Chief Technical Officer
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(This was initially composed as a response to a question in this thread, but I didn't want to take that thread so far off topic.)
...allow the community to request an OoP product go back into production. Paizo could set a pre-order threshold (maybe public/maybe not) for each OoP item (ie. Map Pack: Village) and once enough people add it to their cart from the list, a print run is set.
We don't plan to ever bring back any out-of-print Map Packs or Flip-Mats—at least not in the exact same form.
Now, I know a bunch of you are thinking that reprinting is easy and cheap, because we've already done all the work, and paid for all of the art and such, so reprinting a sold-out product is a no-brainer for easy cash in the bank. Seems obvious—but it's not true.
First of all, the printing costs are usually the highest costs associated with most products. And since print costs are based strongly on volume, that means for a reprint, we pretty much need to print—and sell—almost as much as we did the first time around so that we can charge the same retail price. And while there's a number of people would buy a reprint of a sold-out product, there's also a *very* large number of people who already own the original printing and have no interest in buying a reprint.
Next, keep in mind that most sales for a new product happen in the first month or two, and then taper off over the next couple of months to—hopefully—a slow-but-steady trickle. (You might notice that it usually takes a few years to sell out most of our products. And we've planned things so that that works for us.) Past sales—and our current subscribers—give us the knowledge we need to set print runs and retail prices to ensure that that first burst of sales pretty much covers our costs, allowing the profits to come in slowly over the next year or two, or three. That's one of our primary strategies for staying in business: Cover your costs on the launch.
Now, reprints don't get that "new product" burst at the front end. For one thing, we wouldn't be sending it to subscribers, so that's a huge loss in immediate sales right there. Also, our distributors generally place much, much smaller orders for most reprints than they did the first time around. Without that initial sales bump, it would take much longer to sell out the run—and more importantly, we wouldn't be generating the instant cash that lets us pay the print bill out of the product's own cash flow.
Now, that said, we do realize that if, say, Map Pack: Village has sold out, that means there's probably some demand for a village-themed Map Pack. Given what we've learned, then, the smart thing to do is design an *all-new* village-themed pack that will satisfy the latent demand while also potentially appealing to a chunk of the audience that bought the first one—especially people who like maps enough to subscribe to the line, and to retailers who can promote it as the hot new thing instead of just something else to restock.
While I've put this in the GameMastery thread, the truth is, it applies to most of the products we produce. The same reasons apply to not reprinting our Adventure Paths, Modules, and most other products.
There *are* a few exceptions, though; certain products are considered "evergreens"—that is, products that will have a consistent shelf presence, year after year. The Pathfinder RPG Core Rulebook and Bestiary are the most obvious examples. The Pathfinder Chronicles Campaign Setting would be one, except that it was written for 3.5, and the change in rule systems means that we'll be doing more than just a reprint when it comes time. Similarly, the Critical Hit Deck and Critical Fumble Deck, both evergreens, got some tweaks when they went in for reprints, as did Flip-Mat: Basic, and (you'll soon see) the GameMastery Combat Pad. Kill Doctor Lucky is also considered an evergreen; it's been selling well (in different forms) for over a decade now. (Eight evergreen products out of the hundreds we've produced—that's actually pretty good!)
Very interesting, especially if anyone here is thinking about starting their own publishing venture one day. Thanks for your insight, Vic.
Very interesting, especially if anyone here is thinking about starting their own publishing venture one day. Thanks for your insight, Vic.
Indeed! What the wolf said.
Thanks Vic for this info!
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What about print on demand solutions? I know some publishers are going through Lulu now which prints books on demand if a customer orders it through them from a publisher. The books are more expensive than print run editions, but it would allow people who are desperate to purchase a dead tree book the option of paying extra for the service. I know they also give the customers the option of picking either a perfect bound or hardcover.
This is also a solution for the odd person who wants their adventure paths in hardcover.
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Chief Technical Officer
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In my post above, I tangentially approached a really, really major issue that's worth a post to itself: print run sizing. It's a complicated topic, but since you've got the background given in my previous post, it's probably easier to discuss here than anywhere else.
