DTRPG Shipping

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Tyberious Funk

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I almost exclusively buy PDFs because shipping to Australia is usually pretty painful. But I was wanting a hardcover of Stars Without Number... and was contemplating buying it at the same time as Worlds Without Number (whenever that is ready) to save on shipping costs. So as a test run, I put a copy of SWN in my cart and checked the shipping costs -- $13.63. Put TWO copies of SWN, just as a hypothetical to see how much a 'bundled' purchase might save. Checked the shipping costs -- $29.98.

Huh??

Who charges more per unit to ship two copies of the same item? Are Australians the only ones getting screwed over, or is this just standard practice for DTRPG? I understand they don't actually do the printing/fulfillment of POD themselves. But it seems... odd.
 
I almost exclusively buy PDFs because shipping to Australia is usually pretty painful. But I was wanting a hardcover of Stars Without Number... and was contemplating buying it at the same time as Worlds Without Number (whenever that is ready) to save on shipping costs. So as a test run, I put a copy of SWN in my cart and checked the shipping costs -- $13.63. Put TWO copies of SWN, just as a hypothetical to see how much a 'bundled' purchase might save. Checked the shipping costs -- $29.98.

Huh??

Who charges more per unit to ship two copies of the same item? Are Australians the only ones getting screwed over, or is this just standard practice for DTRPG? I understand they don't actually do the printing/fulfillment of POD themselves. But it seems... odd.
The book is quite chunky, something like 1" thick, and it's possible that two copies went just over some threshold where it went from posting a book to posting some larger object. Royal mail is like that, although I can't speak for USPS. You get a considerably cheaper 'small parcel' rate for items under 2kg, then it goes up quite steeply to normal parcel rates.
 
I have a different complaint about DTRPG shipping: I ordered Neon City Overdrive and its first two supplements (Skinjobs and Psions). I received Neon City Overdrive and the S&W version of Timothy S. Brannan's Warlock and Green Witch books.

DTRPG said they'd send me the correct books. Today I received two copies of Skinjobs and no Psions.

Facepalm.
 
I have a different complaint about DTRPG shipping: I ordered Neon City Overdrive and its first two supplements (Skinjobs and Psions). I received Neon City Overdrive and the S&W version of Timothy S. Brannan's Warlock and Green Witch books.

DTRPG said they'd send me the correct books. Today I received two copies of Skinjobs and no Psions.

Facepalm.
Dude just keep pointing it out! Soon you'll have a whole store worth of books to sell!
 
Yeah we are truly stuffed sometimes over here when it comes to shipping from the UK & Europe
 
There are weight thresholds om international shipping which can see a price jump if you breach it.
 
I would have thought there would be a robust PoD industry in Australia in light of the high shipping costs.
 
I would have thought there would be a robust PoD industry in Australia in light of the high shipping costs.

Not really... any local industry is almost always expensive because of the high standard-of-living here (and hence higher wages), compounded by the insanely high rents fueled by a property bubble that's lasted basically since the 90s. On top of that, most Australians are so used to being gouged by middle-men, dealing with a fluctuating exchange rates, and insane shipping prices... we usually just shrug and accept it. And bitch about it online, of course :smile:

At least (to the best of my knowledge) DTRPG doesn't gouge us on digital purchases... which is more than I can say about the computer game industry, which often charges 20%-30% more just... because.

I looked into local PoD on a few occasions and it was insanely expensive. Almost to the point that I started looking at buying my own book-binding machine, because if you have enough books to produce, it could almost be economical. And I liked the idea of having shelves full of uniformly bound books, like an 'old school' style library.
 
Not really... any local industry is almost always expensive because of the high standard-of-living here (and hence higher wages), compounded by the insanely high rents fueled by a property bubble that's lasted basically since the 90s. On top of that, most Australians are so used to being gouged by middle-men, dealing with a fluctuating exchange rates, and insane shipping prices... we usually just shrug and accept it. And bitch about it online, of course :smile:
I think the most significant factor is that that you live on a giant barren island in the middle of nowhere. No disrespect, I love Aussies and Kiwis. I was pretty serious with a girl from Australia.
 
Living in NZ as I do, especially with the pandemic, makes me appreciate the collection of books I already have. You can get more games, but there is a degree of patience and cost that you have to come to terms with. That said, if you know the community, you can tend to pick up nearly new games through trading sites pretty regularly and for much cheaper prices.
 
