Paizo Pricing & Sustainability Update

And I really believe they waited a long time before raising the prices.

Thankfully, it seems Paizo's audience keeps on climbing. And AoN is still free. So, good news. Really.

TOZ wrote:

The realities of the market are not 'raise prices or don't raise prices', they are 'raise prices or stop publishing'.

Yep. I was coming here to say exactly this. :3

Pretty sure I stole it from you over in Discord, so that tracks.

Thank you Mark for your reply. I had a long reply in turn adressing the points you made but honestly, it's not worth my effort. Good luck with the company.

While I'm not enthusiastic about paying more, I definitely understand the increases and I love the transparent communication!

I'm delighted with the products I've been getting, so I'll keep acquiring even if it's not as much of a steal.

Michael Hebert 10 wrote:

The old pdf increase is just greed. The remainder of the price increases is expected but would have been better at 50% of increase. Costs are up for businesses but putting so much onto the consumer is extreme.

As for your first sentence, prove it. As for your last, see my previous post regarding economics.

As I've posted before, a price increase from $3.99 to $8.99 is a 125% increase. All production costs for these scenarios has already been paid, years ago. The only ongoing cost is the cost to maintain the files on the server and the web description pages. Under Paizo's current business practices, customers have access to digital purchases on the Paizo servers until the practices change, so these are (small) ongoing costs.

I suspect, the price increase on older 1e PDF scenarios is also PR related. Paizo want to steer customers to the new products, which do cost more to make. Having inexpensive first edition produces available for significantly less than current products is an incentive to purchase them and not move to the newest edition. The downside to this price increase on old products is that some customers will see this as being greedy. I suspect Paizo has picked a price point that will maintain the current cash flow of 1e PDF products even with a reduced number of sales while pushing customers to 2e.

I also suspect that 1e purchases are making up a smaller and smaller amount of their sales. Overall, from what I see locally, Paizo's significantly smaller present at conventions (GenCon & Origins in particular) and the traffic I perceive on various websites, it looks like Paizo's sales are down all around. A GM needing to pay almost twice as much to get into the print remastered (2.5) edition, wont help. ($109.98 to $179.97)

As I've posted before, a price increase from $3.99 to $8.99 is a 125% increase. All production costs for these scenarios has already been paid, years ago. The only ongoing cost is the cost to maintain the files on the server and the web description pages. Under Paizo's current business practices, customers have access to digital purchases on the Paizo servers until the practices change, so these are (small) ongoing costs.

Server space isn't free. The choice may well be increase prices, or wipe old 1e content from the servers to save space.

Swiftbrook wrote:

As I've posted before, a price increase from $3.99 to $8.99 is a 125% increase. All production costs for these scenarios has already been paid, years ago. The only ongoing cost is the cost to maintain the files on the server and the web description pages. Under Paizo's current business practices, customers have access to digital purchases on the Paizo servers until the practices change, so these are (small) ongoing costs.

Server space isn't free. The choice may well be increase prices, or wipe old 1e content from the servers to save space.

If you wipe it off the servers to save space, then Paizo is changing it's practice/policy and customers will not be able to download previous purchased PDFs.

Ed Reppert wrote:

Michael Hebert 10 wrote:

The old pdf increase is just greed. The remainder of the price increases is expected but would have been better at 50% of increase. Costs are up for businesses but putting so much onto the consumer is extreme.

As for your first sentence, prove it. As for your last, see my previous post regarding economics.

As I've posted before, a price increase from $3.99 to $8.99 is a 125% increase. All production costs for these scenarios has already been paid, years ago. The only ongoing cost is the cost to maintain the files on the server and the web description pages. Under Paizo's current business practices, customers have access to digital purchases on the Paizo servers until the practices change, so these are (small) ongoing costs.

I suspect, the price increase on older 1e PDF scenarios is also PR related. Paizo want to steer customers to the new products, which do cost more to make. Having inexpensive first edition produces available for significantly less than current products is an incentive to purchase them and not move to the newest edition. The downside to this price increase on old products is that some customers will see this as being greedy. I suspect Paizo has picked a price point that will maintain the current cash flow of 1e PDF products even with a reduced number of sales while pushing customers to 2e.

