Pounds to dollars (and vice-versa)

I

Imajica

Mongoose
An anomaly. I hope.
RuneQuest Deluxe: $39.95 or £20 Fair enough. 2:1 exchange rate. Not bad.
RuneQuest Spellbook: $29.95 or £20. Hmmm.
RuneQuest Slaine: $34.95 or £25. OK, so where's the logic gone? By the logic of the current exchange rates, Deluxe is correct and the other 2 are over-priced (or under-priced in dollars).

So what's going on?
 
Mongoose have a special exchange rate thing based on duties and taxes and exchange rates and whatnot. Basically it makes sense sort of when you have it all explained to you, slowly, from what I remember..
 
Conan 2nd ed £25 or $40. With the exchange rate that should be $50. Cthulhutech is the same. £30 should be $60 but is actually $50.

How is it that the British get stiffed on price, given the game is now written, printed and shipped here? The price differential is the same as it was when the books were printed in China.

Mind you, £30 for a book is extortion anyway!


Sam
 
steffworthington said:
..erm... not long ago I paid £80 (book + shipping) for Delta Green:eyes Only. :oops:
Click to expand...

That's a collectors descision, not for a brand new book. (How much is Beyond the Mountains of Madness going for on ebay?)



Sam :D
 
steffworthington said:
It's the collected, hard back "reprint"* out in October.

*It has some new scenarios and (I think) is dual stat'd. So really, it IS a new book.

Here:
http://web.mac.com/drgonzo/Site/Welcome.html

BTMOM is about £80 but pretty worthless as the updated reprint is out in 2008.
Click to expand...

Blimey!

It's costing you £60 for shipping? Is that the cheapest way of getting a copy? It is a magnificent book, though. I'm very tempted myself.

Sam
 
Nope, your right Steff. That's the only way to get a copy as it's limited to 1000 and only for sale through that site.

Still, £60 for shipping does sound excessive. Did I get the calculation wrong?

Sam
 
Hi guys,

For various reasons which I have gone into at length elsewhere, US prices are far, far too low at the current time. We are looking into various ways of bringing the prices back into parity (and are able to do so on some newer books), but the weak Dollar is causing all kinds of problems at the moment.
 
Just overlapped posting with MS.
Samvail1 said:
How is it that the British get stiffed on price, given the game is now written, printed and shipped here?

Mind you, £30 for a book is extortion anyway!
Click to expand...

Exchange rates really don't help; the fact that the UK is a really expensive place to live in comparison with the US doesn't help, either; and the fact that short run books are _really, really_ costly to print doesn't help at all (it's not surprising Mongoose is trying to pull it in-house with a digital press).

Distribution costs for an RPG publisher are high. The margin he has to work on is lower than many people think and nowhere near the cover price. It's worth thinking of the chain:

1. Author - Write/playtest - get's paid.
2. Artist/Illustrator - Erm, illustrate and do art.
3. Publisher - Pay everyone from 1-4, Layout, edit, proof, playtest, market and takes some profit somewhere if he's lucky
4. Printer - Prints (costs readily available - look at Lulu, Lightning Source for short-run prices - cna be expensive)
5. Distributor - Distributes and takes cut (don't forget shipping)
6. Retailer/LFGS - stocks book (shelf space), takes cut

I read somewhere that the top printing run for Wizards was only 20,000, with higher runs only for books they can guarantee will sell more (perhaps 4e). Other publishers are, at most, 10-20% of that, iirc. It leaves very little on the margin.
 
Yes, that's all understood and accepted.

But how come I can buy my book for £30 here in the UK.
If I were to convert my £30 to dollars I would have close to $60.

I then buy from the States and still have $10 spare. (obviously forgetting the fact I have to fly there or get it shipped here).

The point is, it's more expensive to buy it here, relatively, even though it has to be distributed a lot further when shipped over the the USA.

Why aren't they Yanks charged $60?


Sam
 
Maybe our %17.5 VAT is already added to the price here, whereas in the USA the various States have their own sales tax which is added on top of the $ price?

Sam
 
Samvail1 said:
Why aren't they Yanks charged $60?
Click to expand...

They should be - especially when you factor in that shipping books to the UK or Europe is paid for by the distributors, but getting books to US distributors is done on our dime.

The trouble is that, for various reasons, prices are set differently in the US. If we price a book at $60, that would be seen as excessive in the States, and it simply wouldn't sell. In the UK, £30 for a decent sized book is not seen as too much - so perceptions have a part to play as well.

The American Question is something we have been looking into for quite a while, and it will take some time more to resolve completely. We have already made some steps - for example, all CTA ship miniatures now have price parity between UK/US.
 
msprange said:
Samvail1 said:
Why aren't they Yanks charged $60?
Click to expand...

They should be - especially when you factor in that shipping books to the UK or Europe is paid for by the distributors, but getting books to US distributors is done on our dime.

The trouble is that, for various reasons, prices are set differently in the US. If we price a book at $60, that would be seen as excessive in the States, and it simply wouldn't sell. In the UK, £30 for a decent sized book is not seen as too much - so perceptions have a part to play as well.

The American Question is something we have been looking into for quite a while, and it will take some time more to resolve completely. We have already made some steps - for example, all CTA ship miniatures now have price parity between UK/US.
Click to expand...

Aaah, thanks Matthew.
That clears it up. We in the UK ARE treated poorly compared to our Colonial cousins because we are mugs and are willing to spend that much!

Sam :wink:
 
Generally there is a higher cost of living here in the UK.

Petrol/gas equates to about 2-3 times the price in the UK.

But our wages are also higher.
 
Samvail1 said:
Maybe our %17.5 VAT is already added to the price here, whereas in the USA the various States have their own sales tax which is added on top of the $ price?
Click to expand...
VAT is added, but probably not what you think.

  • VAT on books is 0% (oddly, not the same as "No VAT" ). :wink:
    VAT on PDFs/eBooks 'exported' via a US corp/site such as DriveThruRPG is also 0%.
    VAT of the same books on CD is 17.5%.
    VAT on PDFs/eBooks sold though a UK-based corp/site (if there was one) would be 17.5%.

:thinks: Isn't it sad I know that? :lol:
 
lol.
There's VAT on cooked food, but not uncooked food.
E.g. McDonalds Burger has VAT, the ingredients from a supermarket do not.

Sad that I know that!!!

Yeah, the pricing always confused me, same applies with miniatures. It does sometimes feel like ti's being pushed to the max.
Sure, many of us get paid more than the fella's in the states, but not all of us do.
It's a questionable debate.
 
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