Retailer not respecting street dates for Paizo products

[Koujow]

I was uncertain who to contact about this and I figured this would be the best place to start.

Up until recently, I worked for a nationwide book retailer and it always seemed strange to me that the local game store seemed to have Paizo products on their shelves a week or two prior to us. I knew that all new books had dates placed upon them that prevented us from selling them prior to that date. According to my boss, anyone who sold the product prior to was subject to fines and even loss of their contract with the publisher and the rules were there to make sure all retailers had an equal advantage once the books came out.

Even though I changed jobs recently, I still shop at the book retailer because it is 20 minutes closer to my home than the game retailer and I preordered Occult Adventures from them. It was estimated to come in later in August, once the store received all copies. (I believe August 15th?) Later that day, I happen to be in the area and stopped by the game store and they had copies for sale. This was on August 2nd. After speaking to ex-coworkers, they suggested I at least mention it to Paizo.

I know that Paizo was selling copies at GenCon and perhaps gaming retailers receive their inventory earlier, but if not, then I think this is kind of unfair practice by the company and possibly a breach of contract with Paizo (If they follow similar contracts to the larger chain stores).

I am being generally vague about this because if I am totally off base and this is all legitimate, then I don't want to create any kind of negative backlash with either company. If I am correct, however, I will provide the additional information.

[skizzerz]

The street date for Occult Adventures was July 30 to coincide with GenCon according to the release thread for that month's releases. If the game store was selling on August 2nd, they should be good then; if they were selling before that point then there is an issue.

Paizo does take breaches of street date very seriously, and if you do think you came across instances of it the best thing to do is report it as you did :). In this case, it seems it was a non-issue, although it does seem odd that your previous employer was waiting over 2 full weeks after street date to release it, but I can't comment much on that as I don't know what sort of deals Paizo may have in place with them or internal policies of the store if they're a nationwide chain.

If you want to continue to keep an eye out, the street date for August's releases is right now expected to be September 2nd, although that is subject to change -- the August release thread has more details on that.

[Katina Davis]

Hi Koujow,

Thank you for letting us know about this! As Skizzers mentioned, the street date for Occult Adventures was planned to be in time for GenCon, so August 2nd would have been an acceptable date for said retailer to be selling it. We do appreciate you letting us know about it, just in case!

Generally speaking, any time after the Street Date should be fine, since that is when the PDFs are available for purchase and folks should be able to get their hands on the products. If you do ever see anything that looks suspicious or is way before the date, please do let us know and we'll be glad to take a look into it. You can contact us here, email us at [e-mail], or give us a call during the week at [phone] between 10am and 5pm, PST.

If there are any further questions or concerns that you may have, please don't hesitate to let us know, and we'll be more than happy to help out as best we can.

Thanks!
Katina

[Vic Wertz]

I also have to note that there's a sort of "industry gap" that exists as well. Paizo effectively sells to two different trades using two different sets of distributors: "hobby" and "book." Hobby stores focus on games and comics, while book stores focus on books and other mass media.

Because new comic books are released on Wednesdays, the hobby trade generally prefers Wednesday release dates. But because new books, DVDs, and CDs are released on Tuesdays (well, at least historically), the book trade prefers Wednesday release dates.

Paizo has always set our release dates for the hobby trade—meaning Wednesday*—and the book trade chooses to set the release date for bookstores on the following Tuesday.

*There's one exception to that each year: Gen Con always begins on a Thursday, and we set our release date for that month to coincide with that.