Too many books in August?


Lost Omens Campaign Setting General Discussion

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IconoclasticScream wrote:

When I do "Wait to ship together" for those three items the combined shipping is a little less than nine dollars. Priority USPS is $14.60, and two-day UPS jumps up to $37.31.

Where do you live?

I live In Quebec, Canada, near Montreal...

And concerning Amazon shipping delay, I'm quite satisfy ... My last two purchase (DnD4 core rules book and Dark heresy inquisitor handbook) took less than 3 days after the release dates to be delivered to my home (even with free shipping)... I can hardly complain if I compare it to the 2-3 weeks shipping delay of Paizo...
But I guess I will still purchase as usual the pathfinder path and modules in PDF format because even if I don't mind printing adventures on my laserjet printer, a 400 pages rulebook and a campaign setting is out of question (not cost effective and not practical)...


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber
SirUrza wrote:
IconoclasticScream wrote:
etrigan wrote:

Yes.. but for unknown reason, they charge me the 12$ for each book when I try to order them.. This is why I decide to pre-order on Amazon... And on Amazon, you have about 25% reduce cost for pre-order books...

I'm not trying to sell Amazon to anyone here, but if people need others option, it's a pretty good one...
Have you let Cosmo or someone else know about that? Because that just can't be right. Unless you live off-planet or something.

No it's right. Amazon sells everything 25-38% less then retail cost. The difference between ordering from Amazon and ordering from Paizo is..

1) You get the pdfs for free.
2) You get the products sooner (I assume Paizo ships their books to customers the same time they ship their books to distributors.)
3) Paizo makes more money off the direct sale.

3b) Ensure that Paizo can continue to provide us the quality products they are known for.

Scarab Sages

I agree that buying directly from paizo has its benefits.

I just won't buy anything else hobby related in August. $91 is already past the budget.

Dark Archive

August is a tough month in terms of managing my gaming budget vs. other expenses. That said, I can afford it and I am looking at $98 for August and not counting the Beta (which I assume will come out later this month and that I have preordered). All that said, Erik, James, Lisa, and everyone else at Paizo have made it clear that August was an aberration because of the need to get everything caught up and on schedule as well as producing several key products for Gen Con. So having the first $100 month since I subscribed is something I can live with. I will also point out that I am a superscriber and even in the months where 2 products shipped together, I have never had a month of more than $50 or so before this month. So I think the statement that August is an aberration is an accurate one. Certainly I can't wait to get that 1000 pages of awesome into my grubby hands here in the next week or so. It will give me lots of reading material between the end of my summer classes and the start of the fall semester.

I empathize with those who are having a hard time pulling the money together for the big load in August, but I do think this is the exception and not the rule. After this I suspect things will get onto a more or less steady track each month.


Elorebaen wrote:
3b) Ensure that Paizo can continue to provide us the quality products they are known for.

I'm not sure I understand why buying from Amazon with free shipping as anything to do with providing less money in the pockets of Paizo...

Are you implying that Paizo make money on the shipping and handling cost? If it's not the case, the 25% save from Pre-Order on Amazon is probably the same as the one you could get from a Paizo subscription... The only difference is I don't need to pay 26$ of shipping fees for a 90$ purchase...

Dark Archive

I'm confused why Amazon can get away with selling books at such a discount but Paizo (the manufacturer) can't. Sad too because I studied business and all...I would say it has to do with buying in bulk but really isn't Paizo doing that when they produce them and have em sent over to their own warehouse?

This isn't leveled at Paizo in particular, but in general I've always wondered that heh.

And yeah I feel for ya guys. I decided not to subscribe to Companion yet because I didn't wanna get dinged that hard on shipping fees. I'll prolly order it when I go home to visit next month. (And yeah Paizo is doing a great job subsidizing the shipping, I'm just cheap and don't mind taking the book on the plane with me ;p)


Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber; Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories, Starfinder Society Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber
Aarontendo wrote:
I'm confused why Amazon can get away with selling books at such a discount but Paizo (the manufacturer) can't.

This has confused me as well. I regularly see Amazon selling items such as this at significantly lower prices than anyone else.

Dark Archive

Kata. the ..... wrote:
Aarontendo wrote:
I'm confused why Amazon can get away with selling books at such a discount but Paizo (the manufacturer) can't.
This has confused me as well. I regularly see Amazon selling items such as this at significantly lower prices than anyone else.