If you consider my above logic for a bit, you'll realize that one of the biggest challenges we have is setting a print run size.
If reprinting is generally bad, then printing too little is just leaving money on the table. Not only have we failed to maximize sales, but there's a possibility that if we'd chosen a higher number, that may have brought our per-unit print costs down more... so there are actually *two* ways that we've failed to maximize return.
Of course, if we print *way* too little, then a reprint may actually be viable... but we've *still* left money on the table, because if we'd printed it all at once, the higher volume would have almost certainly given us lower per-unit print costs. And we could have either A) lowered the retail price, which may have increased the appeal to price-sensitive customers, thus resulting in even higher sales, or B) kept the retail price the same, and taken higher profits.
On the other hand, if we print too much, then we have product taking up room in our warehouse for years, which does have a monetary cost. If sales eventually trickle to the point that the cost exceeds the revenue, then we have to either discount it or destroy it. Destroying it usually has a cost as well. And while discounting something now and then is ok, and often good for business, when a lot of your products end up on clearance, that actually has a whole bunch of bad effects. One is that it reduces consumer confidence in your products—some folks think if it's on clearance, there must be something *wrong* with it. Another is that it may encourage people to buy your old cheap stuff instead of your new stuff, which not only reduces the profit you make, but also has a cash flow impact by reducing the front-end sales bump. And if that happens a lot, that's death to a product line whose only flaw may have been overprinting.
And if we print *way* too much, then the initial sales bump may not even cover our print costs, and we have to shuffle money around from somewhere else to pay for the run. That doesn't just harm the product line—that harms every aspect of the company.
If you think about these possibilities a bit, you can see one case that's not covered. What if we print more than we can sell right away, but the sales *don't* slow to a cost-inefficient trickle? Well, that's really what defines an evergreen product. In these cases, the trick is mainly just working out the cash flow to ensure that you can cover the cost of reprinting. That's why sometimes you'll see our evergreens go out of print for a few months—we're letting demand build back up so that we can have a mini-bump at the front to cover more of the reprint cost. (Sometimes, though, the delay is because we're reworking the product a bit, or we're just waiting for the shipment to arrive.)
At any rate, you can see that getting the print run size right is really good, and getting it a little bit wrong either way is not the worst thing in the world, but getting it really wrong is really bad.
And that's one reason we have subscriptions to so many of our lines. The fact that we know we're going to sell a certain number of copies right out of the gate really brings down the risk for us. Subscriptions let us get more of our print runs into the sweet spot, and that has a huge overall effect on the company.
So thank you, subscribers, and those of you who commit regular orders through your retailer; you're—quite literally—the reason we're here.
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What about print on demand solutions? I know some publishers are going through Lulu now which prints books on demand if a customer orders it through them from a publisher. The books are more expensive than print run editions, but it would allow people who are desperate to purchase a dead tree book the option of paying extra for the service. I know they also give the customers the option of picking either a perfect bound or hardcover.
This is also a solution for the odd person who wants their adventure paths in hardcover.
I think Lulu is free for publshers since they claim 20% of each book printed through them.
Personally I would mind the option of spending $79.95 - $99.95 for a complete adventure path set in hardcover. Probably would be about as thick as the PFRPG core rules though.
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Chief Technical Officer
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What about print on demand solutions? I know some publishers are going through Lulu now which prints books on demand if a customer orders it through them from a publisher. The books are more expensive than print run editions, but it would allow people who are desperate to purchase a dead tree book the option of paying extra for the service. I know they also give the customers the option of picking either a perfect bound or hardcover.
This is also a solution for the odd person who wants their adventure paths in hardcover.
Good question. There are a number of reasons we're not going POD.
First, as of yet, we haven't seen a print-on-demand solution that delivers the quality we're looking for. (They do get better every year, though, and I think that's just a matter of time.)
Second, we have a web store through which we sell tens of thousands of products, and we know that shipping costs are a big issue for our customers. If we outsourced our POD, we'd be unable to combine POD products with other products, and that's not great. (And we're not ready to invest in our own POD system—see the previous paragraph re: quality. Another company tried that recently, and... let's just say they're not doing it anymore.)
