Hardcovers generally get remaindered. And last I checked, White Wolf refuses to allow stripped returns on their fiction. It’s wasteful, and White Wolf used to be a company that at least paid lip service to things like reducing waste. I’m not saying people were going to donate their books rather than sell them, I’m saying that White Wolf could have taken the full books back and donated them to any number of organizations that give things to underprivileged kids.

And furthermore, it fails to grow the market. Every stripped PH is a PH that doesn’t go to a potential future player that may eventually trade their PH in for Exalted.

Because that’s not their competition.

You don’t see Pepsi folks promote a blind taste test with Budweiser when their strong competitor in the soft drink market is Coca-Cola.

As for other ideas, how about “trade in your Yu-Gi-Oh cards for Exalted”, or “trade in your computer game for Exalted”? At least that’s not cannibalising the RPG market. Or how about a “win a free copy of Exalted” competition promoted to anime and manga fans?

“Could they not have come up with something more creative?” –John H
Like “Trade in your 4e for EXALTED” promotion? Any other idea?

Anyway, given the state of the tabletop RPG market, I can’t help feel that it would have been better for WW to spend their marketing dollars on a promotion that tried to expand the market, rather than simply try to grab a bigger slice of the pie at the expense of their biggest competitor. Could they not have come up with something more creative?

Regarding other ways of distribution: If they waited until GenCon, they’re missing out on a window of opportunity — if gamers think that their 3.5 books are going to be useless because 4th edition is coming out, the time to get new gamers hooked on Exalted is right now, before 4th edition comes out. They’re also getting people coming to local game stores all across the nation.

You’re misreading the credit card information. The $5 credit card charge is there as an incentive to go to a local game store. The additional $20 charge is not for you, the mail-in customer. It’s to the game store if they fail to turn in covers. You, the mail-in customer, are only charged $5.

Honestly, if I were running a business, I would have no problem removing a competitor’s product completely from the market when replacing it with one of my products. What I wouldn’t want to do is then turn that competitor’s product out into the market again, which has the potential to drive sales away from my business.

Actually, many folks complain about the book and magazine stripping system the book trade uses. It is reprehensible, especially in this day and age. And books going to a half-price book store are an excellent way of supporting gamers with low budgets; it supports local stores and gaming at the same time.

There were many other ways to get these books in the hands of D&D players without requiring the destruction of those books. At Gen Con and Origins, they could have given away a copy to any gamer who came to the booth with a ticket for a D&D game. They could have asked people to send in pictures of the players dropping their books off at Half-Price Books or Goodwill. They could have given away the books to the first 2500 people who simply asked. Many different ways were posible, but instead, they purposefully went for a way that removed competitor’s books from the general stock of games in the most wasteful manner possible.

As to why a credit card, apparently, the interesting thing is that if the customer who sends in the book covers doesn’t do it correctly by the written terms, they get charged $20 for the Exalted book on top of the shipping. That’s why they can’t take money orders… If you get even a 10% screw-up rate on the 2500 that means $5000 cash for White Wolf…

I can understand 2e, but I still occasionally play 1e (once in a while I dust them when not in use), when I reunite with my old childhood gaming group.

Bookstores strip covers for credit and pulp books all the time; this is the same practice yet nobody complains that stripped books would be donated to “poor kids”. Don’t fool yourself — there never were 2500 used PHBs destined for the Make-A-Wish Foundation before White Wolf decided to crush dying children’s hopes and dreams for a quick buck. They’d be going to your local half-price book store.