D&D (2024) D&D Pre-orders; this is sad

occam · Wednesday at 1:29 AM

mamba said:
by using different numbers from your initial ones…

That didn't happen. If you think it did, clearly point out the difference.

mamba · Wednesday at 2:02 AM

occam said:
That didn't happen. If you think it did, clearly point out the difference.

here is your first post on this:

occam said:
I doubt anyone disputes that digital products likely have a higher percentage profit margin. But profit margin in dollars is what counts. If we assume something like $25 gross profit on a $60 physical book,

The gross profit was $25, which incidentally is the price of many books on DDB (others are $30). As I wrote in my reply $25 * x < $25 * y, for 0 < x < y. And since the digital profit margin is higher, so is the digital $ amount.

In your recent reply you changed that to

occam said:
For the sake of an example, assume the following:

Physical book: retail price $60, gross profit $25, i.e. cost of goods sold (COGS) is $35

Digital book: retail price $30, gross profit $25, COGS is $5

In this example, there's no doubt that the digital product has a lower COGS. If you express profit margin as a ratio of gross profit to revenue (retail price), the digital product has a much higher margin: 83% vs. 42%.

But the profit margin measured in dollars for both products is the same: $25.

So your print profit margin is no longer based on the $25 gross that WotC gets as it should be. Basing it on the retail price is nonsense, that is both outside WotC's control and outside their ability to monitor and derive their profit margin from. The $25 WotC gross should be the basis, as it was in the first post.

So in effect you changed the $25 that was the print baseline in your first post to $60 now (or made it explicit if you like that better)

If you want to argue that this is me misunderstanding your first post feel free, it still is the correct number to base it on and it clearly is the number I used in my example for the retail price without you correcting me and instead wondering if I even understood the different between % and $.

Let's make it real simple, do you disagree with my initial reply

mamba said:
if the profit margin is higher on digital (which we both seem to agree is the case), and WotC gets gross $25 from print and also $25 from digital (there it can even be $30, depends on the book). then WotC gets more $ per unit from the digital book too, that is simple math...

or do you see a flaw in the math?

Your initial reaction was

occam said:
Huh. Is it possible you don't actually understand the difference between profit margin measured as a percentage of revenue, vs. absolute dollars

so show me the error in the math and logic I used, that is with the prerequisites I mentioned being met, if you can...

occam · Wednesday at 2:50 AM

mamba said:
here is your first post on this:

The gross profit was $25, which incidentally is the price of many books on DDB (others are $30). As I wrote in my reply $25 * x < $25 * y, for 0 < x < y. And since the digital profit margin is higher, so is the digital $ amount.

Okay, I think I see the misunderstanding here. In this example, $25 is the profit margin, in dollars rather than percentage, from a sale of either a physical or digital book. You seem to be calculating a percentage profit margin applied to the gross profit, which doesn't make sense; it's circular.

mamba said:
In your recent reply you changed that to

So your print profit margin is no longer based on the $25 gross that WotC gets as it should be. Basing it on the retail price is nonsense, that is both outside WotC's control and outside their ability to monitor and derive their profit margin from. The $25 WotC gross should be the basis, as it was in the first post.

So in effect you changed the $25 that was the print baseline in your first post to $60 now (or made it explicit if you like that better)

As noted, I didn't change a thing. The $60 amount was in my first post, which you quoted.

mamba said:
If you want to argue that this is me misunderstanding your first post feel free, it still is the correct number to base it on and it clearly is the number I used in my example for the retail price without you correcting me and instead wondering if I even understood the different between % and $.

Let's make it real simple, do you disagree with my initial reply

or do you see a flaw in the math?

Your initial reaction was

so show me the error in the math and logic I used, that is with the prerequisites I mentioned being met, if you can...

I can. The profit margin ratio is applied to gross revenue in order to derive gross proft. You appear to then be applying the ratio again to the gross profit, which is invalid.

mamba · Wednesday at 2:57 AM

occam said:
Okay, I think I see the misunderstanding here. In this example, $25 is the profit margin, in dollars rather than percentage, from a sale of either a physical or digital book. You seem to be calculating a percentage profit margin applied to the gross profit, which doesn't make sense; it's circular.

