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only just seen this:

Ridiculous. Art and writing don't cost anything.

On which planet does this happen?
With respect, you are talking to people involved in both those professions I dare say, and they will be shocked that their services are expected to be provided gratis.

And please refrain from the, "can't pay don't pay" platitude.
It is patronising and insulting. I don't agree that the BRB is poor value, but others have a right to disagree on that issue.

If writing and art don't cost anything however maybe it should be 75% cheaper!

Silverkell wrote:
I don't play them...anymore.

So you're just trolling then.
Initiating ignore sequence.


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Chibi Bodge-Battle wrote:only just seen this:

Ridiculous. Art and writing don't cost anything.

On which planet does this happen?
With respect, you are talking to people involved in both those professions I dare say, and they will be shocked that their services are expected to be provided gratis.

And please refrain from the, "can't pay don't pay" platitude.
It is patronising and insulting. I don't agree that the BRB is poor value, but others have a right to disagree on that issue.

If writing and art don't cost anything however maybe it should be 75% cheaper!

I'm an illustrator Chibi Bodge-Battle. I'm being sarcastic.

As far as the "can't pay don't pay" thing goes, there's no alternative in this case. If you don't like the price of GW models there are lots of options...I've been posting them in several Modelling/Painting threads lately, but if you don't like the price of the main rulebook (and specifically want to play Warhammer)...sorry but tough. Either find a deal on-line somewhere, deal with the price and support your LGS, or...steal it I guess.

The type of textbook is what really determines the cost of the books.

I graduated from college in 1995. When I was majoring in physics (before the calculus kicked my butt), the science textbooks were usually right around $100.00 for a single, new textbook. We usually only needed one textbook for each science class.

When I switched to liberal arts major, I could usually get all of my textbooks for the quarter for around $100, used. This lower price was despite the fact that most classes, like my English Lit classes, usually had 4-8 books that we had to buy for the class.


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plastictrees wrote:
As far as the "can't pay don't pay" thing goes, there's no alternative in this case. If you don't like the price of GW models there are lots of options...I've been posting them in several Modelling/Painting threads lately, but if you don't like the price of the main rulebook (and specifically want to play Warhammer)...sorry but tough. Either find a deal on-line somewhere, deal with the price and support your LGS, or...steal it I guess.

Nah. Just wait for all the soft-back version to show up on e-bay, or buy one from a friend who just HAS to have 5+ of the new starter sets.

OP:

I thought you were a Spambot when I first saw this thread.

And all my first semester texts are E-Books... Booyah!

Liquidice281 wrote:Not to mention the 60%-80% buy back rate for textbooks.

when I went (graduated 2002) my school (Towson University) only gave back around 40% and wouldn't take back half of the books. "New Editions" for next year and all.

Also for the average college student

Student Loan Bills: $75000

Finding that the only jobs available are Fast Food, Walmart and Strip Clubs: Priceless.

Didn't get a text book for less than $100 each this semester and every single textbook from last semester was being updated so they had 0 trade in value. :-P
Yah GW stuff is expensive but I bet it gets read a lot more and hope its more fun to read.

Howard A Treesong wrote:

whatwhat wrote:Your also forgetting how much it has to do with what's actually in the book. They did actually have to pay people to write, photograph, paint, draw etc. that stuff ya know. That is always the bulk of the cost with anybook, the stuff inside it.

I haven't forgotten them but I have no idea of GWs set up. These people have a tangential cost to the book which is hard to calculate. GW studio staff for instance paint and photograph stuff but most are on a fairly low fixed yearly wage. I don't know about cover art, that might be done on individual contracts, I can't say. But on their fixed wage they will contribute to many books and projects across the year, making their financial input fairly small in the overall scheme of things. I did mention authors - I imagine they are the only ones who get royalties but again I don't know how GW contracts work. Authors of Black Library novels surely get royalties, studio staff working on Codexes is hard to say. With a BL novel they will have paid an author a fixed wage which won't be huge, with codexes it's hard to know if they pay authors specifically or if it's fixed term studio staff churning out the material. Aside from a fixed payment even mainstream authors get little more than a token amount from actual book sales, a brand new book selling for £20 probably nets them a penny or something insignificant. You can only make serious money if you have a particularly generous contract or you sell in colossal volumes like the JK Rowlings of the world, and even she has made the bulk of her money through merchandise/films.

