that sells gaming stuff, but walmart.com or amazon.com can nearly always beat them. The closest FLGS to me is 30 miles away, and after the completely crappy way I was treated when I went to buy the BoVD, I refuse to set foot in that store again, and I do all I can to dissuade others from patronizing it. So I feel no guilt using soul-less megacorporations to get cheap gaming stuff.

 

[John Q. Mayhem]

I buy most of my my RPG stuff at Waldenbooks and Amazon. I got the IKCG and Legends of Excalibur at a nifty local store called Jersey's, and they usually have some cool semi-obscure stuff that otherwise I'd either not buy or get online. I purchased a 10% off card at Waldenbooks for $12, which has more than paid for itself already, and so the books there are about $28; close to what they'd be if I bought individually on Amazon (after S&H). Sp I mostly buy at Waldenbooks.

 

[tarchon]

I have to admit, I've bought 1/3 of my RPG books at regular bookstores anyway.

There's one store close to me that seems to get by pretty well by doing comics, trading cards, RPG books, graphic novels, and anime videos, with rentals for the last two.

 

[FCWesel]

So you're saying that if the local store charged you $25 bucks a year for a 10% discount, that the owner would make no money? My hobby store gives you checks for every $10 you spend. get ten checks get a $10 gift certificate. You can't imagine the # of candybards I've bought to get it up to an even $10 increment.

yay games plus!

better yet, if you fill out 40 checks (4 lines of 10 checks)...spend four hundred bucks...within 6 months you get a 20.00 gc instead of a 10 on that lest line; so all told you get 50.00 in gc if you spend 400.00 in 6 months.

yay games plus!

 

[Raven Crowking]

Yeah, I really don't think so.

Yeah, well, when I get into "rant" mode, you should always take into account:

(1). I'm old enough to have learned D&D from the blue boxed set in the early 80's. Hence, old enough to have developed the crankies.

(2). I have sold freelance writing, and I read a lot of odd things. Watching what's happening to publishers here in Canada makes me feel worried indeed for the future of bookstores, and the future of bookstores that carry the kind of esoteric stuff I enjoy.

(3). That set-up with 100% returns is actually occuring here. That stuff with "100% returns, you stock our shelves, and you pay us for the store space if it doesn't sell enough" is happening here, too.

(4). When Wallmart claims that their wages are competitive for the industry, it's true. But good luck trying to find even a bachelor apartment in Toronto you can afford. Unless you can do without food. And God help you if you work for one of their less competitive competitors.

(5). Wallmart and its competitors now control the largest slice of pie in the Canadian job market. Sad, but true.

(6). I actually own a comic book store, www.goldencitycomics.com. We're just over 3 years old and offer a 20% discount. At first, we kept gaming stuff well stocked, but it was a losing proposition for us. As others point out, you can get some stock cheaper on Amazon.com than we can for the store. Similarly, we've stopped ordering DVDs because Wallmart sells them cheaper than the distributors sell them to us. We cover the WotC product line as we are able, but most of the rpg stuff we sell now is esoteric, or otherwise hard to find in our area. Thus, we order (and sell) more EnWorld Player's Journal than Dragon magazine.

I try to keep my "old guy" persona from coming out too often. I'm only 38, after all. But once you've got a case of the crankies, sooner or later they'll flare up again.

RC

 

[Mystery Man]

Yeah, well, when I get into "rant" mode, you should always take into account:

(1). I'm old enough to have learned D&D from the blue boxed set in the early 80's. Hence, old enough to have developed the crankies.

(2). I have sold freelance writing, and I read a lot of odd things. Watching what's happening to publishers here in Canada makes me feel worried indeed for the future of bookstores, and the future of bookstores that carry the kind of esoteric stuff I enjoy.

(3). That set-up with 100% returns is actually occuring here. That stuff with "100% returns, you stock our shelves, and you pay us for the store space if it doesn't sell enough" is happening here, too.

(4). When Wallmart claims that their wages are competitive for the industry, it's true. But good luck trying to find even a bachelor apartment in Toronto you can afford. Unless you can do without food. And God help you if you work for one of their less competitive competitors.

(5). Wallmart and its competitors now control the largest slice of pie in the Canadian job market. Sad, but true.

(6). I actually own a comic book store, www.goldencitycomics.com. We're just over 3 years old and offer a 20% discount. At first, we kept gaming stuff well stocked, but it was a losing proposition for us. As others point out, you can get some stock cheaper on Amazon.com than we can for the store. Similarly, we've stopped ordering DVDs because Wallmart sells them cheaper than the distributors sell them to us. We cover the WotC product line as we are able, but most of the rpg stuff we sell now is esoteric, or otherwise hard to find in our area. Thus, we order (and sell) more EnWorld Player's Journal than Dragon magazine.

I try to keep my "old guy" persona from coming out too often. I'm only 38, after all. But once you've got a case of the crankies, sooner or later they'll flare up again.

RC

35.

Been playing since '82 - '81.

Online business does not raise the price of books. If anything it would lower them.

If you said that (in a nutshell) due to the low interest rate on mortgage loans it's causing inflation to go up thus raising prices on everything. That I'll buy into.

WoTC has to pay artists, printers, binders, r&d staff and the list goes on. I understand that they have to charge more. I'll still buy magazines and dice from my FLGS, but until they can compete with the big boys on book prices, my money goes to the lowest bidder. I may be a cold hearted decision but when it comes to my money, 'tis all about me.

 

[Raven Crowking]

35.

Been playing since '82 - '81.

So, you're allowed to be cranky, too. Cool. I started playing Christmas 1979. Of course, then I was cranky because I was a teenager.

Online business does not raise the price of books. If anything it would lower them.

I beg to differ.

As you said, "WoTC has to pay artists, printers, binders, r&d staff and the list goes on." The more WotC has to shell out, the better return it needs to make on its expenditures just to break even. To make a profit, it needs to do even better.

In the old days, the risk was shared by thousands of stores, which purchased product outright, without the ability to make returns. This made it a lot easier to see what you had to charge for a product in order to make certain that you hit a projected profit level.

At Golden City Comics, we offer a substantial discount to members because we know what they want to buy, and when we order it reduces our risk. We can afford to make less of a profit on those books because we know that we can count on X copies of product Y not to be a loss. This is something we do every day of the week.

Now, imagine that you wanted to order 600 copies of Wolverine #31, but you were unwilling to agree that you would actually pay for any of those 600 copies. Further, let us assume that you are willing to buy on the basis of a 20% discount. At $4.25 a copy (Canadian currency), I stand to make $510 (the base cost of the books is $2,550, $2,040 with a 20% discount, but I payed $1,530 for them). This is, of course, a retailer example.

Now, let us say that I am also the publisher of Wolverine #31. My liability should you not pick them up clearly outweighs my profit. However, I still want to make that profit. But, if my costs remain the same, and I raise the price, my potential profit increases whereas my liability does not. For example, by raising the price to $5.25, I change the cost of those 600 issues to $2,520 (including the 20% discount), increasing my profit potential by $480 to $990. Of course, I am also raising the price to all other consumers, which have to pay up front, thus using them to subsidize my liability.

Of course, the discount to retailers (including online retailers) is better than 20%, but if I give you an extra 20% discount, and get other retailers to cover your liability, you can now offer a substantial discount without fearing any liability....At least until the other retailers go under. Then I am forced to make you undertake more liability, but since you are the only retailer standing, you can pretty much charge whatever you like....at least until your customers revolt.


RC