Introducing New Paizo Subscriptions!

If Pocket Edition were at the same time as normal I might convert to Pocket only honestly.

Huzzah!

But none for PDF version subscriptions... sigh

But none for PDF version subscriptions... sigh

that would be very good

FarmerDad wrote:

But none for PDF version subscriptions... sigh

that would be very good

I agree.

Seriously, just two weeks ago I cancelled my Starfinder Subscription and Preordered the Special Edition of the Galaxy Guide for exactly this reason. I wanted the classier looking covers where everything thematically matches.

Great to see that I can re-sub and just get what I wanted in the first place.

Mouchi wrote:

FarmerDad wrote:

But none for PDF version subscriptions... sigh

that would be very good

I agree.

Ditto

If Pocket Edition were at the same time as normal I might convert to Pocket only honestly.

I imagine if it becomes a popular enough sub, they might.

That said, I always like that they're delayed, because theoretically they'll mean you'll always get second printing, so biggest errata pass will be in your book.

Nicolas Paradise wrote:

If Pocket Edition were at the same time as normal I might convert to Pocket only honestly.

I imagine if it becomes a popular enough sub, they might.

That said, I always like that they're delayed, because theoretically they'll mean you'll always get second printing, so biggest errata pass will be in your book.

It's 3-4 months, not enough time for an errata pass. The pocket editions are already at the printer when the normal versions are shipping.

With the incoming tariffs, I'm going to struggle to keep my AP subscription going which is the only one I have right now.

The pocket edition sub would be so good though, maybe someday.

Anotherlostcause wrote:

Mouchi wrote:

FarmerDad wrote:

But none for PDF version subscriptions... sigh

that would be very good

I agree.

Ditto

I would jump on this in a heartbeat for both Pathfinder and Starfinder. I started buying the books on Demiplane cause it was the same cost as the books I don’t need and gives me the PDF, but if we got an appropriate price rate for the PDF, I’d be thrilled.

Anotherlostcause wrote:

Mouchi wrote:

FarmerDad wrote:

But none for PDF version subscriptions... sigh

that would be very good

I agree.

Ditto

Oh I'd love a PDF sub, I've wanted one for years (as I'm sure many of us have!) I got very excited when I saw "three new subscriptions" and then my heart sank again

But none for PDF version subscriptions... sigh

Somebody asks this around every subscription change, understandably. But Paizo does have good reasons for doing it this way.

First, why have a subscription at all?: Printing and shipping books is expensive. The more you can print, the lower the cost-per-book, but the total is still only going to go up. The unsold books also have to be stored. The thing Paizo needs to know, more than anything, is how many books are going to be sold. Print too few, and you're just leaving money on the table while giving a bad experience. Print too many, and you're throwing money away in extra book costs, valuable warehouse space taken up, etc. Having a subscription goes a long way to solving that problem- not only does it give them some mostly locked-in orders, but they can probably also gauge overall demand by how many people sign up or drop off.

Why does the subscription work the way it does?: There are a few reasons. One is that there does need to be an incentive to subscribing, and that's getting the PDF alongside the hard copy. Otherwise it's cheaper to get it from a local store (which gets its shipping costs spread across several books) or from Amazon (which is still doing shady competition-crushing monopoly building and eating losses for tax write-offs). The PDF goes out when the book ships, which is also when the card is charged, for lots of payment card industry reasons. The early book isn't a promised perk (or even one advertised by Paizo themselves); sometimes it isn't early.

Why no PDF subscription?: First off, there isn't a need for one. From Paizo's side, the consequences for underestimating the popularity of a PDF are... nothing. The consequences for overestimating the popularity are still real, but much smaller in scale than for physical books. From the customer's side, there's no benefit either. Why subscribe when you can buy the PDF instantly? You can "subscribe" by signing up for email alerts for new books, or following their twitter. Secondly, if it had a "get the PDF early incentive", it would cause problems. Sending the PDF when the physical copy ships is something of a side effect. You can still go to your local game store and get a hard copy without the shipping cost tacked on, but if Paizo started selling PDFs earlier for less, local game stores would start dropping Paizo's material because of their practices would cut into sales. It would also tank Paizo's direct physical copy sales, and the less they sell, the more each one has to cost, creating a feedback loop that crushes their ability to print physical copies.

