D&D 5E The Printers Can't Handle WotC's One D&D Print Runs!

One of the reasons why the three new core rulebooks next year will not be released together is because D&D is such a juggernaut that the printers can't actually handle the size of the print runs!

Jeremy Crawford told Polygon "Our print runs are pretty darn big and printers are telling us you can’t give us these three books at the same time.” And Chris Perkins added that "The print runs we’re talking about are massive. That’s been not only true of the core books, but also Tasha’s Cauldron. It’s what we call a high-end problem."

 

[Oofta]

That is one of my all-time favorites.

The amazing thing is that it was done years before the dot com bubble, yet perfectly predicted it.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

The amazing thing is that it was done years before the dot com bubble, yet perfectly predicted it.

Arguably, the dot com bubble was more-

We'll burn through $100 to get each additional subscriber who will get us $50 in lifetime revenue. How will we be profitable?

Network effects.

 

[Micah Sweet]

So you get to decide how much profit is "enough". Gotcha.

There are certainly companies large and small that engage in price gouging. I personally think all Apple products are overpriced for what you get. So you know what I do? I don't claim that they "should" charge less, I simply don't think their product is worth the premium, I simply don't purchase their product.

Price gouging primarily happens on goods and services people need to survive, books to support a hobby are not required to survive.

Do people need Apple products to survive? Your own example doesn't follow your claim.

 

[Parmandur]

I too wish all TTRPG companies could channel their inner 90s TSR so they'd all go out of business and we could just post about the good ol' days instead of having new games to play.

Honestly seems like a lot of people on forums would like that.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I used Paizo as an example because they likely have the 2nd largest print runs of books, so are probably getting better print rates than other publishers and even then needed to raise prices. The upcoming Rage of Elements rulebook is $55 print ($5 increase over their usual $50) and the PDF is still $20. The remaster core books? $60, no price on PDF listed yet.

Digital has a different set of costs associated. Assuming DDB still uses AWS for their hosting, if Amazon raises the cost on that service enough, you'll definitely see a price increase on DDB while not seeing a print book increase. If they were doing this purely because greedy corporation, they'd raise DDB prices as well because inflation would be enough justification. They're focusing on the area where costs have risen the most, period.

Because those areas are the ones with most plausible excuse that people will accept.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Exactly! Fantastic business plans like publishing product without tracking how successful they are, not understanding how to track net profit, buying back books if they don't sell. Pure business genius.

No one ever claimed it was a good business plan. I'm still very glad they did it.

 

[Parmandur]

What happened to the other two largest printers?

They went bankrupt, due to the intense economic pressures in the publishing industry in the past decade. From the article @Snarf Zagyg has shard:

"Until 2018, there were three major printing presses in the US. Then one of them, the 125-year-old company Edwards Brothers Malloy, closed. The remaining big two, Quad and LSC, attempted to merge in 2020, but then the Justice Department filed an antitrust lawsuit. Quad responded by getting out of the book business entirely; LSC filed for bankruptcy and sold off a number of its presses. Smaller printers have continued to operate, but the infrastructure to keep up with the demand for printed books in North America is in shambles."

They are already no where near selling at a loss and were at no risk for that.

Oh, you have access to WotC numbers on their costs and income...? Thisnis an industry wide problem, WotC is actually one of the few publishers large enough to keep prices this low, again from the article:

"In the long term, it’s likely that as current agreements between printers and publishers expire, the printers will begin to charge publishers more for their services to better manage the rising costs of paper, ink, and labor. At that point, book prices will likely go up. No one is entirely certain what that increase will do to the book retail market, but it’s unlikely that demand will keep scaling up indefinitely."

 

[bedir than]

What happened to the other two largest printers?

One closed the year before the pandemic. The other two tried to merge. That was denied because of monopoly. One of those two then shut down. The other sold off several or many of its largest printers.

The available printing capacity in the U.S. has gone down at the same time that the general costs of supplies has gone and more people are reading physical books than ten years ago.

 

[Oofta]

Do people need Apple products to survive? Your own example doesn't follow your claim.

Which is why I would call Apple product overpriced but not price gouging. If you feel like WOTC's products are overpriced, that's fine. I associate greedflation with price gouging.

Of course capitalism works on a profit motivation. It's a terrible system. It's just better at many things (discussing exceptions is not appropriate for this forum) than any other system out there.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

There's one other massive factor that @Henadic Theologian and @Micah Sweet are not paying attention to-

Hasbro (and to a much lesser extent Paizo) set the market rates for gaming books. They have market power. When they raise rates for core books, such as these, to acknowledge inflation, that creates a marker (an anchor effect) for consumers-

This is now the "price" moving forward for this type of book.

Why is this important? Well, if you're a smaller indie publisher, or an independent creative, you are a minnow operating in this market. You are not a price maker. But now? You are able to raise your own prices to at, or near, the prices charged by the market makers.

Given the notoriously poor margins in this industry, the ability to charge fair prices for work is always a good thing. No, Hasbro isn't thinking of the little guy when they raise prices to account for inflation. But the little guy in terms of others in the industry will benefit from their own ability to raise prices and remain competitive.