I think the most significant factor is that that you live on a giant barren island in the middle of nowhere. No disrespect, I love Aussies and Kiwis. I was pretty serious with a girl from Australia.

That may have been a factor 30-40 years ago, but not so much anymore. Unless you are buying something bulky and difficult to ship it is generally possible to ship stuff half way around the world fairly cheaply if sellers know what they are doing. Unfortunately, my observation is that lots of retailers, while offering overseas shipping, don't really do much to optimise it for their non-US/EU customers.

Amazon set up here a couple of years ago, and initially were criticised for being too expensve. There were a lot of comments, exactly like yours... "What do you expect, Australia is in the middle of nowhere, etc, etc". Not from Amazon, mind you. They just went about their business, and got progressively better. Since the start of the pandemic I've been buying a lot of stuff from them, and they've definitely upped their game. I fully expected, with their huge business and economies of scale, to beat out small retailers. But they are beating the major retailers here on a lot of products -- offering them cheaper AND delivered to your door in less than 24 hours. Somehow they are faster than pretty much any delivery service (despite being in a pandemic) AND cheaper.

Say what you like about Amazon, Bezos and the way they treat their employees... but these cats know what they are doing.
 
That may have been a factor 30-40 years ago, but not so much anymore. Unless you are buying something bulky and difficult to ship it is generally possible to ship stuff half way around the world fairly cheaply if sellers know what they are doing. Unfortunately, my observation is that lots of retailers, while offering overseas shipping, don't really do much to optimise it for their non-US/EU customers.

Amazon set up here a couple of years ago, and initially were criticised for being too expensve. There were a lot of comments, exactly like yours... "What do you expect, Australia is in the middle of nowhere, etc, etc". Not from Amazon, mind you. They just went about their business, and got progressively better. Since the start of the pandemic I've been buying a lot of stuff from them, and they've definitely upped their game. I fully expected, with their huge business and economies of scale, to beat out small retailers. But they are beating the major retailers here on a lot of products -- offering them cheaper AND delivered to your door in less than 24 hours. Somehow they are faster than pretty much any delivery service (despite being in a pandemic) AND cheaper.

Say what you like about Amazon, Bezos and the way they treat their employees... but these cats know what they are doing.
So you are saying my retirement plan if taking all my hundreds of board and rpg games and shipping them all in a container to pay for my retirement in australia/new Zealand might be poorly thought out?!?!
 
I have a different complaint about DTRPG shipping: I ordered Neon City Overdrive and its first two supplements (Skinjobs and Psions). I received Neon City Overdrive and the S&W version of Timothy S. Brannan's Warlock and Green Witch books.

DTRPG said they'd send me the correct books. Today I received two copies of Skinjobs and no Psions.

Facepalm.
In fairness, they're usually pretty good at fixing that sort of thing.

One other issue is that they can't print every type of book in every country, so even if they have a facility in your country they might have to get sent from the US instead. It's not ideal, but they've got a lot better at this over the years.

I did order some PoD books earlier this year of which one wound up not arriving, and in the few days between me seeing on their Q&A site "we don't consider books lost until 30 days after shipping" and it getting to 30 days, they changed their policy to 45 days, which kinda narked me. But when that was up, they told me that the book wasn't actually passing their QA process so wasn't being printed at all, and refunded my entire order... even the book that had got printed and arrived. So it's not all bad.
 
Not really... any local industry is almost always expensive because of the high standard-of-living here (and hence higher wages), compounded by the insanely high rents fueled by a property bubble that's lasted basically since the 90s. On top of that, most Australians are so used to being gouged by middle-men, dealing with a fluctuating exchange rates, and insane shipping prices... we usually just shrug and accept it. And bitch about it online, of course :smile:

At least (to the best of my knowledge) DTRPG doesn't gouge us on digital purchases... which is more than I can say about the computer game industry, which often charges 20%-30% more just... because.

I looked into local PoD on a few occasions and it was insanely expensive. Almost to the point that I started looking at buying my own book-binding machine, because if you have enough books to produce, it could almost be economical. And I liked the idea of having shelves full of uniformly bound books, like an 'old school' style library.
At one point it was cheaper to fly to 'murica, buy a copy of Adobe Creative Suite and fly back to Australia than it was to buy it locally. In New Zealand I used to buy secondhand books from Amazon and ship them to NZ, and it was still a lot cheaper than buying locally. NZ gets it even worse for a lot of stuff as it gets shipped to Oz at Oz shipping prices, double handled and then shipped to NZ from there. It's not so bad now as it used to be, though.
 