Some of it is bulk. Some of it is the sheer amount of sales they make. If you are selling 10,000,000 million books per month then you can afford to discount all your books a little bit more than a company selling 10,000 books per month. Consider, if Amazon sells all their books at .50 less than anyone else sells the same books, but sells 7 times as many then they still make far more profit than the other companies do. It's a pure numbers game. Amazon is MASSIVE. They sell books, music, and DVD's in all genre's. They can even afford to LOSE money on certain products as a way of drawing in business. For a small company like Paizo that isn't an option. Even then the prices aren't that different. Consider that getting a Pathfinder AP volume from Paizo costs 13.99 with a subscription and from Amazon costs $13.49 for a whopping difference of fifty cents per book. So Paizo is offering a price almost identical to Amazon for their subscribers despite not selling anywhere near even a fraction of the total volume that Amazon sells. I think the value they are getting us for the size of company that they are is phenominal.

Amazon can afford to sell some books at or below cost on the idea that the person buying that book also will spend money on other products that aren't anywhere near as discounted. Amazone makes their money on the high volume sales that aren't discounted below cost and uses their lower volume items just to draw in business. Pathfinder even at Amazone just doesn't sell as many issues as say the latest John Grisham novel. But if I go to Amazon to get my Pathfinder issue, I am more likely to buy that Grisham novel while I am there and that is how Amazon is getting the money back on that Pathfinder issue they aren't selling that many of comparatively anyway (compared to say the latest Harry Potter book or whatever). Essentially selling some products cheaper than cost is the "tax" Amazon pays to increase the probability that a person buying a low volume item will come back and buy something else that isn't low volume.


A big part of it is 'playing nice with the FLGS'. You'll notice that Paizo discounts almost everything they are carrying below list price with the exception of their own products. Take a look at other publishers and you'll see the same thing. Everyone is discounting every one elses products but not their own.

Essentially the current paradigm is that you can't heavily discount your own product because your undercutting the FLGS' which makes them unhappy (and could easily cause them to refuse to carry your product on principle) but their are no such unstated rules regarding everyone elses product.

This is true book industry wide - If you order a book from John WIly & Sons Ltd. their books on their web site are listed at retail, same with Random House etc. etc. The retailers can do what they want with the margin (including cutting it) but the manufacture of a product can't undercut the retailers without alienating them.

Amazon in particular cuts back heavily on the margin because of their volume and because they have a very low overhead. Of course the whole thing is pretty unstable, Flags and other brick and mortar bookstores are going out of business at a very high rate. There may come a time when its not worth it to sell ones own product at list just to stay on the shelves of a declining number of FLGS. The main reason to stay with this policy is the belief that the FLGS essentially provide a focal point and those on their shelves receive some kind of competitive advantage versus those that are not on the shelves of the FLGS. Should it get to the point where its no longer seen as worth it to even bother with the FLGS we could easily see a significant shift in how the industry works especially considering how strained the traditional distribution model already is.

Paizo Employee Creative Director

Aarontendo wrote:
I'm confused why Amazon can get away with selling books at such a discount but Paizo (the manufacturer) can't. Sad too because I studied business and all...I would say it has to do with buying in bulk but really isn't Paizo doing that when they produce them and have em sent over to their own warehouse?

It has to do with fair play.

We COULD discount our books down to a few pennies over the cost of goods, certainly, but then we're undercutting ALL of the stores and distributors and vendors. And their response would (rightly) be, "Fine, you think you can sell all your books on your own, you don't need us!" and then presto. No Pathfinder in stores, Amazon.com, or ANYwhere but at paizo.com.

The MSRP is in there as a way for the retailer to make money over what he has to pay to buy it from the distributor or publisher, in other words. And us not discounting our own products (with the exception of Pathfinder subscriptions) is basically a way to reward the retailer for the VERY IMPORTANT role of expanding the presence of a product in the marketplace.

Dark Archive

Ah k got it =) I always wondered why Amazon got away with discounting from the MSRP's. Just assumed it was cause they're the big gorilla and what-not.

Scarab Sages RPG Superstar 2009 Top 32

Dragnmoon wrote:
Anything shipped through Paizo takes 4-8 weeks..

Where do you live?

I live in Australia and the longest I have ever had to wait was 3 weeks.
Every other order has pretty much arrived within a day or 2 either side of 2 weeks.

