GURPS Tactical Shooting: Extreme Conditions

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Varyon

In theory you could have a download code included in the book, but in practice this would be a massive headache.

Yeah, there's a reason I specified 'viable'. There are a number of ways you could try to do it, they're just all horrible.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by cupbearer

Hi

The book looks good but the pricing and the way you guys dont bundle pdf and physical copy is ridiculous.

$20 for pdf
$20 for Amazon copy

No bundle. Ok fine you want to charge $25/30 for bundle, fair enough. But no option?

If you look at DCC rpg, they include download code in physical copy. It’s crazy to ask people to pay twice at full price when the majority dont charge at all.

I paid NZ$15.00 for the pdf, which is close to the direct exchange rate currently (someone made an extra US$0.22 on the sale).

Amazon Australia (the closest) offers it at NZ$25.83 (and don't want to tell me the shipping, because they want me to buy more stuff and get free shipping), and also offer to ship it from the US at NZ$31.10 plus NZ$17.54 shipping. The Australian one is slightly cheaper than the exchange rate would suggest, and its price in both Aus and here is about right for the USD exchange rate.

So while I'm not buying the hardcopy, that's because 1) I've not been doing that for years, and 2) while $15 for the pdf is within my gaming budget, $30+ is not these days (thanks to Covid, wars, etc., etc.).

[cupbearer]

Originally Posted by Varyon

I'm seeing it as $9.00 for the pdf on Warehouse23, and $14.95 for the paperback on Amazon, so I'm not sure where you're getting $20 each from. I'll admit that "complementary pdf with every physical book purchase" would be ideal, however, and maybe some bundle option would be decent.

Im looking at the wrong book sorry.

The correct price is $20 hard, $13 soft. Still silly imho

[cupbearer]

Originally Posted by Refplace

I don't know, to me the basic price is cheap enough I don't really see the issue. Also there are additional costs, fees, taxes, etc, involved.
Lets say the author gets a royalty payment, call it $1 for simplicity.
I do not know how much a cut Amazon takes in this case but it ap[ears they range from 6% to 45% plus a VAT fee from .99 per item to $39.99 per month.
So were looking at about $2 per PDF going elsewhere. Then you have administrative overhead and taxes.
Seems like each PDF looses about $3 on Amazon, less on W23 (but still have to pay taxes and royalties if that was the deal with the author).
Taxes can be pretty complicated but I bet that you pay based on the official price and wont get a discount per special bundle - taking the difference as a tax deduction and business expense. Tax deductions are not tax credits though.

So the question becomes, is all that extra time and expense going to be worth it? And of course its far less worthwhile on low volume items where the administrative overhead is more significant.

Why does every other small outfit do it though?

My prediction is that they will eventually do this just as they said they wouldnt do kickstarter and domain management etc.

Welcome to 2023 where companies with three employees do this.

Also i dont see why youll pay extra taxes on the bundle, its a coupon.

[Farmer]

My view? GURPS books (PDF, physical), are cheap. I don't mean that to sound narky to those for whom it's a not-insignificant amount. I get it. Perhaps it would be better to say they are good value. But relative to the effort that goes into making them, the quality, the content, and the enjoyment derived from them, it's hard to stack it against other things and say they're over-priced. This, BTW, goes for a lot of RPG material. As a market, it's generally good value and I find most GURPS material has been particularly so.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by cupbearer

Why does every other small outfit do it though?

My prediction is that they will eventually do this just as they said they wouldnt do kickstarter and domain management etc.

Welcome to 2023 where companies with three employees do this.

Also i dont see why youll pay extra taxes on the bundle, its a coupon.