I think it's quaint that a continent, similar in size as that of the United States, with cattle farms bigger than some countries, still gets referred to as an 'island', heh heh

Wish I was on an island!

The next thing you know is the people will assume we have patriotic attachments to a beer most of us have never tried more than once, on account of its dubious quality :grin:
 
Who charges more per unit to ship two copies of the same item? Are Australians the only ones getting screwed over, or is this just standard practice for DTRPG? I understand they don't actually do the printing/fulfillment of POD themselves. But it seems... odd.

In essence parcels will be X length, X width, and X thickness - so anything that exceeds one, or more of these may result in extra costs which are then passed on. Trust me on this, I am looking at a DPD invoice right now.

Yeah we are truly stuffed sometimes over here when it comes to shipping from the UK & Europe

As I live in the UK, I have never tried to have a DTRPG shipped to UK. I was thinking of doing one as a test, is it difficult to get deliveries?
 
As I live in the UK, I have never tried to have a DTRPG shipped to UK. I was thinking of doing one as a test, is it difficult to get deliveries?
DTRPG use Lightning Source for their UK printing, so many things are fairly fast and cheap.
 
DTRPG use Lightning Source for their UK printing, so many things are fairly fast and cheap.

Okay, but it will still need to sent by courier who will have dimension or weight requirement, and the books may have exceeded that.
 
LS usually send my DTRPG books via Royal Mail if I don't specify anything extra. I usually cop a £3.65 shipping cost (I think) for a single book so pretty affordable.
 
Are Australians the only ones getting screwed over, or is this just standard practice for DTRPG? I understand they don't actually do the printing/fulfillment of POD themselves. But it seems... odd.

Even here in the US their shipping/handling charges are on the high side.
 
Yeah we are truly stuffed sometimes over here when it comes to shipping from the UK & Europe
Well heck if y’all would move your country to the right side of the world you wouldn’t have all these problems.
 
In essence parcels will be X length, X width, and X thickness - so anything that exceeds one, or more of these may result in extra costs which are then passed on. Trust me on this, I am looking at a DPD invoice right now.



As I live in the UK, I have never tried to have a DTRPG shipped to UK. I was thinking of doing one as a test, is it difficult to get deliveries?
I did this with some cards I made up as a prototype; they had to be printed in Murica as their English supplier didn't have the kit to do that. I don't know what it's like in these COVID times, but the cards came back in about 10 days. At the time their estimated delivery dates were way conservative - it arrived much sooner than the order said it would.
 
DTRPG use Lightning Source for their UK printing, so many things are fairly fast and cheap.

Lightning Source have a local presence here in Australia... I'm guessing, judging by the shipping costs, DTRPG aren't using them. It's strange because it's part of Lightning Source's pitch that they have facilities all over the world.
 
In fairness, they're usually pretty good at fixing that sort of thing.

One other issue is that they can't print every type of book in every country, so even if they have a facility in your country they might have to get sent from the US instead. It's not ideal, but they've got a lot better at this over the years.

I did order some PoD books earlier this year of which one wound up not arriving, and in the few days between me seeing on their Q&A site "we don't consider books lost until 30 days after shipping" and it getting to 30 days, they changed their policy to 45 days, which kinda narked me. But when that was up, they told me that the book wasn't actually passing their QA process so wasn't being printed at all, and refunded my entire order... even the book that had got printed and arrived. So it's not all bad.
Well, maybe not every country, but every continent would be nice to have and I'd think it's within their abilities:thumbsup:.
 
I think it's quaint that a continent, similar in size as that of the United States, with cattle farms bigger than some countries, still gets referred to as an 'island', heh heh

Wish I was on an island!

The next thing you know is the people will assume we have patriotic attachments to a beer most of us have never tried more than once, on account of its dubious quality :grin:
Well, you know where to move to - no snakes, no spiders, no crocs, no emus or cassowaries. We still have bogans, though.
 
In essence parcels will be X length, X width, and X thickness - so anything that exceeds one, or more of these may result in extra costs which are then passed on. Trust me on this, I am looking at a DPD invoice right now.

I get what you are saying, but when you break it down it still doesn't really make sense.

From the distributors point of view... even if a second (identical) item bumps you into a new price category, the economies of scale for combined shipping (ie, less handling, packages, etc) should make up for it. I'm not disputing that what you say happens (because I've seen it before)... I'm just saying it doesn't seem justified from a cost perspective.

