Perhaps someone will correct me if I'm wrong, but I doubt WotC is paying Curse anything.  Rather, Curse is likely paying WotC a licensing fee, which means rather than costing them money, DDB is making money for WotC. Literally profit (except whatever marketing WotC decides to do on behalf of DDB).

I'm not sure how many people work on the DDB team, but basically Curse is paying those salaries. If WotC had brought this in-house, then they would have to pay those salaries, and the price of the books would likely be even more to cover that over-head.

The only possible change that would really make any kind of sense to me is if they bundled the books and D&D Beyond on Amazon.  Since Curse is a subsidiary of a subsidiary of Amazon, it would be theoretically possible for Amazon to take that step.  I know that I would personally be willing to pay a bit more for my books and let Amazon send me a code for D&D Beyond at the same time (or just let me purchase it directly when buying the book, similar to giving me the option to buy the Audible version of my Kindle book at a discount).  That would alleviate the "buying the books twice" dilemma, while also encouraging D&D Beyond users to get their books though Amazon, which would be a bit of a win/win from their point of view.

I know the only way so far, i believe, to add content u have access to on dnd beyond is buy it digitally. if u own the physical copy can u add it it says u have and can use it on dnd beyod. I like using it for the character builder for offline gaming just making it a bit easier then writing the character down.

We should write to Wizards of the Coast: This is not comparable to other game formats like Monopoly as referenced by CuppaMatt https://www.dndbeyond.com/forums/d-d-beyond-general/d-d-beyond-feedback/5376-physical-purchase-gets-the-digital-equivalent
This is basically a pdf installment of  a book game. It does not require anything more than the 3rd party to (Wizards does no heavy lifting) to integrate the product into a well-defined system. Which is no small task for DnD Beyond.

I understand the licencing is the issue, no disagreement there, but this is still ripping off potential customers that WOTC could have. WOTC could charge a minimum of a few bucks per book if they wanted to and we would have the access or scan the barcodes on the back of our books into our accounts. 

EDIT: I just wrote them a long complaint, I would recommend the same for everyone here.

I said long ago that if Wizards didn't ship DDB codes in the physical books then Wizards and DDB were essentially going to be competing against each other for sales.

At this point I feel pretty comfortable in saying that's exactly how things have turned out and I would additionally guess that DDB is winning that competition thanks to good marketing and ease of access.

Quote from Mutak >>

I said long ago that if Wizards didn't ship DDB codes in the physical books then Wizards and DDB were essentially going to be competing against each other for sales.

At this point I feel pretty comfortable in saying that's exactly how things have turned out and I would additionally guess that DDB is winning that competition thanks to good marketing and ease of access.

Finally! We have actual data to that clearly maps out the profit margins of D&D Beyond and Wizard's of the Coast's D&D division!

Link?

Again, not the way it works...
Of course DDB is winning, its digital and its like 3x cheaper !
Here in canada... heres the rundown...

the player Handbook here... 90$ including taxes.
The Player Handbook DDB... 30$ including coin rates...

why would i buy the physical book that cost me 60$ more just for a stupid hard cover that doesn't do anything else ?

now why physical and DDB cannot do what you ask for ?
well first and foremost cause they are two very very different companies.
by selling both at the same time, they both loses money out of the transaction.
the only reason they would do this, is if you can guarantee them that they will make more money i th e long run because of people buying more.
this is something you cannot guarantee, nor can they. thus they do not do it.
heres the run down of how it works...
i buy the physical copy... 90$
i get the code for the digital copy as well... thats about 30$ thats going to DDB instead of WotC.
out of the 90$ there is like 15 dollars of imports for us.
about 33% of the money who is lost in coin rates.
in the end, the only people losing on this transactions are WotC because instead of having their whole 50$ for the book, they literally only gained 20$

explain to me, why would wizard accept this to begin with ? they are the only one losing to this ?
and if DDB decides to split in between... both companies are losing profits on it.
the only real reason they would have to give both, would be to sell the book at a higher price.
tell me, why would i, in canada... ever buy a book that is upward of a 100$ ?
nah i'll keep to my 30$ investment on DDB digital...

by the way, this is the very same thing happening on video game websites that sell their game codes much much much cheaper then the official vendors. there is a reason why they can sell this low. DDB as the same reason.

hey i have a question for you. me and my group is fairly new to dnd. no one owns any books. we dont have enough devices to play online so we are playing at someones house. would it still be worth it to buy the books on dnd beyond considering that we would only be using these as a reference. also as a dm is it better to run the modules like curse of strahd from a physical or digital. thanks. group is going to meet soon to discuss character creation and im tempted to get what we need on dnd beyond. but im reluctant if it isn't going to be super beneficial 

Quote from dtoll1987 >>

hey i have a question for you. me and my group is fairly new to dnd. no one owns any books. we dont have enough devices to play online so we are playing at someones house. would it still be worth it to buy the books on dnd beyond considering that we would only be using these as a reference. also as a dm is it better to run the modules like curse of strahd from a physical or digital. thanks. group is going to meet soon to discuss character creation and im tempted to get what we need on dnd beyond. but im reluctant if it isn't going to be super beneficial 

 Yes it is, you could , you and all players, just pay a small fee each, then buy every book on one account, and then make a campaign on that account and just add/invite everyone in that campaign and everyone would have the books shared together. for a very very small fee.

as an exemple...
each books cost about 30$ each. which is already much cheaper then the hard covers.
say you have a group of 4 friends along with the DM thats 5 players...
30 divided by 5 equal  6$ each per books. thats really not that much !

the only drawback of tdoing that is that the only one who can create characters with said books will be the one on the account, the others wil need to make characters in the campaign itself. otherwise they wont have access to everything. aside from that, for references, beyond is a toold that actually helps group in lowering the prices of said books by allowing sharing between players of the same campaign.

as an exemple...
my players in my groups all have access to my stuff, while they didn't buy them. they still are invited into a campaign i did, and they all have access to my books and they love it. because now they have access to every books on the go. no more pesky PDF to run through. no more adding your own favorites to a PDF either. no more bookmark either. just plain old beyond with its search engine and the reference of everything.

now is the subs needed... only if you want to make more charcaters and have unlimited characters. so in your case, its not a necessity. but think about it... you could have all books for about 6$ each. that's something right !

Yeah that does sound super beneficial. Ill see what my group says about chipping in. Fingers crossed lol

 Locking to promote new conversation in a new thread, rather than digging up this old one.

Would hate people to respond to a year old original post and not get any replies.  : (