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Message: <blockquote data-quote="GQuail" data-source="post: 3838122" data-attributes="member: 30709">As others have said, the phenomenon can be traced to the fact that many RPG shops are not run by people who are businessmen first: they are often RPG fans first, who got into the business for love rather than profit.  THey don't turn over a huge amount, but don't always realise that discounting a book m eans something comes in rather than spending years waiting for that £20 book to finally sell.  (OK, $35 or whatever, you get the point)  ;-)My local shops aren't too bad for this, to be fair: I have seen stock marked down for a sale, and have seen books I've eyed and passed up at £22 drop down to £16 when I finally decide to pick it up.  Also, one of my local shops gives me a 10% discount that's part "used to be in student gaming group", part "comes in most weeks so I'll throw him a bone" - so he's obviously not afraid to reconsider marked prices.I wonder if part of the reluctance to lower prices comes from competition online.  A local games store owner must know he can never compete with prices on Amazon or what have you, or at least not in any real long-term capacity - enough games shops deal in other material beyond RPG books (like CCGs, board games, tradeable figure games etc) that they must feel RPGs can't be relied upon alone to pay the bills.  Perhaps they think that no markdown will ever beat the competition, so they might as well keep it at top and rely on passing trade and customer good will?  Certainly, I've spoken to some of my game group and they've told me that they would prefer to support their local shop even if it's more expensive than buy online.</blockquote>

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