I also suspect that 1e purchases are making up a smaller and smaller amount of their sales. Overall, from what I see locally, Paizo's significantly smaller present at conventions (GenCon & Origins in particular) and the traffic I perceive on various websites, it looks like Paizo's sales are down all around. A GM needing to pay almost twice as much to get into the print remastered (2.5) edition, wont help. ($109.98 to $179.97)

The switch from PF1 to PF2 was decided by people some years ago. TBH I have not heard of newcomers starting with PF1. So I do not think this was a reason for the price change.

Not to mention all PFS products are concerned, both PF1 and PF2.

Finally, we had a Paizo staff saying recently that they are selling more than they ever did.

On a somewhat related point, Netflix is gaining huge numbers of new customers after increasing their prices. So, higher prices do not necessarily result in lower sales.

Arutema wrote:

Swiftbrook wrote:

As I've posted before, a price increase from $3.99 to $8.99 is a 125% increase. All production costs for these scenarios has already been paid, years ago. The only ongoing cost is the cost to maintain the files on the server and the web description pages. Under Paizo's current business practices, customers have access to digital purchases on the Paizo servers until the practices change, so these are (small) ongoing costs.

Server space isn't free. The choice may well be increase prices, or wipe old 1e content from the servers to save space.

If you wipe it off the servers to save space, then Paizo is changing it's practice/policy and customers will not be able to download previous purchased PDFs.

Which is why they're going this route instead. Server space isn't free, and they have to maintain that space to allow people to still be able to access things they purchased 10+ years ago.

If you wipe it off the servers to save space, then Paizo is changing it's practice/policy and customers will not be able to download previous purchased PDFs.

So they issue codes to download the same PDFs from Drivethru, as many Kickstarters do with digital content. Problem solved.

Overall, from what I see locally, Paizo's significantly smaller present at conventions (GenCon & Origins in particular) and the traffic I perceive on various websites, it looks like Paizo's sales are down all around.

Extreme speculation based on an insignificant sampling size.

I am curious to see how this pairs with the upcoming changes to subscriber benefits that Aaron has teased are in the works. With the higher price points, sourcing via online stores will become a lot more attractive (financially), particular when you factor in shipping costs. I stopped my subscriptions sometime back as it was more cost effective to buy the books separately and get the PDFs in conjunction with Demiplane.

I would love to see a combined offering that could merge print and digital (PDF/Demiplane/Foundry), but I’m not sure that is viable yet, given all the moving pieces.

As disappointing as it is to see a price increase, I figured this was coming when there was talk of a new website and unionizing efforts. I am glad, at least, that the money will be going more toward the workers via the union.

On the bright side, this was just the push I needed to go ahead and fill out my collection of society scenarios.

zanbato13 wrote:

Aaron Shanks wrote:

Also, if you know a school, library, club, or nonprofit that does not restrict its membership and needs Pathfinder or Starfinder products to get started, please email community@paizo.com with a request!

Do we need to be a librarian to put in a request for our local libraries?

I'm in Massachusetts and go to a few libraries. I even volunteered to teach teens how to play trpgs, until 2019 for obvious reasons, when public places were dangerous.

Where are you located as I know that some of my local libraries in Massachusetts (Boston) carry those books and they might be able to help if they did it already?

Canton and Stoughton, volunteered at Canton

If you're mad about PF1 PDF's having a price hike, there are a lot of discounted used softcovers floating around, including in Paizo's warehouse.

As disappointing as it is to see a price increase, I figured this was coming when there was talk of a new website and unionizing efforts. I am glad, at least, that the money will be going more toward the workers via the union.

On the bright side, this was just the push I needed to go ahead and fill out my collection of society scenarios.

From what I heard from people talking with printers and stuff, the price of printing books and gettiing them shipped to you have increased by about 40ish percents recently... In an industry with such small profit margins, it's not nothing.

I don't mind about the price increaes its the shipping costs to Australia thats killing me. I really wish Paizo would investigate other distribution options. Reaper and other small companies have mamaged it so not sure why Paizo can't.

I don't mind about the price increaes its the shipping costs to Australia thats killing me. I really wish Paizo would investigate other distribution options. Reaper and other small companies have mamaged it so not sure why Paizo can't.