Why does Paizo care about physical copies anyway?: A lot of people like physical copies, so it's good for business to provide for them. It's probably really handy to have versions of the material that can't be pirated practically, and that's doubly true when you're also giving the rules away for free. Plus, shelf space at local game stores is good for bringing in new people. Very few people randomly stumble on Paizo's website, and fewer end up navigating through the digital store. Game stores having the game, and equally important, providing a space to learn and play the game, does a lot for keeping the game alive and growing. (And that's only the self-interested reasons.)

Back in the old days when it was not completely nonsensical (shipping to he EU got real expensive and the local taxation setup changed), I liked having subscriptions, but these days getting the physical book at all might be a downside.

The BIG advantage for the user of having a pdf subscription would be to have all the cart/payment clicking done automatically and without risk of human error.

An advantage for Paizo is that they would have pretty fixed sales which greatly helps financial forecasts.

The idea that getting pdf early would cut into the sales of books is nonsensical. They are not the same products at all.

I'd be happy with PDF subscriptions that process on the release date and has no discount below the normal retail price just for the convenience factor of purchase.
Given international shipping rates, I'm not going to be getting more physical books than I already am regardless of whether there's a subscription or not.

Is Starfinder possibly starting a pocket edition subscription in time for the new books or at least the Player Core? If so, that makes my decision for Starfinder easier. My thoughts were leaning towards doing the normal Starfinder subscription just for the Core three as a taste if anything, but a pocket edition sub would be easier to justify for more.

The idea that getting pdf early would cut into the sales of books is nonsensical. They are not the same products at all.

Paizo reps have responded to this point at length in the past, as QuidEst said. Just because you don't have all the information, or don't accept it, doesn't make it nonsensical.

I'd love to see PDF subscriptions. It would guarantee more purchases from me (and maybe others). I sometimes miss releases or pick and choose more than I would if I subscribed. For Paizo PDF subscriptions would allow them to see a guaranteed revenue stream.

I'd love to see PDF subscriptions. It would guarantee more purchases from me (and maybe others). I sometimes miss releases or pick and choose more than I would if I subscribed. For Paizo PDF subscriptions would allow them to see a guaranteed revenue stream.

Same. I genuinely forgot Rival Academies released recently. I'll try to remember to get it with my next batch of PDFs I guess.

Given the tariff roulette, I would really prefer Paizo lean onto their digital offerings anyways, including offering more digital subscriptions. I like the company, I like their products. Give me a more frictionless way to give you money, Paizo! One that doesn't depend on me remembering to do things.

Hopefully the new webpage they're creating will offer something along these lines, or something near enough.

The Raven Black wrote:

The idea that getting pdf early would cut into the sales of books is nonsensical. They are not the same products at all.

Paizo reps have responded to this point at length in the past, as QuidEst said. Just because you don't have all the information, or don't accept it, doesn't make it nonsensical.

IIRC the canon answer came from Vic Wertz like 12 or 14 years ago.

What made a lot of sense then might not make much anymore.

Also I very much would like to get an actual counterpoint so that I can understand it better.

VestOfHolding wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

The idea that getting pdf early would cut into the sales of books is nonsensical. They are not the same products at all.

Paizo reps have responded to this point at length in the past, as QuidEst said. Just because you don't have all the information, or don't accept it, doesn't make it nonsensical.

IIRC the canon answer came from Vic Wertz like 12 or 14 years ago.

What made a lot of sense then might not make much anymore.

Also I very much would like to get an actual counterpoint so that I can understand it better.

More like 16 years actually.

After some research, I found this post from 2009 quoting from an older post that seems to have since disappeared :

Samuel Weiss wrote:

And toss in all of the comments about why Paizo does not have a PDF-only subscription in on top of it.
So which is it?
Do lower priced PDFs have a significant impact on sales or not?
Or do they just threaten Paizo's direct sales and subscriptions while somehow benefiting actual stores?

Indeed. From the "Give me a PDF subscription" thread:

"As for a PDF only subscription, I'll look into it but since Paizo's primarily a print company (call us old-fashioned or stubborn or whatever), there are various reasons we haven't done a PDF subscription yet. Playing nice with friendly local game stores and our distributors is one of the biggest reasons, though." -- James Jacobs

"The simple fact of the matter is that the more subscribers to the hard copy Pathfinder we have, the more we can afford to print, thus lowering the per-unit cost per book." -- Erik Mona

"I suspect for one that a PDF only subscription would have to cost the same as a Print + PDF subscription, and I'm not sure people would appreciate or understand that." -- James Jacobs

"However, every time this topic comes up, we hear from people who say that if we offered a PDF-only subscription, they would drop their print subscription. There are a few such posts in this very thread." -- Vic Wertz

All of those replies make the implication that "one PDF sale = one lost hard copy sale". So why is it suddenly ridiculous when somebody else makes that suggestion?

