Rolling for Initiative is a weekly column by Scott Thorne, PhD, owner of Castle Perilous Games & Books in Carbondale, Illinois and instructor in marketing at Southeast Missouri State University.  This week, Thorne looks at the conflict between publisher policies and Amazon pricing decisions.

A previous version of this column said that Wizards of the Coast was selling the Player’s Handbook and other D&D books on Amazon at deep discounts of around 45%.  Actually, that is Amazon setting the price, not WOTC, much as Amazon does with the 27% discount it offers on a box of Shadows over Innistrad. Companies that set the price at which they sell a product through Amazon use the Fulfillment by Amazon program and are so identified. I apologize for the error.

As you may have seen last week, Iello announced that to further support brick and mortar stores, all of their products henceforth will ship early to those stores, arriving two weeks earlier than they will in mass market and online only retailers. This makes them the third company, of which I know, that allows early release of their products by the brick and mortar channel.  Konami allows tournament stores in good standing to release new Yu-Gi-Oh! products a day ahead of the announced street date and Wizards of the Coast ships out their Dungeon & Dragons products two weeks before the mass market gets the books. Given that the company manages to handle the logistics of doing so with D&D, is it too much to hope that one day they figure out how to handle the logistics of a two week early release for Magic? Pokemon did so with one release last year, with the limitation that stores could receive the product a week early but only sell it if a local mass market store broke street day. Since they did not repeat the process with subsequent releases, I can only hypothesize that too many brick and mortar stores could not resist the siren song of the Pokemon sitting in their back room and put it out for sale, whether they had competing mass market stores that did so or not.

Be that as it may, Iello’s action is the latest in a series of actions that companies have taken to work with the brick and mortar outlets, to price protect their product lines and to encourage the brick and mortar retailer, who is the one most likely to work to introduce customers to new games, to continue to promote their lines.

Mayfair Games was one of the first, introducing a Minimum Advertised Pricing policy several years ago for all of its games, and save for some glitches (Amazon), it has functioned pretty well. Games Workshop also started policing discounters a few years ago and drastically reduced price cutting on their products.  WotC some years ago also required online sellers of new Magic to sign an agreement to become an official online reseller. In the past month or so, Asmodee NA has required those wanting to sell new Asmodee NA products online to sign a separate agreement as an online retailer and, from what I understand, purchase product at a smaller discount than a brick and mortar retailer receives, while Privateer Press announced a program to discourage “free riders.”

So, with companies actively working to protect the pricing on their products through agreements, shorter discounts and whatnot, why is WOTC allowing Amazon to sell D&D 5th edition books for near cost? As of the writing of this column, Amazon has the D&D 5th Edition Player’s Handbooks, a $49.95 retail value, listed on Amazon for $26.97. That’s for a new copy of the book. I could restock the Player’s Handbook for the store at that price. Used copies of the same book are not listed on Amazon that cheaply. Other D&D books are also listed by Amazon at similar 45% discounts.  

WotC is not the only company with their products listed at a deep discount by Amazon.  As I noted earlier, both Asmodee NA and Privateer have put in place policies designed to reduce deep discounting and yet Amazon has the X-Wing Core Set listed at 30% off while Privateer’s Cygmar Battle Group kit is listed at 36% off.  However, I have not seen any OP programs put into place by Amazon to comply with Privateer’s “free rider” policies or to support X-Wing Miniatures. Even Catan, which has a MAP of 20%  and which Mayfair Games used to enforce pretty stringently even with Amazon, now is offered at 24% off.  Not being privy to company selling decisions and policy enforcement, I can only infer that Amazon these days is “too big to ignore.”

The opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the writer, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the editorial staff of ICv2.com.