July 14, 2022: Paper! A Cautionary Tale

I'm not saying buy all the GURPS books ever . . . but I'm not not saying that. Let me explain. Sure, I'd love it if you bought every supplement your heart desires. But I recognize that you can't get everything you want at any given time. However, I wanted to make note of one reality of publishing, so you can make informed decisions.

As many of you have no doubt noticed, many things have gotten more expensive in recent years. One such item you may not have noticed is paper. Paper is one of those elements that you don't think about too much until there's increased demand due to a recovering global pandemic, forthcoming holiday publishing needs, and global unrest. And so it's quite likely that paper will get more expensive at some point soon.

For you (our amazing fans), the element that most concerns me with this possibility is our popular On Demand offerings. This program makes available many items that are long out of print, such as (GURPS Thaumatology or the Discworld Roleplaying Game) as well as many items that have never been available in print previously, such as GURPS Adaptations, GURPS Social Engineering, and Dungeon Fantasy Companion 3.

If the price of paper goes up considerably, we have to look at the prices of our On Demand offerings. While we prefer not to raise them, we work with the economic realities of what we have. (In particular, it's challenging to make the numbers work on small books, such as GURPS Template Toolkit 1: Characters, and color books, such as the color version of GURPS Goblins.)

To be clear, we don't have any immediate plans to raise prices. However, things can happen quickly in our "boat gets stuck and global trade grinds to a halt" world. I imagine some of you would appreciate more notice of a possible future event so you can plan accordingly, rather than learning that 100+ books are about to become more expensive all at once.

(As an aside, the title is meant to be read in the style of a 1950s educational short voiceover. I probably watch too much Mystery Science Theater 3000.)

-- Steven Marsh

(Steven is not wrong. We've been hit by paper shortages and rising paper costs this year. Most recently, the One Roll Chronicles adventure for Steve's One Roll Quest rules-lite RPG ended up costing more to manufacture than it would have cost us only two months ago. For us. the paper challenges are less of an issue for offset, traditional books, but even those are likely to climb in price if the paper issues are not resolved soon. If there's a print-on-demand book you want in your library, now is the best time to act. We have no idea what the future may bring. -- Phil Reed)