Wingspan will soon receive its 25th printing. Scythe is on its 28th printing. Viticulture has been reprinted over 20 times. These evergreen reprints are the lifeblood of publishers like Stonemaier Games, as they require significantly fewer resources than creating a new product.
For such a common activity, I don’t think I’ve ever fully covered it as a topic on this blog. Big thanks to alert reader Brennan for recently asking about the reprint process.
Let’s start with some key terms:
- Out of stock: There are no available units of a product at a specific location. It’s possible for a product to be out of stock on a publisher’s webstore but not in a particular retail store (or vice versa). Out of stock typically indicates a temporary status–the product is still in print, just not currently available.
- Out of print: The product is no longer being made. This typically indicates a permanent status–the publisher has decided to stop manufacturing the product. In the world of modern tabletop games, the rights to games often revert to designers if their publisher doesn’t reprint the game within a certain period of time.
- Reprint: A fresh batch of copies of an existing product, printed exactly the same as the previous batch. At most, the latest reprint of a game may fix typos from the previous printing. Example: Wingspan’s 25th printing is the same as its 24th printing.
- New Edition: A significantly revised or updated version of an existing product. A new edition of a game offers some combination of a complete refresh on the art, graphic design, and/or mechanisms. Example: Libertalia: Winds of Galecrest is a new edition of the 2012 game, Libertalia.
- Sequel: A spiritual successor to an existing game, continuing the story or expanding the world with completely (or mostly) new mechanisms. Example: Expeditions is a new, standalone game set in the same 1920+ world as Scythe.
So how exactly does the reprint process work? It can quite literally be as easy as emailing our manufacturer, Panda, and saying, “We’d like to make 10,000 more units of Tapestry.” But usually it’s a little more involved than that.
- Gauge Demand: On a quarterly basis, we decide which products–and how many units of those products–to reprint. If we anticipate that we will run out of stock of a product in the next 6 months, we will typically reprint that product. The quantity depends on interest from distributors, localization partners, and customers (via the number of back-in-stock requests received on our webstore).
- Request a Quote: We inform Panda of our desired quantity and get a quote from them. Panda tries to maintain consistent pricing for reprints, but we still want to check in case a particular component has significantly increased in cost or if making a lower quantity increases the cost per unit too much.
- Check for Updates: Even for games we’ve printed dozens of times, sometimes we find typos, inconsistencies, or better ways to explain various concepts (“we” includes our internal team, our proofreaders, players, and the game’s designer). We keep a running list on Basecamp, and our graphic designer implements any changes and uploads the corresponding files to Panda. Otherwise, Panda uses the files from the previous printing.
- Then We Wait: The manufacturing process takes around 4 months. Near the end of this time, Panda sends us one of the first printed and assembled products to review–this is our chance to ensure that the product is consistent with previous printings and that any changes were correctly implemented. With our approval, the assembly is complete a few weeks later, with another 1-2 months for freight shipping to our fulfillment centers and various distributors.
That’s it! If other publishers reprint differently, feel free to share your methods in the comments. I’m happy to answer any questions there as well.
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Also read:
- Board Game Supply Chain Basics
- Evergreen Games: What Do They Have in Common?
- How to Design a Tabletop Game
If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.
23 Comments on “Reprinting a Game: How the Process Works”
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[…] If your game is selling well and you need to make more copies, reprint it. […]
Wow! Wonderful article!
So… with Scythe having 28 print runs… how many total units is this? And Wingspan having 25 print runs … how many units is that?
I am so happy to hear that demand for those games has continued. These are two of my favorite games.
Here is the data reported last year: https://stonemaiergames.com/2021-behind-the-scenes-stakeholder-report-for-stonemaier-games/
I’ll post a similar report in a few months.
I am curious about the check for updates step: Do you simply fix these small errors and then print it or do you have some kind of versioning in your games? And of yes, where can you see this version of the 19th print for example?
Great question. The only difference between printings is a tiny code that Panda puts near the bar code. It’s an internal code they use, so if we want to identify a specific printing, we ask them which printing the code is referring to.
Really appreciate the peak behind the curtain. Gauging demand has to be one of the most exciting things as well as frustrating. There’s so many variables considering all the ways people interact with this hobby. I saw your lessons from Wingspan on the issue of demand. Can you expand on factors that help gauge the “numbers” for the decision on how much to order?
It’s a big topic! Here are some articles that delve into it:
https://stonemaiergames.com/kickstarter-lesson-179-gauging-demand/
https://stonemaiergames.com/are-the-reasons-we-quit-kickstarter-still-valid-6-years-later/
https://stonemaiergames.com/kickstarter-lesson-184-how-many-units-should-you-make/
https://stonemaiergames.com/lessons-learned-from-quitting-kickstarter-as-a-creator-part-5/
Does quantity not get cheaper if you increase the print count? Particularly for wingspan, scythe, Viticulture you have ongoing demand so would it not make more sense to print more and minimize the chances a potential customer sees an out of stock situation? Also seems this could make the pricing better. I would think you may have storage issues right?
The price per unit does go down the more you make, though it’s very marginal after 5000 units.
My wife works in academic publishing and this sounds very similar to her process. One big change in book publishing is the move to print on demand to save warehousing fees, shipping, and the whole waiting months for shipments from China. Is the TTBG industry moving towards that format?
Unfortunately, games aren’t as easy to print in that way as books. The closest analog are digitally printed card- only games like KeyForge.
I’m curious to know what other games would fall under the category of “sequel”, according to you and your definition. I’ve seen some online suggest that Expeditions is not a true sequel, or at least not a spiritual successor, seemingly because it doesn’t maintain enough similarity in gameplay to warrant the term.
I feel like I haven’t encountered the term “sequel” very much in all my consumption of board game media, but perhaps I am not representative. Is there room for debate on this term, or is it much ado about nothing?
In any case, you can count me excited as I look forward to Expeditions!
I think Garphill Games is the master of sequels—lots of examples there. There are also shared-world sequels like the Roll Player universe, plus sequels that are much close to the original game (like Clank Catacombs).
Will your cats finally appear on the player mats for the second printing of Wingspan Asia since that was a graphic design mistake?
They will! :)
Would this count for a replacement part request if I got the first printing and really wanted/expected the cats?
I appreciate your excitement for it–I’m eager to see Walter and Biddy hiding in the background too–but given that the 200,000 original mats function as intended, they aren’t eligible for replacement parts.
That’s fair. :) Figured I’d at least ask. I’m glad the game/expansion is popular enough that you get a second chance at having them included.
Thank you for answering my question Jamey!
Thanks for asking–sorry I didn’t get to it in Wednesday’s livecast!
No worries, you had some better things to talk about 👀
How large is a reprint run usually? I imagine expansion runs are smaller, so how do you gauge if an expansion reprint is needed, or if its run its course?
The minimum order quantity for any printing is typically 1500 units. We gauge demand based on interest from distributors, localization partners, and customers (via the number of back-in-stock requests received on our webstore).
Expansions are a different topic. :)