TSR Printing Records
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Post Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2021 3:31 am 
 

This is amazing once again. Makes the financial analyst in me want to reconstruct theoretical balance sheets & cash flow statements for early TSR.

As an aside, everytime i read your signoff "Futures Bright" I feel a little happier in these grim times. Thank you for that!

  

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Post Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2021 6:58 am 
 

The Collector's Trove wrote in TSR Printing Records:Originally Dave and Gary each got "a buck" for every copy of D&D sold! That's 20% of the sale price! This was the same for Warriors of Mars (Blume 5%, Gygax 15%)

My understanding is that under the original contract, they got a buck for every copy of D&D that TSR sold itself retail at full price - that is, through direct mail order or in-person sales (all pre-DHS of course). The issue was, retail was a small percentage of the copies they sold. Many were sold wholesale or job lot at below 50% of cover price. So in effect, the 1975 revision (which gave 10% to the cover price instead) to the contract wasn't halving anyone's take - it broke even if virtually all sales were at 50%, and given how many sold below 50% at the time, could even be more advantageous.

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Post Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2021 12:27 pm 
 

Howdy Jon,


Looking forward to your book! Are you doing any seminars at Gen Con? I enjoyed the seminar we did together at Gen Con years ago with Peter and Michael.

increment wrote in TSR Printing Records:My understanding is that under the original contract, they got a buck for every copy of D&D that TSR sold itself retail at full price - that is, through direct mail order or in-person sales (all pre-DHS of course). The issue was, retail was a small percentage of the copies they sold. Many were sold wholesale or job lot at below 50% of cover price. So in effect, the 1975 revision (which gave 10% to the cover price instead) to the contract wasn't halving anyone's take - it broke even if virtually all sales were at 50%, and given how many sold below 50% at the time, could even be more advantageous.


From the sales records in the Arneson Archive, they initially got 10% each and, after April 1, 1975 (April Fools!), 5% each on whatever the sale price was ($4.50, $6 or $10). There doesn't seem to be any difference in how it was applied, other than the reduced percentage.

In Q3 of 1974 they sold 266 copies and the royalty was $138.80 on sales of $1,388.00. That's 10% of total sales.

In Q3 of 1975 they sold 795 copies and the royalty was $279.50 on sales of $5,590.00. That's 5% of total sales.

Admittedly, I don't know the exact breakdown of discounted vs retail sales and the number of copies sold Q3 1975 could be as low as 527 by TSR Hobbies but a note indicates another 268 were paid royalties through Tactical Studies Rules, thus my 795 figure. The math on the royalties favors the 795 figure.


Futures Bright,

Paul


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Post Posted: Mon Sep 13, 2021 2:15 pm 
 

Yeah, it's pretty complicated stuff, and I'm not going to pretend that my understanding of this (or access to figures) is perfect - pretty much everything on the very early days has asterisks on it. But I guess my understanding is that it was the other way around: under the original royalty contract, Gygax and Arneson got (jointly, and split evenly between them) 20% of "the selling price of the set" (regardless of the cover price), and under the revised April 75 contract they got 10% of "the cover price" (regardless of the sale price). The cover price never varied in this period. The selling price is where you have to worry about wholesale etc.

Q3 75 in particular is also complicated as you said by the split between the Tactical Studies Rules partnership and TSR Hobbies, which are accounted in different sales buckets for the figures I've seen. My information is that 1372 total copies sold in Q3, and that they were paid (jointly, split even between themselves) $1372 (so, $686 each). (And Q3 75 has another anomaly as well that makes this tougher I'm glossing over there). For Q3 74, my understanding is that the figure you gave for royalties is right for the split price (jointly, it was $277.60), but those sales of ~275 copes yielding just $1,388 is based on the "selling price" mix of wholesale, job lot, etc. It reflects a "selling price" on average of 52% of the cover price of $10. In that case, the terms of the original contract are slightly more advantageous than the take would have been for the April 75 contracts. For other quarters (Q2 74, say), maybe the April 75 deal would have been more advantageous. That's what I was trying to say. Does that make sense? Fun to compare notes on this.

Not doing a Gen Con seminar actually - when it was time to schedule those, I was not clear if I was going to go at all. So far, I am still planning to go, but even now not 100% sure...

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