Why are the new army books so expensive?

[Quinzy]

Empire Army Book in 2007: 18€
Empire Army Book in 2012: 33€

That's a 83% difference. In half the time of the 20% inflation that had to be expected.
With an average of 2.5% of inflation per anno the book should cost 20€.
That comparison is not completely fair because of the switch to hardcover and full color printing.
Some books are still the same they've been five years ago, the Dwarfs, Wood Elves, Bretonnians. Those books are 26€ now, a 44% increase over five years.

Provided the Wood Elf book was €18 upon initial print in 2005, it's gone up by 30%.

Now I'll be fair, yeah, the price increase from 7th ed books to 8th ed books seem quite steep, as evidenced above by Norton.
Was the book before that also €18? What was the cost of the previous book in 2001?

A hardback book seems to be about what? Between €4 to €8 more than a paperback version? The €26 to €33 isn't dramatically huge given trends in books.

I'm not particularly defending Games Workshop. I'd love if they made things cheaper. I'm more trying to play devil's advocate.

[enyoss]

This pseudo-argument is a pet hate of mine.

Agreed.

Admittedly, I'm very careful with my books, but I never had a page fall out of my 4th-7th edition softback army books. The spine on my 8th edition hardback, however, has already split, so it's going to be a tough job keeping the pages in there from now on.

The problem is that if I want to replace the hardback it costs me twice as much (and weighs a tonne more when carrying my stuff on the tube to games).

I don't really see any improvement in the quality of the product for the extra price (I don't really class colour as added quality: I much prefer the black and white artwork), so this time around I guess I'll only buy the one or two books that I really need and give all the rest a miss.

[loveless]

I went into the LGS tonight and saw someone working on their Eldar army at the painting tables. Nearby was their army book. It had, apparently, been stored in a cardboard tube from the looks of it. I may have made an audible noise of disbelief upon seeing it.

Well...it'd be hard to make a hardcover look like that...though I thought it was difficult to get a softcover to look like that, too.

Apparently I'm paying extra to idiot-proof my army books.

[Rosstifer]

I like the new books, but they are so expensive over here I have to order them from the US (Just like all my GW product). I have to wonder though, will GW keep going with the price rises? When will it end? and will they stop, or lower the prices even when they stop making any kind of profit? I used to be a massive GW fanboy, but recently it's been getting to me a bit. When my AOW Chaos Warriors get here, I'll be able to field a completely non GW 2400pt Slaanesh WOC army, and I can already field 1500ish points of Gamezone Dark Elves. If GW's prices (and attitude and output, Gamezone especailly aren't all that much cheaper but produce some lovely sculpts) were a little more reasonable, odds are I'd never have looked elsewhere. Still, at US prices anyway, I'm happy to pay for the new books, they are very nice indeed.

[Wakerofgods]

Maybe it helps them get a leg up against the 'up and comers'? Like mantic (with Kings of War) or warmachines and hordes?

GW obviously can't compete with the cheap price or balance of KOW - but they can overshadow KOW with pretty books, deep lore and variety of options (magic items/ect).

GW is probably just becoming slightly more 'niche' in the market that it has previously just dominated.


This is just a theory, I already see several holes in it so I'm just throwing it out as a random idea.

[kyussinchains]

For those using college/university textbooks as an example, after you've gotten your 3-4 years of use out of them, you can often sell them and recoup some of your outlay (I never paid full price for any of my textbooks at university) but in 4 years time your army book will probably be a tatty mess (let's see how they hold up over the next few years) from being used and read, and stands a good chance of being obsolete and worthless (I've tried ebaying 6th edition books in great condition and even for 99p they rarely sell)

I don't believe there was widespread outcry that the army books needed to be made hardcover, full-colour affairs, in fact I barely remember any threads on here about how shoddy the old army books were before the hardbacks were released, I just think GW saw a way they could attempt to justify a large price hike by increasing the percieved quality of their product, and that has been their business model for many years now....

[scarletsquig]

Maybe it helps them get a leg up against the 'up and comers'? Like mantic (with Kings of War) or warmachines and hordes?

GW obviously can't compete with the cheap price or balance of KOW - but they can overshadow KOW with pretty books, deep lore and variety of options (magic items/ect).

Not for much longer they can't.

Deep Lore? Yes, definitely on that point. Not on the other points though.

http://www.beastsofwar.com/kings-of-...ges-kings-war/

Mantic are, next month, releasing a high-quality hardback rulebook containing the main rules, background text, extra rules for campaigns and sieges, and 8 army lists (with a good variety of magic items!) Artwork for it is looking rather nice, too, much better than the recent warhammer army book covers.

The price? £20. Or free as a .pdf download from their website.

...also, all the rules have been throughly beta-tested for the past 3 years with lots of input from the community and tournament players to identify and fix broken builds and loopholes in the rules, the points values in the army lists are well-balanced, and kept updated online. Smaller softback rulebooks (IoB style) also come free in every army box, or are buyable for £5.

*That* is how you release a set of rules when you take them seriously as opposed to a chore that has to be done to allow you to sell more miniatures.

To put it bluntly, there is no real physical reason why GW needs to price the books this highly. They do it because they know that their target market is price insensitive. If the army books were £40, people would still buy them because they need them to play.

I will personally be grudgingly buying the new (and incredibly shoddily-written by Cruddace, to the point where 1/3rd of the units are literally useless) Empire book from a discount retailer, and nothing else. Already got the IoB book off eBay.