And from the retailers point of view... if it is cheaper to ship two items separately than combined, then I would expect a half-decent e-commerce platform to work that out and charge accordingly. Since shipping is a pass-through cost, retailers should be aiming to use whatever means necessary to get the price down, because you get to offer your customer the cheapest possible price without eating into your own profit. Unless there is a little bit of 'cream' added on top of the shipping price -- which wouldn't surprise me.

I'm curious how publishers and writers experience find DTRPG. Because there are plenty of self-publishing platforms out there... they just don't specialise in RPG books. But from a consumer point of view, I don't care -- I just want my product for the cheapest possible price. Whenever I buy anything online, I'll start by perusing products at a particular site, but I'll always cross-reference with google to see if I can get the same thing cheaper / faster elsewhere. I mentioned Amazon in a previous post because they offer a PoD service... but I don't think any RPG publisher uses it. Maybe it's crap?
 
Seattle. Missing all of the above including Bogans!
Behold, The Castle, a sort of apotheosis of everything Bogan. It was done on a budget of $27,000 and was voted Australia's favourite film at one point. It also picked up quite a few gongs..

From a bit of google-fu, looks like it's available on Prime.

 
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At the moment I’m living in lockdown in Melbourne.
For all intents and purposes you may as well be, how can I tell the difference.....
At this point the value of any major city over a minor one has been drastically reduced. I used to live ten minutes from starting to go somewhere. Now I live at my destination. I haven't moved.
 
I've lived in 'big' cities and small rural towns. Most of my friends who make a big deal out of living in a big city no longer go to music shows in clubs, drink or eat out or go to arthouse theatres, all the real world advantages of actually living in a big city.

All the other former advantages of living in a big city, the book stores, music shops, etc. has been rendered less important due to the net.

Sometimes I think people just like the idea of living in a 'big city' even if they never leave their boring suburb.
 
I've lived in 'big' cities and small rural towns. Most of my friends who make a big deal out of living in a big city no longer go to music shows in clubs, drink or eat out or go to arthouse theatres, all the real world advantages of actually living in a big city.

All the other former advantages of living in a big city, the book stores, music shops, etc. has been rendered less important due to the net.

Sometimes I think people just like the idea of living in a 'big city' even if they never leave their boring suburb.
It took me about a year from moving in London to be out in the commuter belt. Actually, London is too expensive for most niche retail, so if you want bookshops or things like that you're likely to get better mileage in the small towns surrounding it. About the only bookshops you'll see in London are Waterstones and Foyle's. There are more bespoke tailors and shops selling £10,000 watches than there are bookshops anywhere near where I worked.
 
I've lived in 'big' cities and small rural towns.
I've done both and am looking a happy middle ground between the two. Big city life is for young people. It's too loud and crowded. Anonymity makes people into assholes. Rural living is for old people. Everything is so goddamn inconvenient, provincial, and slow. There are no jobs.
 
I get what you are saying, but when you break it down it still doesn't really make sense.

From the distributors point of view... even if a second (identical) item bumps you into a new price category, the economies of scale for combined shipping (ie, less handling, packages, etc) should make up for it. I'm not disputing that what you say happens (because I've seen it before)... I'm just saying it doesn't seem justified from a cost perspective.

And from the retailers point of view... if it is cheaper to ship two items separately than combined, then I would expect a half-decent e-commerce platform to work that out and charge accordingly. Since shipping is a pass-through cost, retailers should be aiming to use whatever means necessary to get the price down, because you get to offer your customer the cheapest possible price without eating into your own profit. Unless there is a little bit of 'cream' added on top of the shipping price -- which wouldn't surprise me.

I'm curious how publishers and writers experience find DTRPG. Because there are plenty of self-publishing platforms out there... they just don't specialise in RPG books. But from a consumer point of view, I don't care -- I just want my product for the cheapest possible price. Whenever I buy anything online, I'll start by perusing products at a particular site, but I'll always cross-reference with google to see if I can get the same thing cheaper / faster elsewhere. I mentioned Amazon in a previous post because they offer a PoD service... but I don't think any RPG publisher uses it. Maybe it's crap?

Yeah it is not very good so I agree with you.
DPD in the UK charge £18 per out of dimension parcel, £0.75 per collection in London due to in-London charges etc. it is just shocking.
 
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