Will Atlas Games start to reprint old books. For example Realms of Power: Magic is almost nowhere to be found in Scandinavia or Germany, I am trying to find RPG stores in UK that still has it or know that they gan order it from their distributors. And the few online stores I have found in the US sells it for $50-$863 (yes that is eighthundred and sixty three dollars) + postage to Sweden which is usually around another $20
My question: Is there a reason you don't want the PDF, which is only $15 at warehouse23.com?
My next question: Is $50 really that much to pay for an out of print book from Amazon?
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Yes. I want real books not blocks of pixels when i read
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I live in Sweden and it is really hard to get books here. So add another $20+ for postage and packing. That is why I ask.
I'm keen to see a Print on Demand option, and respect that it isn't ever likely. Australians know well the costs of shipping and conversion rates. It's why I get ars books in pdf almost always now. Be nice if the PDFs were released faster.
I just think that Atlas Games should try to reprint at least the Houses of Hermes and the Realms of power books, even though the line will end. This way they will have the 8 most important books (not counting the Core book) in circulation and keep the game alive even though no more books are published.
There was a convention in my town last weekend and there was a huge interest when I started short scenarios, even though it was not any planned in the convention program. During the 4 days that I played with 2 scenarios every day - I had 6 players at all time and a waiting list just in case that someone was not coming. So next year I will have a scheduled Ars Magica game. Many people thought this was a new game and had never seen it in any shops, others just thought that 5th edition was new and knew of the old editions. So there is clearly an interest in this game from what I see.
Drivethru RPG has print on demand options among some of their other publishers. Maybe Atlas could ask one of them how to make POD affordable?
I am speaking from ignorance and mean no offense to the lovely people at Atlas Games, but my understanding is that Print On Demand can be rather expensive and I assumed that would be the limiting factor.
We don't presently have any plans to reprint any of the older out of print books in the ArM5 line, but we're continuing to make PDFs available. This isn't ideal for everyone, so we are considering other options (like POD) but it's a lot of work and the books end up being pretty expensive for customers. We can usually make our books available in print at a reasonable MSRP because we print in larger print runs; printing one book at a time doesn't get the same bulk discounts.
If I wanted to print a softcover corebook via PoD, it'd probably cost me around £40. So about twice as expensive as it would be to buy the corebook from, e.g., Amazon. Mind you, that is for full colour and it'd be a whole lot cheaper to get the corebook in B&W. That is without shipping, but PoD shipping is usually very affordable and not the nightmare expensive mess getting stuff in from overseas is at the moment.