Miskatonic Repository - imminent price rise for printed books

[Nick Brooke]

DriveThruRPG’s outsourced print partner Lightning Source has announced that a price hike is coming on 1 July. The prices of premium colour print-on-demand books will increase on that date to reflect the new costs. All five of the printed books available from the Miskatonic Repository are in premium colour.

Ultimately, if you want one of our Miskatonic Repository books, buy it now for premium print quality at reasonable prices. There may be new cheap editions in future, but they will look cheaper; the current premium editions will still be available (unless creators take them down), but will be significantly more expensive.

NB: this also applies to the Jonstown Compendium, other community content and indeed any professional books that are available in print-on-demand premium colour format from  DriveThruRPG. I’m telling you about its impact on the Miskatonic Repository because that’s what this forum is interested in, but we’re not being singled out.

Edited June 7, 2021 by Nick Brooke

[klecser]

How big of an increase Nick? Can you say? If they're going to go up a buck a piece, I'm not going to be in a rush. But if they're going up something ridiculous like 25%+, that is different.

[glassneedles]

There is more info in the similar topic on the RuneQuest forums looks like a fairly big increase.

 

 

 

[Nick Brooke]

2 hours ago, klecser said:

How big of an increase Nick? Can you say? If they're going to go up a buck a piece, I'm not going to be in a rush. But if they're going up something ridiculous like 25%+, that is different.

I understand premium colour printing costs will rise by between a third to a half again (with higher rises the longer the book is). On 1 July, the increased print cost will be added to the selling price. Creators may of course fine-tune their books’ prices thereafter.

DriveThruRPG describes the price rise as “dramatic” in its latest newsletter:

[Nick Brooke]

I've had time to crunch the numbers for my own printed titles (on the Jonstown Compendium, but the same price hike applies):

In general, it looks like our premium-printed books' cover prices will go up by 15% to 25%, with larger increases for books with more pages.

We hope to make new cheaply-printed editions available, which should be about 10% cheaper than the current premium-printed editions. I can't emphasise this enough: these will look cheaper than the current premium-printed editions, and this is not our preferred format.

DriveThruRPG has standard vs. premium printing comparisons here, and I will check a "standard color" proof-print of one of our books vs. the original "premium color" edition before we decide whether to put these on sale. I'm optimistic (because the one standard color book I've seen looks pretty good), but I don't want to slip up.