Either way the financial costs of filling a book are low, all the retail cost of a book comes from the markup accrued by a distributor and retailer (who take on a fair burden of risk when buying stock), only a fraction of the RRP goes back to the publisher and they cover all their costs with that and hopefully make get a profit. That's why a book costs about £1 to make and £10 to sell, authors are the bottom of the pile.

You obviously aren't too clued up on how business works if you think retailers make more money out of products than their manufacturers. That's the basis on how things like franchises exist. GW are the people you are compensating most when you buy their books. Whether they contracted someone to write it or not, they still brought the pople/materials together to make it, they produced it.

And again I will reiterate the main value of any book is down to it's content.

I don't see many people going to art galleries, eyeing up a painting, then once told the price proclaiming: "I can buy a canvas like that for two quid down the market."

whatwhat wrote:You obviously aren't too clued up on how business works if you think retailers make more money out of products than their manufacturers. That's the basis on how things like franchises exist. GW are the people you are compensating most when you buy their books. Whether they contracted someone to write it or not.

GW largely sell their own stuff which means they cut out the middle men, as they *are* the publisher, I've been forgetting this and thinking about normal book sales. But I think this is the case with most gaming manufacturers, they sell direct. So a comparison with other gaming companies is fairer than comparisons with highstreet shops. If anything it reflects quite poorly on GW because they are selling stuff as the publisher at the prices you'd expect if the book had gone through the hands of a wholesaler and retailer. But then again they do have the overheads of highstreet shops so this argument could go on forever.

The majority of the RRP cost of normal books is added on after the manufacturer because the wholesaler and retailer have to add their cut. When the later Harry Potter books were being released small bookshops found that they were able to buy copies cheaper from the supermarket than they could wholesale, so we know the wholesale price offered to them was above £5 per book. But the RRP was £18, although most places offered some kind of discount.

Books in highstreet bookshops have around a markup from wholesale to retail, but the retailer loses a lot of that in overheads, so I'm not saying the retailer makes more money than the manufacturer, only that they add the bulk of the cost on, which they then lose to overheads which is why it's a hard time keeping an independent bookshop open. To make up some figures - GW meanwhile print a book as a cost of £2 say, and sell it for £18 which nets them a lot more money than a normal publisher who sells their £2 book to a wholesaler for £5 who sell it to a shop for £10 who sell it to a customer for £18.


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whatwhat wrote:And again I will reiterate the main value of any book is down to it's content.

I don't see many people going to art galleries, eyeing up a painting, then once told the price proclaiming: "I can buy a canvas like that for two quid down the market."

If that were true then authors would make a lot more money than they do, they actually see very little of the money made from sales.

Howard A Treesong wrote:

whatwhat wrote:And again I will reiterate the main value of any book is down to it's content.

I don't see many people going to art galleries, eyeing up a painting, then once told the price proclaiming: "I can buy a canvas like that for two quid down the market."

If that were true then authors would make a lot more money than they do, they actually see very little of the money made from sales.

wtf?

Publishers wouldn't contract authors to write books if they thought any differently.

plastictrees wrote:

whatwhat wrote:

Your also forgetting how much it has to do with what's actually in the book. They did actually have to pay people to write, photograph, paint, draw etc. that stuff ya know. That is always the bulk of the cost with anybook, the stuff inside it.

Ridiculous. Art and writing don't cost anything. The only production cost is literally the value of the paper, charging us anything more than that is highway robbery.

I love how we get these fiery revolutionaries revealing the "truth" about GW every few months to us poor sheep. Get over yourself OP, you're not saying anything new or interesting.
If you don't like the games they produce, don't play them, if you don't like the prices they charge, don't pay them...or, you know, get a decent job and suddenly a $60 book every four years isn't really a big deal.
Nobody wants to hear your shocking revalations.

Modquisition on. Although I agree with the "don't like it don't buy it mindset" I really must insit everyone get back to compliance with Rule #1. Lets get back to being polite people.