Finally, there's the notion of self-competition. If we give our customers too many similar products to buy, each of those products will sell fewer copies. Say a new player is looking to start playing an Adventure Path. If you have ten to choose from, odds are good that each one of those will garner about 10% of the new players. If you have five to choose from, each one will garner about 20%. Now, while our oldest APs are already profitable, our newest APs are just starting to contribute to the bottom line—if we don't get enough sales on the new ones to cover the costs, the line dies.
So the fact that our non-evergreen products do have a limited lifespan actually works for us in that respect. We need them to eventually get out of the way for the new guy, as it were.
As it happens, the graph of sales over time coincides pretty well with our needs, where:
A) the initial sales pretty much cover costs
B) ongoing sales provide a reasonable profit over a reasonable time
C) by the time a product is winding down, we have enough new products competing with it that having it go away is probably a good thing. (And if we don't want it to go away for some reason, we may figure out how to reinvent it, starting over at A.)
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Chief Technical Officer
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Personally I would mind the option of spending $79.95 - $99.95 for a complete adventure path set in hardcover. Probably would be about as thick as the PFRPG core rules though.
Offering a collected volume of each AP would be encouraging people *not* to buy volumes as they come out. If there's one thing you should take away from everything I've said in this thread, it's that that's a *very* bad strategy for us.
Also, your proposed price point would pretty much ensure that nobody bought it any other way, because the six volumes cost $119.94 as separate volumes ($83.94 for subscribers). Quite seriously, if we offered a product like you describe, we'd go out of business.
Have you considered taking your six volumes to a bookbinder? That sort of thing can be done.
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Well I can say that it’s a good thing that we have Pathfinder. When I purchased the Core Rules and Bestiary PDFs at the price of $9.99 I got drawn in and ended up getting back into pen and paper RPGs (not to mention I ended up getting the hard copies anyways.) I can't wait until I'm ready to start my own subscription for the Adventure Paths.
I do ask though that your team revisit this option later on. Great works of art always deserve another run at some point future (just ask Disney.)
On a personal note, having PDFs eternally available has been making me interested in doing book binding as a hobby.
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Completely agreeing with Vic's last point. Anime DVDs are kind of the same damned-either-way with me. Either I buy the volumes as they release, and have them take more shelf space, or wait until the boxset releases and kick the publisher in the teeth with lost revenue for the individual volumes. I like to support my favorite industries, but the options kind of suck for both parties.
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Chief Technical Officer
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I do ask though that your team revisit this option later on. Great works of art always deserve another run at some point future (just ask Disney.)
Yeah—like I've said, the "no reprints" rule doesn't apply to everything... and "reinvention" is also possible. So long as it's done in a way that is as appealing as a completely new product, and doesn't train people to always wait for the reinvention.
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And that's one reason we have subscriptions to so many of our lines. The fact that we know we're going to sell a certain number of copies right out of the gate really brings down the risk for us. Subscriptions let us get more of our print runs into the sweet spot, and that has a huge overall effect on the company.
I only wish you guys had brought in the subscriptions to all your product lines sooner.
So thank you, subscribers, and those of you who commit regular orders through your retailer; you're—quite literally—the reason we're here.
You're most welcome. :)
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Offering a collected volume of each AP would be encouraging people *not* to buy volumes as they come out. If there's one thing you should take away from everything I've said in this thread, it's that that's a *very* bad strategy for us.
I'm still holding out hope that Paizo prints an Anniversary compilation of Rise of the Runelords with perhaps updated rules. :)
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Chief Technical Officer
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I'm still holding out hope that Paizo prints an Anniversary compilation of Rise of the Runelords with perhaps updated rules. :)
Well, that *does* happen to be the kind of thing that could be done in a way that is as appealing as a completely new product, and yet doesn't train people to always wait for the reinvention....