No, $25 is what WotC gets from the distributor for the book, nothing circular here

occam said:
As noted, I didn't change a thing. The $60 amount was in my first post, which you quoted.

yes, as the retail price, which is entirely independent from what WotC received for the printed book ($25) or WotC's profit margin. That number is not relevant

occam said:
I can. The profit margin ratio is applied to gross revenue in order to derive gross proft.

to derive net profit from the revenue... and what is WotC's gross revenue? It is $25 for the printed book....

Apart from that you did not actually address what I had written there at all. You did not show where my prerequisites are wrong, you did not show where my conclusions are wrong, you simply misinterpret the sentence and then say that your flawed interpretation contains errors.

Not sure we need to pursue this any further, I already acknowledged that of course the print $ profit can be higher despite the print margin % being lower, if the unit price for print is higher than the digital one. That is a no brainer. The problem for you is that it is not higher in real life. It might match the DDB digital price, but that is the upper limit and it very likely is lower than that.

Of course that is only the case for sales into the retail channel, direct sales via WotC's site will have a higher one.

dbolack · Wednesday at 3:11 AM

Cordwainer Fish said:
I was hoping for Neuromancer but all we got was Max Headroom.

AND NOW.... More of the same!

dbolack · Wednesday at 3:31 AM

Belen said:
I just do not see it happening in the TTRPG space. First, WOTC has a track record of backing down on just about anything. Second, they have experience (4e) with people walking away and going to a competitor with business practices they prefer.

While there is a history of this, I sometimes question if there is an institutional memory of such. It seems like too many decision-making heads have been replaced in those years.

dbolack · Wednesday at 3:39 AM

KYRON45 said:
It’s always refreshing when someone tells me what I do and don’t know.

To attempt to state it a little more kindly... Typically, in my experience, this type of embargo means the product is shipped well enough in advance that, in theory, every retailer may have it at the same time so no retailer has a huge advantage in a locality. In exchange for this bit of goodwill, you agree ( often with a contractual penalty ) not to release before a specific time. It is not unusual for the contents of embargoed goods to also not be public prior to the release date.

In the case of this story, as I read it, the vendor miss-shipped embargoed product for the ordered product and when the customer publicized that he had the product and published contents, WotC sent thugs because there's nothing criminal involved in this situation, merely a simple breach of contract that the customer was not a party to.

Hussar · Wednesday at 4:59 AM

And, yet, said "victim" to whose house the thugs went is perfectly happy with the results and holds no grudges and has publicly stated as such.

But, over a year later, it's still brought up as a reason why we should all hate WotC.

KYRON45 · Wednesday at 11:57 AM

dbolack said:
To attempt to state it a little more kindly... Typically, in my experience, this type of embargo means the product is shipped well enough in advance that, in theory, every retailer may have it at the same time so no retailer has a huge advantage in a locality. In exchange for this bit of goodwill, you agree ( often with a contractual penalty ) not to release before a specific time. It is not unusual for the contents of embargoed goods to also not be public prior to the release date.

In the case of this story, as I read it, the vendor miss-shipped embargoed product for the ordered product and when the customer publicized that he had the product and published contents, WotC sent thugs because there's nothing criminal involved in this situation, merely a simple breach of contract that the customer was not a party to.

Every story needs a villain i guess.

Oofta · Wednesday at 12:43 PM

Hussar said:
And, yet, said "victim" to whose house the thugs went is perfectly happy with the results and holds no grudges and has publicly stated as such.

But, over a year later, it's still brought up as a reason why we should all hate WotC.

Didn't you know? The Pinkertons are the bad guy because of something their company did in the 1800s! They're the bad guys in a video game where you play upstanding bank robbers and outlaws after all. Then, back nearly a hundred years ago they were hired to break up some unions.

Obviously they are jack-booted thugs, they're PINKERTONS!!!

D&D (2024) D&D Pre-orders; this is sad

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