(FWIW, I don't believe it's true.)

Though I also found the following in another 2009 post

As a whole, Paizo doesn't believe that PDF sales significantly harm sales of printed books.

Still all of this does not reflect the current, and even less future, reality.

VestOfHolding wrote:

The Raven Black wrote:

The idea that getting pdf early would cut into the sales of books is nonsensical. They are not the same products at all.

Paizo reps have responded to this point at length in the past, as QuidEst said. Just because you don't have all the information, or don't accept it, doesn't make it nonsensical.

IIRC the canon answer came from Vic Wertz like 12 or 14 years ago.

What made a lot of sense then might not make much anymore.

Also I very much would like to get an actual counterpoint so that I can understand it better.

The original answer came in 2009, sure, but it gets answered again every time the subject of PDF subscriptions come up. That is still the official answer from Paizo.

Which doesn’t mean it has to make sense to others, or even be “right”.

Mosty, Quid Est’s points seem valid. Especially the bit about a reminder being about as useful as a subscription - though Raven’s reply about making it easier (or frictionless!) would be welcome.

I do take exception to Quid’s point about the unlikelihood of someone stumbling across the website. Digital natives can both stumble here, or find it with a search engine (or via “social” media) incredibly easily, and in some ways way more likely than, like, totes going, like, outside IRL. Ehrmagherd.

I do take exception to Quid’s point about the unlikelihood of someone stumbling across the website. Digital natives can both stumble here, or find it with a search engine (or via “social” media) incredibly easily, and in some ways way more likely than, like, totes going, like, outside IRL. Ehrmagherd.

More a comparison of how many people get there while not looking for it. I could be wrong about it, of course. A search for "D&D" isn't going to pop up Paizo's site for a long time, but somebody stopping by their local game store to pick up a copy of D&D will probably see Pathfinder on the shelves. Somebody buying some Pokémon cards might see a PFS game going on. I'm probably discounting how many people end up in the game because they searched up "best TTRPGs" and got linked by a listicle, sure, but I do think that the presence in stores is also a big part of brand new folks buying into the game.

It does sound like Paizo is working to reduce the friction of "people who end up on the site" becoming "people who buy a thing from the site".

The biggest thing about the argument is that while in the long term PDFs do not hurt physical book sales, getting the PDF early would disincentivize brick and mortar stores from stocking Paizo books. There are already game stores that take umbrage to the current subscription process. Whether it actually hurts them or not tends to not matter to business owners who feel threatened.

And if you're not getting the PDF early at all, there are going to be people that complain when physical subscribers start getting their PDFs 2 weeks before them, even though thats not actually one of the stated benefits of the subs.

Is Starfinder possibly starting a pocket edition subscription in time for the new books or at least the Player Core? If so, that makes my decision for Starfinder easier. My thoughts were leaning towards doing the normal Starfinder subscription just for the Core three as a taste if anything, but a pocket edition sub would be easier to justify for more.

Seconded, I would love to be able to subscribe to the Starfinder pocket editions.

In theory, a PDF subscription would mean more brick and mortar sales as people like me could fill in our collection locally, but it's hard to show that to both Paizo and store owners convincingly.

The biggest thing about the argument is that while in the long term PDFs do not hurt physical book sales, getting the PDF early would disincentivize brick and mortar stores from stocking Paizo books. There are already game stores that take umbrage to the current subscription process. Whether it actually hurts them or not tends to not matter to business owners who feel threatened.

And if you're not getting the PDF early at all, there are going to be people that complain when physical subscribers start getting their PDFs 2 weeks before them, even though thats not actually one of the stated benefits of the subs.

I mean, the answer is the same that is always been. PDFs get sent when subscriptions ship. “Ship date” for a PDF is the release date. Iirc, that’s how Paizo’s current PDF subscriptions work. I see no reason for that to change if Paizo expands their PDF subscriptions to the main product lines, and you’ve outlined several good reasons for that not to change.