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I'm still holding out hope that Paizo prints an Anniversary compilation of Rise of the Runelords with perhaps updated rules. :)Well, that *does* happen to be the kind of thing that could be done in a way that is as appealing as a completely new product, and yet doesn't train people to always wait for the reinvention....
That's why I tossed it out there. ;)
Vic, thanks for the insights and open words about your business model. I´m in the happy position to be a subscriber from day #1 (or thereabout), so I won´t bother with reprints anyway. I can see a demand for the oldest products (namely, Rise of the Runelords) when enough time has gone by from first publishing it. Enough time is hard to pin down, but I guess it would be years after the last print copy has been sold. It might coincide with the Pathfinder RPG 2nd Edition :-). I´m only half-joking here, actually, as I´m pretty sure that at some point, a 2nd ed will be inevitable (no, not the monster). Beyond a simple reprint, the RotR should be reworked rules-wise, of course, as it would be pointless to print it again for an obsolete ruleset, and perhaps even some minor rework story-wise, at points where feedback showed problems.
Stefan
On a slightly related note... if there is a paizo item that becomes OOP, is there a listing somewhere that records it?
Well, they stay on the website with a note "currently unavailable". Check out the magazines, for example, Dragon #1 to #4. If there are pdfs of the product, this stays in stock obviously.
Stefan
How about the possibility of a Pathfinderized Campaign Workbook?
That thing has made keeping campaign notes infinitely easier, and has allowed me to be able to work on my campaign literally ANYWHERE, no need for some big folder or binder, I can just slip the thing in my pocket and off I go.
But a Pathfinderized one would be nice, in fact I can tell you I'd buy two immediately (one for my Shackled City/Age of Worms/Savage Tide MegaCampaign, and one for my homebrew world/campaign that I'm using the megacampaign to cover while I work on it).
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Director of Brand Strategy
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On a slightly related note... if there is a paizo item that becomes OOP, is there a listing somewhere that records it?Well, they stay on the website with a note "currently unavailable". Check out the magazines, for example, Dragon #1 to #4. If there are pdfs of the product, this stays in stock obviously.
Not all of them stay on the website. Map Pack Village and Map Pack Countryside aren't listed on the Map Packs page any more.
Not all of them stay on the website. Map Pack Village and Map Pack Countryside aren't listed on the Map Packs page any more.On a slightly related note... if there is a paizo item that becomes OOP, is there a listing somewhere that records it?Well, they stay on the website with a note "currently unavailable". Check out the magazines, for example, Dragon #1 to #4. If there are pdfs of the product, this stays in stock obviously.
Thanks for pointing that out. My first guess as to the reasoning behind that was that there are no pdfs from the Map Packs, but then, there are no pdfs from the old mags either. So, I´m currently at a loss as to why the Map Packs get taken off the site - it would be nice to have them as a reference point.
Stefan
I am talking with Vic about possibilities for out of print products to stay on the website. Stay tuned!
-Lisa
Thanks for looking into it. You may not know it, but RPGers are huge collectors :-))) Having a place where OOP stuff is catalogued is a godsend.
Stefan
Sadly, the collections I really want, Age of Worms and Savage Tide, will never be.
Yeah, if you want those, copy ´em and look for a bookbinder. (I would be loath to cut the mags apart.) Who knows, perhaps I will do just this one day. For Savage Tide, one could even use the title page of the players guide as a cover. That reminds me, I´ve still gotten a clean printout of Ivid the Undying lying around somewhere, but I´ve never gotten around to binding this... Having printouts bound will be the next thing I start once I am done with my masters degree (hopefully in January).
Stefan
What about reprints on other people's behalf?
The adventure paths seem crazy with Advanced Bestiary material, for example, yet I'm having a hell of a time finding it. Same goes for the Tome of Horrors stuff that's so popular.
Any chance of Paizo licensing stuff for reprints? From a certain point of view it would be 'new' stuff, in that case.
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Chief Technical Officer
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How about the possibility of a Pathfinderized Campaign Workbook?
