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If this has already been explained in detail please point me to the right thread as I could not find it searching the forums.
Random thought that struck me and now it won't leave my head. I am honestly quite curious as to the reasons why we used to get SO many soft cover books in the 1e compared to none except AP's and a few one off Adventures in 2e.
Looking at hardcovers the rate is about the same with some variation across editions, a bit more during 3.5 and less for AD&D 1e.
PF1e had about 200/250 official softcover "splat" books not counting the 100+ AP's and one off adventures. Even AD&D 2e with all its Complete & Compendium softcovers can't compete with that. Was it just too much and it had to be reined in maybe?
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Pretty much, yes.
They’ve said that the overall word count being published each year has increased, but that making 6-8 hardcovers a year instead of all the softcovers made more sense for them, stores, and ultimately consumers.
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My best guess (not being part of the marketing or publication department, or even any employee of Paizo) is that softcover doesn't sell well. If a customer wants the physical copy, then they probably want a hardcover. If they want a low-cost alternative, they get the .pdf and read it on their computer/smart phone/kindle.
.pdf has two advantages to a publisher - one, there is no up-front printing costs; two, there is no warehouse storage costs.
Creative Director
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Several reasons.
Wall of text spoiler...
Hardcover books last longer and are more durable and resistant to the rigors of play and reference.
While the pagecount (depending on the year) may not be
By doing fewer books we can put more marketing push into the ones we publish and it's easier for us to present books as spectacles that have a unique spin or take on a subject; that's a LOT harder to do if we're doing 10 64 page books a year. It also prevents us from running through the topics at such a breakneck pace, and encourages and compels us to make sure each of our books avoids the potential perception of it being a "filler" book between some higher-profile topics.
It's easier on the staff. For example, in the Lost Omens line, in the 1E days we normally did 10 64 page campaign setting books a year, for a total of 640 pages. In the 2E days, the Lost Omens line does fewer books, but they're bigger, so the page count can come close in some years or in others even exceed what we did in the previous edition. While we don't necessarily save time in the writing, editing, and developing side of things here, we do save time in other areas. It's easier to market, contract, and ship 3 books than 10 books, for example.
The economics of reprinting a softcover book are awful, so we almost never do that. So if a softcover book goes out of print, it's out of print. A hardcover book is less economically problematic to reprint. BUT THAT SAID...
...Distributors and bookstores and the like are more robust in their orders of hardcovers, so we are able to print larger print runs so the threat of going out of print is less.
Hardcovers are easier to stock on shelves, which makes them more attractive for stores to purchase.
It's also a lot easier for a store to keep up with, say, 3 big releases a year than 10 small ones, even if the pagecount is about the same. Stores who balk at ordering viable amounts of product when it comes out semi-monthly at 64 pages at a time will not balk at ordering 3 books in that same amount of time that are bigger and easier to display.
Books are expensive to produce, and for decades, RPG books in particular have been sold at far less cost than they should be sold for. By publishing more hardcovers, we save money on our printing costs because we're not publishing as many books, and since hardcovers are percieved as more valuable and durable, we can charge more.
A lot of the above boils down to economics—publishing fewer books but making them hardcovers is more profitable than publishing a lot of softcovers.
And a lot of the above also boils down to creative satisfaction—publishing fewer books but making them bigger lets the team spend more time on each book and lets us get more excited and passionate about more of the projects, since each one can be special and unique.
All that said, when you see a company like Paizo make changes like this and then stick with the changes, that's an excellent sign that the change was made to improve the health of the company—both from an economic standpoint and an employee satisfaction standpoint.