I can't say without insider knowledge, or at least general knowledge on the company in question.
My guess though are a combo of...
1) They dont pay royalties to freelance authors.
2) They dont sell through their own store so each sale on another store is not as much a loss. Or simply trying to keep both internal and external sales as consistent pricing as possible.
3) They have staffing that emphasis the line in question as a core line instead of a handful of part time staff or freelancers.
4) lower overhead from items like #3 and things like no physical buildings such as a wharehouse.
5) Their items are priced high enough to cover any extra costs in doing so. So maybe no royalties on PDF in their contracts, less money spent on editing, wharehousing, infrastructure, and higher charge per unit. Or higher volume sales, that makes up for a lot. Selling thousands instead of hundreds lets you more easily absorb certain costs - especially overhead type costs or writing per word. Obviously it wont help with commission or royalties but it helps a lot if you don't pay them.
Another factor, often overlooked for some reason I fail to understand. A successful company spends most of its money where it will return the most profit. For an indy RPG that is on thier RPG, for Steve Jackson Games that is on board games. Every hour their marketing and IT people spend on GURPS instead of say Munchkin effectively loses them money as they stand to make less of a profit. I think that is also one of the reasons some of us who are fellow customers and lovers of GURPS worry about "demands for freebies" and comparisons. Were afraid it will tip the scales enough that the company abandons GURPS in favor of its more profitable lines.

Again, neither I or anyone else is saying its impossible or technologically unachievable. We are just saying that it costs money to do this which some people to suggest its easy and costs no money to do.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by cupbearer

Welcome to 2023 where companies with three employees do this.

That's around 3x as many full-time employees as GURPS has, from what I understand. Sure, SJGames as a whole has more full-timers than that, but for GURPS, there's basically just Kromm as author and editor (layout and so forth are also done in-house, but by people who work for SJGames as a whole and have a lot more on their plate than just GURPS, making them functionally part-timers as far as the GURPS line is concerned).

Also, new companies are setting everything up from scratch, so they're spending roughly the same amount of time and effort regardless of what setup they wind up with. GURPS already has infrastructure in place from back before "print and pdf in a bundle" was a typical thing, so they'd have to spend additional resources to modify themselves to do that. There was also the mention of FLGS - it's entirely possible Steve Jackson prefers the older model of business of going through brick-and-mortar stores, and thus wants to support them... which online-only options like a print+pdf bundle wouldn't work for. And even if you consider that way of doing things to be outdated, I believe FLGS's are still largely responsible for the bulk of CCG sales, and unlike with GURPS, SJGames actually makes a decent profit off Munchkin, so supporting FLGS's is very much in their interest.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by Varyon

There was also the mention of FLGS - it's entirely possible Steve Jackson prefers the older model of business of going through brick-and-mortar stores, and thus wants to support them... which online-only options like a print+pdf bundle wouldn't work for. And even if you consider that way of doing things to be outdated, I believe FLGS's are still largely responsible for the bulk of CCG sales, and unlike with GURPS, SJGames actually makes a decent profit off Munchkin, so supporting FLGS's is very much in their interest.

All your points were good but this one especially I think is noteworthy. Steve Jackson Games has a long history of supporting FLGS and the boardgame and dice game markets help make that a more profitable investment to encourage and support.

[Kromm]

I prefer to avoid speculation and taking sides in grumbling contests, but I can offer facts that I can confirm as an insider or that any of you could confirm with a little homework:

Originally Posted by Refplace

They [other companies] dont pay royalties to freelance authors.

This is a big one!

SJ Games doesn't always offer royalties these days, but they do sometimes. Any future work that reuses content from earlier works created under royalties contracts (as were all works up until the mid-2010s) also pays royalties to the creator of the reused material. Such reuse is nigh-universal – if you're doing homework, look for "Additional Material" credits.

Anyway, royalties are paid on each copy sold. "One PDF" and "one physical book" are two copies under the law in the jurisdiction that governs SJ Games' contracts, and the company cannot get around that through discounted bundling. So, if the company owes x% and were to keep the price of the PDF + print the same as that of print alone, they'd be paying 2x%. Great for the writer, but less than great for SJ Games, who'd end up losing money on the deal.

Many other publishers do not offer royalties and/or reuse fees. Even those that do aren't all incorporated in the same U.S. state, and these sorts of contracts are governed by state laws. So, you need to compare apples to apples.

