GURPS Tactical Shooting: Extreme Conditions

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Refplace

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.

Yeah, as great as it would be to just automatically get the pdf added to your account upon purchasing the physical book, or being able to bundle the two together for a discount, I'd imagine SJGames has some very good reasons to not do that. Not least of which being, I'm not sure you really even could do that when purchasing off Amazon.

[Kromm]

I believe the reasons for not bundling a PDF download with each physical copy boil down to "the tech and tech support needed cost more than GURPS earns," but I could be mistaken. I do know that it has nothing to do with us taking money baths while laughing like Dr. Evil.

[Kromm]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Not least of which being, I'm not sure you really even could do that when purchasing off Amazon.

That's a separate issue. Amazon has lots of rules that vary according to their different levels and packages for would-be sellers. In their pond, we're not even fish; we're bacteria.

[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.

[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

[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.).