From what I heard, it's actually easier for small companies. Paizo is a bit too big for the capacity of most "helper" companies. (Completely made-up number follower to explain my point) So, imagine there's an Australian company that can help distribute directly from Australia. They have a 100 book warehouse (made up number, I KNOW that's way too small.) They are already helping other companies and are using about 50 "book slots". Paizo would need to ship, let's say, 500 books to Australia... That helper company just doesn't have the capacities to help. That's basically what I heard is happening.

I'm late to the party, and while I do not find the prices increases to be unreasonable in almost all cases, $9 is completely non-tenable for a PFS scenario. There is nothing "sustainable" about it; if anything, it is exactly the opposite; you're going to accidentally kill the line.

To be clear, this is not just someone being cheap; this is someone who minored in economics in college telling you that this move was a bad idea, and exactly why. Namely, price elasticity of demand.

Not only do scenarios compare very poorly value-wise at $9 to all of your other adventure offerings, but somewhat counter-intuitively, raising prices can often drive down volume, decreasing revenue -- and ultimately, profit. This is especially true in the case of highly discretionary purchases, such as an RPG adventure. Furthermore, a PDF has a very low marginal cost of production, meaning any revenue you realize from the an increase in sales volume associated with a lower price is almost pure profit.

There were already issues with the financial viability of PFS scenarios which were not corrected by previous price increases, as evidenced by the reduced scenario production schedule. Why double-down on a strategy that has already clearly failed?

Of course, all of this also completely ignores the promotional value of PFS, which as a former VL I know to be significant...if admittedly difficult to quantify.

Sorry to vent, but this is exactly the wrong way to right the financial ship with respect to PFS scenarios. I hope you course correct before you draw all the wrong conclusions and end up killing the scenario line altogether.

PFS scenarios might not have printing, warehouse and logistic costs, but they still have costs for the writers, art, cartographers, editors, layout, etc, and those have all gone up over time.

Now, as a digital product I would expect a lower price percentage increase than physical products, but not zero.

Furthermore, a PDF has a very low marginal cost of production,

True.

But the cost of producing that first copy is astounding. I'm not at all surprised that Paizo spreads out the total cost over all the copies they expect to sell.

"marginal cost of production" is a pretty useless metric to use for digital pricing.

I'm late to the party, and while I do not find the prices increases to be unreasonable in almost all cases, $9 is completely non-tenable for a PFS scenario. There is nothing "sustainable" about it; if anything, it is exactly the opposite; you're going to accidentally kill the line.

To be clear, this is not just someone being cheap; this is someone who minored in economics in college telling you that this move was a bad idea, and exactly why. Namely, price elasticity of demand.

Not only do scenarios compare very poorly value-wise at $9 to all of your other adventure offerings, but somewhat counter-intuitively, raising prices can often drive down volume, decreasing revenue -- and ultimately, profit. This is especially true in the case of highly discretionary purchases, such as an RPG adventure. Furthermore, a PDF has a very low marginal cost of production, meaning any revenue you realize from the an increase in sales volume associated with a lower price is almost pure profit.

There were already issues with the financial viability of PFS scenarios which were not corrected by previous price increases, as evidenced by the reduced scenario production schedule. Why double-down on a strategy that has already clearly failed?

Of course, all of this also completely ignores the promotional value of PFS, which as a former VL I know to be significant...if admittedly difficult to quantify.

Sorry to vent, but this is exactly the wrong way to right the financial ship with respect to PFS scenarios. I hope you course correct before you draw all the wrong conclusions and end up killing the scenario line altogether.

Paizo has extremely strong marketing know-how as part of its DNA. I completely trust that they know what they're doing.

"marginal cost of production" is a pretty useless metric to use for digital pricing.

It is actually particularly relevant, and this is why: nearly all of the costs are fixed, which means that each marginal sale is almost all profit, which in turn means the way to maximize profit is to sell the largest number of units possible (i.e. increase quantity supplied). For a very elastic good like a RPG adventure, the way to do that is to move rightward along the demand curve by lowering price (and therefore spreading the high fixed costs over the largest quantity possible).