That didn't sell as well as we'd have liked. Part of the problem there, admittedly, was the binding problem that caused us to recall the whole run just as it was taking off, and by the time the reprint arrived, all the freshness was gone. But I also think that a lot of folks just didn't take to the concept. And then there's the fact that while a bunch of folks loved the size, a bunch really felt it was too small.
Really, though, the only difference between what we have now and what a Pathfinder RPG version would require is replacing some skills on the PC registry and adding a place for CMB/CMD on the PC and NPC registries.
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Chief Technical Officer
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What about reprints on other people's behalf?
The adventure paths seem crazy with Advanced Bestiary material, for example, yet I'm having a hell of a time finding it. Same goes for the Tome of Horrors stuff that's so popular.
Any chance of Paizo licensing stuff for reprints? From a certain point of view it would be 'new' stuff, in that case.
Converting somebody else's book and bringing it up to our art and editorial standards would cost about as much time and effort as doing a new product ourselves—and we don't have to pay licensing fees on our own stuff. Plus, there's the opportunity cost—if we have people, money, and other resources committed to reworking old things, that means fewer resources for doing all-new things.
A better solution is to try to convince those publishers to publish their own revisions under our free Compatibility License.
Whether they do or not, though, I'm sure some of the best 3.5 Open Game Content from other companies will continue to appear in our books every now and then.
Sadly, the collections I really want, Age of Worms and Savage Tide, will never be.
This to makes me very sad
The adventure paths seem crazy with Advanced Bestiary material, for example, yet I'm having a hell of a time finding it. Same goes for the Tome of Horrors stuff that's so popular.
Green Ronin has print on demand for some of their older stuff on Lulu.
Tome of Horrors Revised has always been PDF only, so you have to find a way to print it yourself. I have a giant 3-ring binder just for it.
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Director of Brand Strategy
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Green Ronin has print on demand for some of their older stuff on Lulu.
ooooo, I remember when Chris Pramas mentioned that they were going to do this, but I wasn't aware the plan had come to fruition yet. Now I just have to start saving my pennies to get a copy of Book of Fiends, though I don't know if I should get a hard- or soft-bound version.
Now I just have to start saving my pennies to get a copy of Book of Fiends, though I don't know if I should get a hard- or soft-bound version.
I got the hard-bound reprint version and love it. Highly recommended.
How about the possibility of a Pathfinderized Campaign Workbook?That didn't sell as well as we'd have liked. Part of the problem there, admittedly, was the binding problem that caused us to recall the whole run just as it was taking off, and by the time the reprint arrived, all the freshness was gone. But I also think that a lot of folks just didn't take to the concept. And then there's the fact that while a bunch of folks loved the size, a bunch really felt it was too small.
I figured as much. Just thought I'd ask. Unfortunate really, cause it's a great product.
I can understand how people would feel it was too small if it was their only copy of their campaign notes, but personally, I'm so scattered and unorganized I like to have two, maybe even three copies of my campaign notes. One at home on regular sized paper, one in my backpack on regular sized paper, and for those times I don't even have my backpack, my little Campaign Workbook. That way when I need them, I can find them easily, and I just update the other copies when I get to them again.
Really, though, the only difference between what we have now and what a Pathfinder RPG version would require is replacing some skills on the PC registry and adding a place for CMB/CMD on the PC and NPC registries.
Yeah, I know. It's just a little annoying having to do that for every PC and NPC. Oh well, I guess I'll just get another one of the old ones for my homebrew (I already have one for the Shackled City/Age of Worms/Savage Tide MegaCampaign).
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This should be obvious for most people, but if you reprint use a laser printer! I was desperate enough to print some of my pdfs in color and it didn't take much to bleed it dry.
I did give the reprint ideas some thought and it might be a good idea that some of the stuff goes out of print for awhile. If Paizo did use a service like Lulu we would end up with over priced books, and the print run from Lulu would prevent a build up of demand that would allow Paizo to release all new editions of older products. This is especially important because most of their older products are not fully compatible with the PFRPG rulesystems.
I vote that we let the older stuff die off so it can reincarnate into something better.
