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Can I buy a print copy of this? or why this wasnt printed?
I downloaded this and really it's not worth buying as print edition. It's great a free download and it's small enough to print off a copy to give to my players as I gear up for this Adventure Path. Just waiting for the books to arrive via mail 4 in total, can't wait. I've got the Core Rule Book, Campaign Setting book, Council Thieves #1, and the Chronicler for Cheliax coming.
Will any of the Campaign Traits from the "Council of Thieves Player's Guide" be approved for "Pathfinder Society" organized game play? All of the prior Player Guides had write ups on what was permissable in the organized game play under the 2.0 rules. Also, does anybody know how often the list of available feats/traits/equipment/prestige classes will be updated for the organized play events?
It wasn't printed because, frankly, our previous printed player's guides didn't do as well as we'd hoped. They sold okay here on paizo.com, but I think many retailers didn't order them because they didn't really understand what they were.
Awww, that's too bad. We bought a good number of them at Village Games in Anoka, MN. Too bad other people missed out on having them in print!
They were a really nice little tool to get when we started the adventure paths and they were so wonderfully inexpensive! Suppose a free PDF is nothing to complain about of course! :)
Vic:
In case you're taking suggestions from store owners, I thought I would post this. When you did the $1.99 Player's Guides for RotRL and CotCT, I sold those particularly well. Yes, I had to explain what they were to potential customers, but when they were explained, DMs loved the idea. When you raised the price to $9.99 (admittedly adding more stuff) is when sales stopped - of course, you could still get them for free on this site; I suspect that was a partial discouragement for DMs spending $10 per player.
So, the suggestion: if you print them, go back to the $2 version. Those did well, and provided a good, low-cost jumping off point for a lot of DMs.
Of course, having access to free stuff I can show to future buyers isn't bad, either, so whatever you choose to do...
Vic:
In case you're taking suggestions from store owners, I thought I would post this. When you did the $1.99 Player's Guides for RotRL and CotCT, I sold those particularly well. Yes, I had to explain what they were to potential customers, but when they were explained, DMs loved the idea.
Sadly, what we heard from distribution was that many retailers didn't even take the effort to understand the product themselves, much less explain it to their customers. Too bad there aren't more like you!
When you raised the price to $9.99 (admittedly adding more stuff) is when sales stopped - of course, you could still get them for free on this site; I suspect that was a partial discouragement for DMs spending $10 per player.
Just to clarify: the Pathfinder Companion Player's Guide PDFs were not generally free (though we did make some available in a one-time promotion). (But I get what you're saying.)
A minibook for $1.99 makes a lot more sense for something you want to get for each player. The $9.99 price seems better as a GM guide for the AP. I wonder if the typical store owner had an intuitive sense that a $9.99 AP Player's Guide didn't make sense and didn't care to understand any more than that.
5" x 7.5" and 20 pages that packs just the character options specific to that AP would be perfect. You could re-use art from the GM guide or the AP itself. Seems like a perfect teaser to hand out and get players excited about creating characters for the AP.
You could even sell the GM's AP guide and five Player's guides as a $20.00 bundle, since the likely customer for the Player's Guide is actually the GM who plans to hand them out.
A minibook for $1.99 makes a lot more sense for something you want to get for each player. The $9.99 price seems better as a GM guide for the AP. I wonder if the typical store owner had an intuitive sense that a $9.99 AP Player's Guide didn't make sense and didn't care to understand any more than that.
5" x 7.5" and 20 pages that packs just the character options specific to that AP would be perfect. You could re-use art from the GM guide or the AP itself. Seems like a perfect teaser to hand out and get players excited about creating characters for the AP.
You could even sell the GM's AP guide and five Player's guides as a $20.00 bundle, since the likely customer for the Player's Guide is actually the GM who plans to hand them out.
That's exactly what they did for the RotR and CotCT player's guides. So the market reaction to them is probably taking into account the exact thing you're suggesting.
Can I buy a print copy of this? or why this wasnt printed?It wasn't printed because, frankly, our previous printed player's guides didn't do as well as we'd hoped. They sold okay here on paizo.com, but I think many retailers didn't order them because they didn't really understand what they were.
All the printed player's guides or just the last two? I did notice that there was a price increase when the size went to 32 pages(and that retailers were selling the $2 player guides at significantly higher prices than Paizo.com.
All the printed player's guides or just the last two?Can I buy a print copy of this? or why this wasnt printed?It wasn't printed because, frankly, our previous printed player's guides didn't do as well as we'd hoped. They sold okay here on paizo.com, but I think many retailers didn't order them because they didn't really understand what they were.
Actually, I was mainly talking about the 16-page standalone guides. Not surprisingly, the two Player's Guides in the 32-page Pathfinder Companion line are among our best selling Companions. One of the main reasons that they're not continuing in that line, though, is that they added confusion to what the Companion line is supposed to be. We also had issues with the fact that the first two 16-pagers had trained AP subscribers to expect them for free, and that's not something we can afford to do with the Companion line for two out of six volumes each year.
I did notice that there was a price increase when the size went to 32 pages(and that retailers were selling the $2 player guides at significantly higher prices than Paizo.com.
For convenience, we sold the 16-pagers to distribution as packs of 5 with a $10 MSRP—though they were labeled for individual sale as well, so distributors or retailers could open up packs for customers who didn't want exactly 5. Were you seeing singles for $10?
I'm going to bump this topic.
I've given it some thought, but it is more complicated that I have the time for right now, so it will have to stay on the backburner until I or somebody I hire has more time to deal with this. That said, I think it is a cool idea and expect that we will offer it some year in the future. :)
The world has moved on a few years since your earlier statement and many other publishers are setting up their own Print on Demand stores via websites like Lulu, Blurb and several others.
I really feel that this is an area where either DriveThru RPG or Paizo is in the best place to step in and give fans of out of print products what they need. As one of the leading sources of out of print PDFs,
If there are issues putting thing out a Print on Demand basis then it should be possible for Paizo to dip their toe into this on a trial basis. I am sure that any of the existing Print on Demand publishers would give their right arm for a chance to have a partnership with Paizo. If you did a trail with your own non-printed products.
Take Pathfinder: Council of Thieves Player's Guide (PFRPG) PDF for example. After a customer enquired about getting printed copies, here is what Vic Wertz said:
Can I buy a print copy of this? or why this wasnt printed?It wasn't printed because, frankly, our previous printed player's guides didn't do as well as we'd hoped. They sold okay here on paizo.com, but I think many retailers didn't order them because they didn't really understand what they were.
With PoD via a third party, you could be offering users like Alagard a "no-risk to Paizo" option to buy the printed copies that retailers will not supply.
Please take this idea off of the "backburner" and give it another look.
I don't think I quite get the point or appeal of "mail order" print on demand companies. If you are going to spend that kind of money for a single copy, why not just print out the PDF?
So, what is print on demand giving you? I assume you get a better paper stock? I also assume it would be bound? If so, do you normally get a choice of binding (saddle stitch, most likely)
I'm not being snarky - I honestly can't see using a print on demand option unless it is very cost effective and the final product is MUCH higher than what I would get printing it myself on a decent quality printer on nice paper.
After all, I would assume that POD companies are basically using a high end printer to do this (some kind of Xerox Docutech or something that just prints the file and then binds it) If so, heck, anyone near a small quick copy shop near by could get the same thing done in a few minutes. Just give them the file, the output it, staple it and you're done.
Thanks!