Why? Well, everyone and their dog plays warhammer, and that is extremely difficult to change. If I want to game with those people, I'll need an army book. Maybe in 5 years time things will be different and I won't have to buy the 9th edition empire book for £50, but for now, that's the way things are. £45 for rulebook and £25 for army book is a spit in the ocean for most of the people who play, because they have an extremely large amount of disposable income.

No point complaining about it, because that is the fact of the matter and it is not going to change. Just gotta deal with it.

[Lord Solar Plexus]

Last time I checked, bread wasn't a luxury item.

Last time *I* checked, you were the one to bring up bread when you justified the price rise with the line that "everything" became more expensive. Also, toys are no luxury item in my neck of the woods. Toys are part of even the most basic standard of living, on the same level as TV sets, computers or software.

€25 from 2001 was worth €30 in 2011.
[http://www.iisg.nl/hpw/calculate2.php]

That's a 20% difference....

So expected means expected. Money loses value. Prices go up. More so with luxuries.

The guy on the stretcher whom I passed on my way to work had expected the collision with that other car, too. Funnily enough his broken leg hurt just the same after the paramedics told him that this was to be expected when you're a commuter...

Prices go up. Wages don't. Me don't like. Easy concept, legitimate PoV. I'm not debating the fact of price rises, I'm saying that I don't like them, that I don't want them, and that it would be logical for every consumer to feel and say the same instead of just shrug and take it on the chin.

[Gromdal]

They are so expensive because GW has increased their profit on them.

[loveless]

Maybe it helps them get a leg up against the 'up and comers'? Like mantic (with Kings of War) or warmachines and hordes?

Less "leg up" and more "catch up" I'm afraid. Privateer's books have long been full-color affairs, available in both hardcover and paperback. Quality of the art included is going to vary based on personal opinion. Privateer books also tend to include rather useful painting guides and actually progress the story, so outside of an edition reboot you're not going to end up with much repeated information. I don't know the page counts on the Privateer books off the top of my head - I think the faction books are rather hefty in comparison to a GW army book while the expansion books might be closer in size to a GW army book.

GW also falters a bit in getting their rules out there. I can direct people to start-up rules (or complete rules) for Warmachine, Hordes, Kings of War, Malifaux, and several other games for free. GW games require you to scour eBay for the starter rulebooks or spend $60-75 on a core rulebook and $33-42 on an army book. GW "starter sets" are laughable as anything other than an army springboard due to a lack of complete unit rules.

Short version: GW overcharges for rulebooks, which makes their start-up costs even higher. If the rulebooks were largely optional, the increased price wouldn't be as big of a deal.

[The Low King]

Prices are high because GW is currently a buisiness that recorded (i believe, from a recent article) a 40% increase in profits.

They are as high as they are because GW can go that high, people will pay that much. Same idea as things like the Ipad (ect) or the newest X-box game. I will happily (well, not quite) buy the new Total war game (or COD, Halo etc) for £40, as will most people.

That said, i will still buy my stuff from GW because i want to support my local store (and i play a lot of games in it)

[Lord Dan]

Prices are high because GW is currently a buisiness that recorded (i believe, from a recent article) a 40% increase in profits.

Sales for 2011 were down 2.7% from 2010. Obviously this means while they're making much more per sale, they're selling far less.

[The Low King]

Far less? from what i can see the sales in the Uk, Australia (understandable) and USA dropped whilst everywhere else they rose......27% isnt that much

[Lord Dan]

Far less? from what i can see the sales in the Uk, Australia (understandable) and USA dropped whilst everywhere else they rose......27% isnt that much

Could you post your source? Here I have their overall sales for the past 4 years:
http://investing.businessweek.com/re...?ticker=GAW:LN
The site also has lots of interesting information on their expenses and net profits.

2.7% down is a lot when you consider how much they've raised prices in the last two years. If they're making much more per unit sold and are making less money overall (before operating costs, we're just talking about income), then they are selling far fewer units.

[The Low King]

Statistics:

http://investor.games-workshop.com/w...ll-25-July.pdf

Article i was talking about:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17274186

[DarkMark]

I bought the Game of Thrones box set today in a regular department store, thats 3936 pages worth, for the princely fee of 26€. Theoretically I could have also gone for a coffee and doughnut too for less than the cost of a single army book.

I used to buy all the books in wfb and 40k, I don't any more.

[shelfunit.]

Statistics:

http://investor.games-workshop.com/w...ll-25-July.pdf

Article i was talking about:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-17274186

You seem to be confusing profit and sales. The annual price rises of 10-15% on average with a reduced sales figure of 2.7% along with their cost cutting measures are no obsticle to a 40% rise in profits. Short term. This needs to either move to GW general or switch back to topic though - the books cost as much as they do because people will pay the money. That simple.

[ColShaw]

back to topic though - the books cost as much as they do because THEY THINK people will pay the money. That simple.

Fixed that for you.

[Sh4d0w]

Why are they more expensive? They can still sell them like that is why, when we look at a book necessary to start our new army we aren't just not going to buy it because it was $10 more than the last one, so they gain alot of profit, i still predict in 10 years time they will be out of business.

[Late]

Why are they more expensive? They can still sell them like that is why, when we look at a book necessary to start our new army we aren't just not going to buy it because it was $10 more than the last one, so they gain alot of profit, i still predict in 10 years time they will be out of business.

They will eventually (rather soon imo) hit a "price ceiling"