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Director of Brand Strategy
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In addition to seeing oop products in the store, I'd also love to have some sort of warning icon or notation that a product is close to being unavailable. I know there have been some store blog entries to this effect in the past, but it was very helpful for me at PaizoCon and GenCon to be able to get hints about what was almost gone from Lisa and Vic and having something on the webstore could help collectors not miss things by waiting too long to get them.
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In addition to seeing oop products in the store, I'd also love to have some sort of warning icon or notation that a product is close to being unavailable. I know there have been some store blog entries to this effect in the past, but it was very helpful for me at PaizoCon and GenCon to be able to get hints about what was almost gone from Lisa and Vic and having something on the webstore could help collectors not miss things by waiting too long to get them.
+1. It is good that the folks at Paizo usually put up an announcement but that detail in shopfront would rock.
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Chief Technical Officer
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In addition to seeing oop products in the store, I'd also love to have some sort of warning icon or notation that a product is close to being unavailable. I know there have been some store blog entries to this effect in the past, but it was very helpful for me at PaizoCon and GenCon to be able to get hints about what was almost gone from Lisa and Vic and having something on the webstore could help collectors not miss things by waiting too long to get them.+1. It is good that the folks at Paizo usually put up an announcement but that detail in shopfront would rock.
You know, you'd think knowing when you're almost out of something would be that simple, but it's kind of amazing how it really isn't.
Sometimes, we think we're down to our last box, and then we find another box.
Sometimes, our book trade distributor (which is allowed to return product), decides to send some back. That's actually fairly rare, but what's more likely is, if we're running out and we find out they still have stock, we sometimes ask them to return some.
Also, we do actually sometime buy our own sold-out products from our hobby distributors to sell to our customers.
Take the Combat Pad—we thought we were down to our last box a couple of months ago, and then we found some more that had been packed in with other products when we moved warehouses in the fall. And now we've actually sold out of those (except for a few damaged ones we're selling as non-mint), but our main distributor still has stock, so we're now buying inventory back from them as customers order it from us. But our distributor doesn't tell us how much they have, only that they have it (and even if they *did* tell us how much, they do have other customers who would be buying it at an unpredictable rate)... so we have no idea if their supply will last a week, a month, or a year.
And sometimes, we actually know a lot about inventory, but our ability to predict sales isn't so hot. Take Classic Monsters Revisited, which was sold out for months. Lots of folks were asking us to reprint it, and we were hearing that it was selling for an inflated price on the secondary market. So we hunted around, found a supply at our book trade distributor, and asked them to send it back. It wasn't much, and given apparent demand, we thought it would disappear in a couple of weeks at most. But here it is a couple of months later, and we still have copies left.
In that case, even though we knew *exactly* how many copies we had, if we'd stuck up a low stock alert (at least, one bigger than me posting in the thread), Paizo would be sitting here looking like the boy who cried wolf, and some of you would be wondering if we were trying to pull a fast one on you.
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Fair call Vic.
I remember when it was reported that the Campsite Map Pack was sold out and you guys found a box.
Just a handy wishlist idea. I would not be upset if an out of print item came back as being for sale, like the campsite map pack.
I would not accuse you of crying wolf, rather I would rejoice! :)
The adventure paths seem crazy with Advanced Bestiary material, for example, yet I'm having a hell of a time finding it. Same goes for the Tome of Horrors stuff that's so popular.
Tome of Horrors Revised has always been PDF only, so you have to find a way to print it yourself. I have a giant 3-ring binder just for it.
Hey!
How come if Tome of Horrors is PDF only, the Paizo store doesn't have it "in stock?"
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Chief Technical Officer
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The adventure paths seem crazy with Advanced Bestiary material, for example, yet I'm having a hell of a time finding it. Same goes for the Tome of Horrors stuff that's so popular.Tome of Horrors Revised has always been PDF only, so you have to find a way to print it yourself. I have a giant 3-ring binder just for it.Hey!
How come if Tome of Horrors is PDF only, the Paizo store doesn't have it "in stock?"
Necromancer's PDF sales are currently exclusively through another channel. (Feel free to tell them you'd like that to change!)