This is the part that I get kerfluffled over, actually. I’m not asking Paizo to venture into some untested media territory that they have no institutional knowledge of how to navigate. They’ve been doing this literally for decades now, and digital ebook subscriptions are a LOT more commonplace for consumers than they were even 5 years ago, let alone 16. (Which in turn means I’m willing to believe them when they say PDF subscriptions don’t make sense for them, however disappointing that be to me. I don’t *understand*, but I believe that they know what they’re talking about).

Further, as you’ve said, early PDFs have never been advertised as a guaranteed perk. I agree that some people will complain that they aren’t getting something they were never offered in the first place, but what can you do for someone like that besides pat their hand and say, “there, there”? They’re getting what was promised and that they paid for.

Edit: honestly, having the ship date, and thus the credit card charge date, guaranteed to be the set release date has the benefit of you’d know well in advance exactly when that charge will hit. Which could very well be important for some customers. If I could *pick* a date each month for this to process, say the 1st, and you get anything that had released between your last sub date and this month’s day (again, nothing early), that would be even better for those that this is an important consideration. That is effectively what I do, assuming I remember to actually buy the pdfs on the 1st and don’t get sidetracked like I have the last 2 months. Having the website do the remembering for me would be ideal in my case, though of course I don’t think my wants are universal, or even typical.

You say that, but every August there are people that whine that they're not getting their PDFs early. Every single one.

You say that, but every August there are people that whine that they're not getting their PDFs early. Every single one.

My sarcastic sense of humor keeps trying to assert itself as I write out a response, but bare honesty, this seems like not something worth worrying about. With or without a PDF subscription for rulebooks and LO lines, this is a complaint being made anyways. So why stress over the reactions of a group of people that provably cannot be placated?

Is the assumption is that instead of this being a once a year phenomenon, it’ll be every month that a LO or rulebook is released? Because it think it could just as easily work out the other way. Having the various PDF subscriptions, including the new ones I want, reinforce the idea that PDFs release on release day unless your physical subscription ships first, might get ahead of some of these complaints rather than feed into them.

But that’s pure speculation on my part, and admittedly appeals to me since it happens to justify what I want.

Its not just a once a year thing, but it *is* one that happens most frequently in August. It happens every time shipping slips past the release date of the book and people haven't gotten their shipping notices and therefore their PDFs. If you reinforce that PDF drops on the release date for PDF subscriptions, you are going to run into people getting upset that book subscribers are getting their PDFs sometimes a full week earlier than them. I know that you don't think that's a big deal but there will be people who make it such.

And why should we care any more than we already do ?

When I started with this game, I had subs to the pathfinder rules line and the player companion line. Now, looking at the "My Subscriptions" list in Account Settings, I have twenty subscriptions across both Pathfinder and Starfinder, some of which are defunct (Pathfinder Tales, anyone?) In most cases I have both the regular sub and the special edition sub. My original reason for that was to avoid wear and tear on the special editions. Still valid, imo, but I spend more time in the pdfs than in the hardcopies these days. I also get (so far anyway) all the pocket editions, even though these old eyes have trouble with them. Cost has not been a problem so far, but it's getting to the point that it may become one, all things considered, even though I don't have to worry about international shipping (I'm in New York State). Then there's the "where do I put it?" question. I can't use my dining room table right now; it's covered in books, and there are piles here and there in the living room. So I'm seriously considering cancelling some of my subs. Not all, certain things (maps, for instance) IMO need to be hardcopy. OTOH, I don't play much any more, and if I do I can play on Foundry, so maybe I don't need hardcopies there either. One choice is to cancel all my subs and just hit the store once a month and look for whatever's new and buy the pdf. Pretty sure Paizo would rather I not do that, but I might. Would save me money in the long run, and space too. But I like books, and that's why I haven't made that jump. Also, manually searching for what's new would be a pain in the butt, and besides, I might miss something. :-(

Ah, well, the saving grace, sort of, is that I'm old enough that there will come a time in the foreseeable future when I won't care, 'cause I'll be dead. <shrug>

One choice is to cancel all my subs and just hit the store once a month and look for whatever's new and buy the pdf. Pretty sure Paizo would rather I not do that, but I might. Would save me money in the long run, and space too. But I like books, and that's why I haven't made that jump. Also, manually searching for what's new would be a pain in the butt, and besides, I might miss something. :-(

That was the exact thought process, and pitfalls, I went through, with the added complication that I want this charge to always be on the 1st to maximize my credit card points. I used to have 6 subscriptions I think.

Is there going to be a Starfinder Pocket Sub or is this going to remain a Pathfinder only thing?