He's being sarcastic.

when I went (graduated 2002) my school (Towson University) only gave back around 40% and wouldn't take back half of the books. "New Editions" for next year and all.

Amazon buys books back at I think is 75% of cost. I've never had any luck selling back to the school they always "upgrade" editions so no buy back.

Gawd I love Amazon.

Student Loan Bills: $75000

Finding that the only jobs available are Fast Food, Walmart and Strip Clubs: Priceless.

Thats why you gotta choose a boring subject like accounting or finance. These art degrees that people are getting will get them no where. It's all in Business or Engineering (of course medical if you have the time).

Wait, wait, wait... we're missing the important thing here:

Brother SRM wrote:I got a $50 off coupon on the 8th ed fantasy rulebook

How'd you manage **that?**

(Still haven't got an 8th edition RB)

Monster Rain wrote:OP:

I thought you were a Spambot when I first saw this thread.

And all my first semester texts are E-Books... Booyah!

So no resale, and the production cost is even less for the manufacturer, but they can charge you a bunch?

Do they at least offer similar a similar featureset as DTRPG, so you can download a fresh copy if yours gets corrupted?

plastictrees wrote:

whatwhat wrote:

Your also forgetting how much it has to do with what's actually in the book. They did actually have to pay people to write, photograph, paint, draw etc. that stuff ya know. That is always the bulk of the cost with anybook, the stuff inside it.

Ridiculous. Art and writing don't cost anything. The only production cost is literally the value of the paper, charging us anything more than that is highway robbery.

I love how we get these fiery revolutionaries revealing the "truth" about GW every few months to us poor sheep. Get over yourself OP, you're not saying anything new or interesting.
If you don't like the games they produce, don't play them, if you don't like the prices they charge, don't pay them...or, you know, get a decent job and suddenly a $60 book every four years isn't really a big deal.
Nobody wants to hear your shocking revalations.

Are you kidding? Seriously, I can spend hours--even days on a single piece of artwork. Just because they have no physical value does not make them worthless. Time is money, and the many, many hours that go into designing, drawing, and creating something are definetly worth merit.

Yeh again I think plastictrees is being sarcastic there.

Yes, again, that was sarcasm. I'm an illustrator. I know what goes into creative work and I'm a fierce proponent of making sure people are fairly compensated for it.

Balance wrote:

Monster Rain wrote:OP:

I thought you were a Spambot when I first saw this thread.

And all my first semester texts are E-Books... Booyah!

So no resale, and the production cost is even less for the manufacturer, but they can charge you a bunch?

Do they at least offer similar a similar featureset as DTRPG, so you can download a fresh copy if yours gets corrupted?

I'm not going to get too deep into it, but yeah, it's a lot cheaper than buying a book. At least at this school. Cheap to the point that I don't care about resale.

DTRPG I don't know about.

Strangely enough, I've kept all of my college textbooks because the information in them was actually useful. What kind of horrible textbooks are people writing that they're not worth keeping?

The books ARE pricey.

Well above production cost? Yeah.
Overpriced? I don't think so. It's the most played game out there, we can play Warmachine or a similar game but you won't get half as many games in. I respect their right to charge what they like in order to please their shareholders and expand their company, hell it's what i'd do if I could.

Especially if I could provide a product of this caliber.

Monster Rain wrote:DTRPG I don't know about.

DTRPG is pretty cool these days (And I say that as a customer, not because Dream Pod 9 sells through them heavily.

The PDFs are best available. Old stock is still often scans. :( New stuff can be as complex as the creators desire... Newer DP9 stuff, for example, has layers so you can turn off graphics and backgrounds for printing, etc.

DRM is very minor. There's the built-in PDF protections, and PDFs are watermarked with your email on them, but that's about it.

If you need to you can download as long as you don't do it too often (the policy is something liek five times, but they seem to give out new downloads often) and PDFs can be updated, which resets the counters.

To be honest, I'm amazed GW hasn't jumped on the PDF bandwagon, as affordable PDFs are a great way to help minimize the inevitable piracy. I can't see it cannibalizing print sales much as large and nice-looking as the main GW books are, and cheap PDFs might get a few more people to have compelte legal PDF collections of codex books for reference.