Originally Posted by Refplace

They dont sell through their own store so each sale on another store is not as much a loss. Or simply trying to keep both internal and external sales as consistent pricing as possible.

Sort of.

Many online stores require those who want to sell products through them not to undercut them. If you do business with an online store that can't or won't sell discounted bundles, then you can't sell such bundles, either, because the discount would undercut them. In most cases, there are workarounds, but they involve the online shop in question taking a bigger cut . . . which leads us back to the previous situation.

Quite a few smaller companies aren't big enough to have, say, Amazon storefronts. SJ Games is, mostly thanks to Munchkin. And yeah, Amazon is one of the shops that includes no-undercutting clauses in the fine print of some storefront deals. There are other possible deals with them and other possible online shops; so, you have to compare apples to apples once again.

Originally Posted by Refplace

less money spent on editing

SJ Games spends a lot of money here, because its editorial staff are required to do deep first-draft reviews, actual i-dotting and t-crossing editing, indexing, proofreading, and PDF reviews. Many competing companies don't do all this stuff. I can tell you for sure that quite a few edit the copy, check the PDF, and call it a day. Once editorial costs get high enough, you need to recover them somehow, so there's an incentive not to offer discounted bundles.

Originally Posted by Refplace

Or higher volume sales, that makes up for a lot.

Yes. GURPS isn't everyone's cup of tea for many reasons that are beside the point in this sub-thread which is already beside the point. Most of its supplements don't sell all that many copies. "Giving away" free copies, even to people who've already bought copies, is less attractive in that context.

Originally Posted by Refplace

Steve Jackson Games has a long history of supporting FLGS and the boardgame and dice game markets help make that a more profitable investment to encourage and support.

This is 100% true. Steve, personally, refuses to undercut brick-and-mortar games shops. His reasons have nothing to do with laws, contracts, or any other externally imposed rules; it's a personal code of honor, one that I support. Discounted bundles are intensely bad for brick-and-mortar shops, to the point where their owners and the distributors who do business with them take every opportunity to say so. Steve has made a point of listening to these people.

—

In brief, while there are surely exceptions on one or two of these points: Small and usually (but not always) "indie" publishers aren't paying royalties, aren't paying reuse fees, aren't paying a fairly large editorial staff for deluxe editing, aren't using large online storefronts, aren't selling in brick-and-mortar shops, and are selling single-genre (and often single-setting) games that have a clearer market than "Anything You Want. Any World You Can Imagine." Most aren't based in Texas and operating under Texas law. None are owned by Steve Jackson and share his values. Collectively, this makes them oranges to SJ Games' apples.

I do realize that from the customer's point of view, I just said, "Because reasons." Even if SJ Games were to publish all the reasons in detail and include sample contracts, copies of their distribution deals, extracts from lawbooks, and so on, they couldn't expect the average customer to read that or care. All the customer cares about is the price. And no, I have no clever comeback to that . . . it's true, and it's one of the challenges of the time we live in.

(It's certainly the case that if SJ Games decided tomorrow that GURPS and I weren't worth the trouble and said, "Sean, you and GURPS are done here. We'll keep ownership of everything published up to now, but go ahead and publish new stuff for the brand from this point forward. Godspeed!", I'd have just me to pay, I'd write what people asked for via comments or polls on a blog, I could write and edit to at least decent standards in one pass, I'd probably sell PDFs exclusively online through shops that let customers pay for POD if they like, and it'd all be under Canadian law. Then you could compare more justifiably. But that ain't ever gonna happen.)

[Phil Masters]

Originally Posted by cupbearer

Why does every other small outfit do it though?

Genuinely small outfits (like, umm, occasionally me) are doing it through DriveThruRPG, who have their own print on demand facility. That makes it very easy; no need to offer print codes or whatever, just sell both from inside the same site. In other words, for this purpose, the very small outfits subsume themselves into a large outfit.

I guess that, in principle, SJGames could offer PDF-and-print bundles on books they sell in both formats from that site. But they understandably prefer to sell direct through W23 where possible.