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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Glade Riven" data-source="post: 5432805" data-attributes="member: 86468">Some of that is a little cheaper than I last checked, but... A quick check with the book cost calculator for an AD&D 2nd Edition Player's Handbook has a minimum printing cost of about $15 per book for a hardcover, black & white interior. Full color interior with that same calculator has it listed at $48 for a base color print. As I don't own any 2nd edition stuff, I have a tendency to forget that a lot of it was printed in black and white. So that's where I got the $50 figure. Presumibly WotC could negotiate a better deal (although that person has to be paid). Now, assuming that WotC were serious about it (and we stick with black and white) and they were paying that particular company to scan something that was in perfect condition (which if they don't have, it could probably be picked up fairly cheap on Ebay), the costs aren't as bad. If they have to pay someone to go in and digitally clean up every page, that gets real expensive very quickly - and the final cost from that is hard to determine without knowing the damage. If you are just scanning to pick up the text only, someone has to be payed to fix errors from the automated process. Computers aren't perfect. Granted, the costs are front loaded - but is there enough demand to offset those costs? That is an unanswered question. So it comes down to where you see it from a best case scenario vs. me seeing it from a worst case scenario. Without more detailed information on the actual quality of the works that WotC has in their vault, it is harder for us to get more accurate. @<a href="http://www.enworld.org/forum/member.php?u=6667746" target="_blank">shadzar</a>1. I've looked into POD pricing and have also talked with professional authors who have gotten published. POD is more expensive than traditional publishing, because of volume pricing. However, a chunk of the costs I was refering to was what it would cost to pay someone to do page clean-up. If the scans are bad (and even from a major company who's business is to scan things in bulk can have bad scans, if the original material is in poor condition) that can get expensive. 2, 3, & 4. Companies have marketing departments and management that has to okay things. Managers have to sign off on it, and to do so they have to be informed on the pros and cons of spending the time and money on something like this. Researching this information takes time and money, and people who are looking into other things now have to look into this. Not only do these wages have to be paid, but taxes, benefits, etc. - and if someone is working on this, then they aren't working on something else. 5. And you want them to make it worse? With WotC using early box art on new product, releasing old product with the same art will only add to it.</blockquote>

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