Project-H Print & Digital Quality?

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I would gladly pay more for the quality increase...

Sure, and I am not saying they can't increase quality and keep the same price. It's just it's apples to oranges. PH won't drop distribution, it reaches a much wider audience than Fakku. Just being listed on Amazon probably gives them a pretty good selling volume.

I think the improved PH website is good deal and a big step in the right direction. And none of my points change the excellent issue you brought up about quality of the digital product.

the improved PH website

I had a chance to buy Ring X Mama 4, but I passed, I swear I saw it in stock.

I actually picked up the 2nd ed Cute Devil Girlfriend because I wanted the "extra" content, worth it for me anyway.

I was going to give some back ground speculation about the differences between Fakku and PH. My apologies if this considered common knowledge, but I wanted to share some info. I have been purchasing from both for a while (and before that eros comix (fantagraphics), and before that Icarus comics (got the entire AG collection)!

PH is part of a larger company and they distribute their books for sale, and that changes everything. Alot of physical products you buy 'cost' just a fraction of the msrp to produce. I say 'cost' because the physical cost of a product is just one aspect. The cost to create that content exists, but the sale of all items cover it, vs the sale of one item to cover the cost to product that single item.

So, for board games anyway, the cost to create something is about 1/4 the msrp. So, lets say you are buying an $60 boardgame, that is most likely costing about $10-12. So, the company then sells it to a distributor for about twice that, so about $20-25. The distributor than sells that to the retailer for about twice that so $40, who then sells it to the consumer for $60. Basically, each middleman gets a cut, because they bring something to the table. The distributor has the network of retailers to sell to, the retailer has the network of consumers.

So, a $20 book from an established publisher is going to be very different from a book like Fakku or a Kickstarter. If Fakku was a traditional publisher, they would probably be charging closer to $30-35 for the quality of product. But they don't have to pay off the distributor or retailer. When I buy a PH book from barnes and noble or books a million, just a fraction of that money is going back to DMP.

If Fakku did your typical PH quality, I would guess they could charge $10-12 per book. Could PH increase quality? Certainly, but upto a point, they have to take a smaller cut or pass it onto the consumer. Remember too, the size of the print run changes the cost of your base product. PH has quite a few products going at once, which makes me think their print runs are smaller, which is a higher price point for them.

TLDR; Fakku isn't a traditional publisher and they are using the extra money they could get from selling direct to give you a higher quality product. There will always be a price/quality difference between indie/niche producers and anyone going through 'standard' channels.

-You can't sort the books by release date or price anymore
-No "coming soon" section which was one of my favorite aspects of the previous site. You still get some of the informations from the blog section, but the blog section is shitty...
-Digital and physical releases are merged. In the past there were two sites for physical and digital releases, now everything is shown together. There is an option to show only physical releases, but it doesn't work as I still get a list of all books with the digital prices.
-Cheaper book prices are shown. As result of the merge the prices of the books are shown for the digital edition. Always. I think I can get a book for 10$ and it's only the god damn digital version. The above mentioned sorting option doesn't help.

There is also a point that has nothing to do with the new site per se and more with the decision of the management:
-Prices increased. Like a lot. In the past PH had a lot of books for under 10$. For example: "Absolute Monarch Syndrome" costed around six bucks, now it's "on sale" for 17,95$. And it's still the newspaper quality... (I'm glad that I bought it for six books...) And this book is one of the cheapest on the site...

To be honest I don't think the new website is in any regards better (well, except the bundle buy option) than the old one but in many regards worse:
-You can't sort the books by release date or price anymore
-No "coming soon" section which was one of my favorite aspects of the previous site. You still get some of the informations from the blog section, but the blog section is shitty...
-Digital and physical releases are merged. In the past there were two sites for physical and digital releases, now everything is shown together. There is an option to show only physical releases, but it doesn't work as I still get a list of all books with the digital prices.
-Cheaper book prices are shown. As result of the merge the prices of the books are shown for the digital edition. Always. I think I can get a book for 10$ and it's only the god damn digital version. The above mentioned sorting option doesn't help.

There is also a point that has nothing to do with the new site per se and more with the decision of the management:
-Prices increased. Like a lot. In the past PH had a lot of books for under 10$. For example: "Absolute Monarch Syndrome" costed around six bucks, now it's "on sale" for 17,95$. And it's still the newspaper quality... (I'm glad that I bought it for six bucks...) And this book is one of the cheapest on the site...
(They had last year a sale on Pi day: 12 books were sold for 3,14$ each. I wonder if it will take place this year too...)

I do like the points system and the emails with discount codes, though. Shipping cost for domestic being $8, with no other options I could find at least, is a bit steep, however.

The coming soon section was pretty great. I did send an email about that a while back because one of the only books I was interested in that Project H had in their coming soon section was Monster Girl Idols. I asked about that book to make sure it was still coming out as well as if there would be a "coming soon" section. I was told that a coming soon collection is already being worked on.

I do like the points system and the emails with discount codes, though. Shipping cost for domestic being $8, with no other options I could find at least, is a bit steep, however. Thankfully there is a free threshold, but it is $100, so you need to order at least 5 full books or doujins to get it.

I was able to buy Passionate Lovers by Maban off of books-a-million but it didn't show up on the old PH site. My biggest thing is that I don't see as big a lag between the new PH site and what DMP says is supposed to be out.

I also can't access my cart by clicking on it directly. I have to right click and open in a new tab for it to load, even with adblockers turned off completely in Chrome and also in IE.

Thankfully there is a free threshold, but it is $100, so you need to order at least 5 full books or doujins to get it.

Funny enough I got my copy of "Passionate Lovers" today...
Do I imagine things or went the quality of the books down again? My most recent non Kickstarter purchase from PH before "Passionate Lovers" was "One Kore: Sweet Sister Selection" and as far as I can tell "One Kore" has a better paper quality...

I have this exact same issue in Chrome. I also see a 'heart' icon for wishlist and the world 'Wishlist' which takes me to a 404.

I placed an order last week and got free shipping on just 75.

Wow, I guess I never noticed before, but I would say that "Passionate Lovers" feels more like newspaper, while "One Kore" feels more like a Fakku book.

I'd be pleased if every release from here out uses at least this quality of paper stock for the money.

For anyone that cares (not that I particularly want to advertise) but Project H hasn't put anything up (that I've seen) that they have physical editions of Monster Girl Idols, which is like the only book I've been SUPER interested in that they have. Just giving a heads up in case anyone else wants a physical since they don't seem to have a large amount of stock of their initial print runs from what I've heard.

For anyone that cares (not that I particularly want to advertise) but Project H hasn't put anything up (that I've seen) that they have physical editions of Monster Girl Idols, which is like the only book I've been SUPER interested in that they have. Just giving a heads up in case anyone else wants a physical since they don't seem to have a large amount of stock of their initial print runs from what I've heard.

Thanks for the heads up. I'm always down for more monster girls, especially in print. I follow Project-H on Twitter and they announced it there as well. That's the best place for up to the minute info aside from stalking the Project-H site.

Monster Girls are my jam, man!