News: Massive print cost increase coming to DriveThruRPG effective April 1, 2025
DriveThruRPG and associated sites will soon increase cost of print-on-demand products from 20% to 80%, depending on print binding and location:
Upcoming Print-on-Demand Book Price Changes – Effective April 1, 2025
We always want to keep print costs as low as possible, and it has been years since we passed any price increases through to our publishing partners.
However, our print supplier, Lightning Source/Ingram, has announced a price adjustment starting April 1, 2025, that will be reflected on DriveThru sites.
Key Changes
- Due to increasing supply costs in the US, Black & White print costs in the US will increase significantly, from around 20% for low-pagecount hardcover titles up to about 50% or slightly more for large hardcover books, and with softcover titles seeing an even greater increase.
- UK print costs for Black & White books will also increase, but generally only by 3-4%.
- Standard Color print costs will increase, by roughly 12-13% for US printing but only around 3% for UK printing.
- On the whole, Premium Color print costs will decrease slightly for US printing but increase slightly for UK printing.
- Example 1: A 180-page large premium hardcover currently costs $32.10 to print in the US; after April 1, that same title will drop to $27.80.
- Example 2: In the UK, the same 180-page book currently costs £20.23, which will increase to £20.93 starting in April.
Above will most likely lead to publishers increasing prices on the books, especially those who use at-cost pricing. I ordered all hardbacks from my wish-list, just in case. :)
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