Of course this could be taken to a ridiculous extreme ("Make the price $.01!"), but that is always the case. I would argue that, at $9, a PFS scenario is clearly a poor value compared to Paizo's other adventure products, meaning that if those other products are priced correctly -- and I believe they are -- the PFS scenario is priced above the the point at which it would generate maximum profits.

Were I Paizo, I would assess the lower volume that usually sells for a PFS scenario and base my price on this so that I can be pretty sure to cover my fixed costs.

Any further sales would then be pure benefit.

Whereas if I bet on selling more and reduce my price accordingly but then fail in reaching my target, I would be losing money.

I started thinking about subscribing to Paizo adventures, but since I live in central Europe and shipping can be very expensive (last year, when I tried to order Core Rulebook directly from Paizo, it almost doubled the price), I'm afraid to place the order.

Is there anyone who receives internationally shipped Paizo products from subscription? Does the fact it's distributed in bulk lowers the price of shipping?
FAQ only confirms that there is international distribution, but doesn't go any deeper..

Were I Paizo, I would assess the lower volume that usually sells for a PFS scenario and base my price on this so that I can be pretty sure to cover my fixed costs.

Any further sales would then be pure benefit.

Whereas if I bet on selling more and reduce my price accordingly but then fail in reaching my target, I would be losing money.

That is a good summary of their probable thought process. It makes intuitive sense. Unfortunately, it also misses the point.

For a highly elastic good, the volume is almost solely dependent upon the price. Set the price too high and volume -- and therefore revenue -- craters. Counter intuitively, higher prices leads to lower revenue. Worse, if you fail to understand this relationship, you are tempted to increase the price again in an attempt to course correct. Of course doing so only winds up driving down volume further, and so on.

Now take a look at PFS scenarios. As a result of repeated price hikes, they have gone from $4 to $9 at a pace that greatly exceeds inflation (in a period of historically high inflation!). Yet in the midst of such a rapid price escalation, Paizo has still had to cut back the production schedule for PFS scenarios.

To be clear, this is not concern trolling. I genuinely want PFS to succeed. What makes the situation particularly frustrating is that if you know a bit about economics it's really not that hard to spot the pattern here...or to guess what probably comes next. :/

I started thinking about subscribing to Paizo adventures, but since I live in central Europe and shipping can be very expensive (last year, when I tried to order Core Rulebook directly from Paizo, it almost doubled the price), I'm afraid to place the order.

Is there anyone who receives internationally shipped Paizo products from subscription? Does the fact it's distributed in bulk lowers the price of shipping?
FAQ only confirms that there is international distribution, but doesn't go any deeper..

As far as I know, Europe's subscriptions, like Australia's, are shipped to the individual directly from Paizo. This means we pay the normally high shipping prices that are part of today's reality.

The Raven Black wrote:

Were I Paizo, I would assess the lower volume that usually sells for a PFS scenario and base my price on this so that I can be pretty sure to cover my fixed costs.

Any further sales would then be pure benefit.

Whereas if I bet on selling more and reduce my price accordingly but then fail in reaching my target, I would be losing money.

That is a good summary of their probable thought process. It makes intuitive sense. Unfortunately, it also misses the point.

For a highly elastic good, the volume is almost solely dependent upon the price. Set the price too high and volume -- and therefore revenue -- craters. Counter intuitively, higher prices leads to lower revenue. Worse, if you fail to understand this relationship, you are tempted to increase the price again in an attempt to course correct. Of course doing so only winds up driving down volume further, and so on.

Now take a look at PFS scenarios. As a result of repeated price hikes, they have gone from $4 to $9 at a pace that greatly exceeds inflation (in a period of historically high inflation!). Yet in the midst of such a rapid price escalation, Paizo has still had to cut back the production schedule for PFS scenarios.

To be clear, this is not concern trolling. I genuinely want PFS to succeed. What makes the situation particularly frustrating is that if you know a bit about economics it's really not that hard to spot the pattern here...or to guess what probably comes next. :/

Maybe they cost much more to produce too. I feel the overall quality of PFS scenarios has grown a lot.

Maybe they cost much more to produce too. I feel the overall quality of PFS scenarios has grown a lot.

The overall quality of scenarios has definitely gone up since the early days of 1st edition PFS. They're also using more original art since those days.