Dark Archive

flash_cxxi wrote:
Dragnmoon wrote:
Anything shipped through Paizo takes 4-8 weeks..

Where do you live?

I live in Australia and the longest I have ever had to wait was 3 weeks.
Every other order has pretty much arrived within a day or 2 either side of 2 weeks.

In my experience, things take more than 2 weeks if the post office missends the shipment to a different country. For example, I live in the Philippines and I notice that late shipments were erroneously sent to Canada.

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber; Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber
flash_cxxi wrote:
Dragnmoon wrote:
Anything shipped through Paizo takes 4-8 weeks..

Where do you live?

I live in Australia and the longest I have ever had to wait was 3 weeks.
Every other order has pretty much arrived within a day or 2 either side of 2 weeks.

Part of the problem is this... The postal service does not have it for the majority of the trip to me.. Once the Package leave Paizo, it heads to NY to a Military post that picks it up and sends it to me.. For some reason, all my Paizo products as soon as it hits the miltary takes weeks to get to me.. But only my subscription shipments.. I usually don't get my subscriptions until 1-2 weeks after the next month shipment has already been sent.. But anyhting I order outside my subscription only take a week or 2 to get to me.. still have not figured this out.

Sovereign Court

Mine Says:

42.49 = Pathfinder Chronicles: Campaign Setting (OGL) Hardcover
12.74 = Pathfinder Chronicles: Curse of the Crimson Throne Map Folio
13.99 = Pathfinder #12—Curse of the Crimson Throne Chapter 6
13.99 = Pathfinder #13—Second Darkness Chapter 1
00.00 = Pathfinder Companion: Second Darkness

83.21 = subtotal

25.44 = shipping
-1.96 = shipping discount

106.69 = total

Now I'm waiting for;
41.97 = PFRPG:Beta, including shipping, expected August.
38.39 = PF minis pre-order (Merisiel+2ogres) including shipping. due?

187.05 = potential August blow-out total!


Heh - getting all that stuff in one month would be like Christmas to me. I'd love it!

But etrigan is right - I'm also in Canada, and I stick with getting the Pathfinder mods from Amazon.ca. I'm just not willing to spend the unreasonably exorbitant shipping costs to Canada (we're on the same continent for pete's sake!) when I can get free shipping. The USPS sucks.

I avoid paying for anything that's not value-added, and shipping (especially from the US) is one of them.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

Uzzy wrote:
I'm also confused as to why I'm paying more for one less item then Zaister.

Uzzy,

I've looked into it. For some subscribers, this month's shipment weighs in over the 4-pound limit for international standard shipping, which would mean subscriptions would have to go Priority Mail, which is more expensive.

Gary wrote some new code to break down overweight shipments into multiple packages when it makes sense to do so. That code correctly broke down Zaister's order, but it *didn't* break down yours, and it should have. We're looking into it; once we figure it out, we'll make adjustments to your order (and to those of everyone else in that situation) that will likely decrease your shipping cost a bit.


Jeremy Mac Donald wrote:

A big part of it is 'playing nice with the FLGS'. You'll notice that Paizo discounts almost everything they are carrying below list price with the exception of their own products. Take a look at other publishers and you'll see the same thing. Everyone is discounting every one elses products but not their own.

Essentially the current paradigm is that you can't heavily discount your own product because your undercutting the FLGS' which makes them unhappy (and could easily cause them to refuse to carry your product on principle) but their are no such unstated rules regarding everyone elses product.

I'm not sure why FLGSs would be happy with Paizo selling a product to Amazon for $30 so that Amazon can sell it for $32, yet they would be unhappy if Paizo sold the same product for $32. But maybe FLGS owners have a different way of looking at things than I do.

Arnwyn wrote:
But etrigan is right - I'm also in Canada, and I stick with getting the Pathfinder mods from Amazon.ca. I'm just not willing to spend the unreasonably exorbitant shipping costs to Canada (we're on the same continent for pete's sake!) when I can get free shipping.

Ditto.

Paizo Employee Chief Technical Officer

hogarth wrote:
I'm not sure why FLGSs would be happy with Paizo selling a product to Amazon for $30 so that Amazon can sell it for $32, yet they would be unhappy if Paizo sold the same product for $32. But maybe FLGS owners have a different way of looking at things than I do.

Many FLGS owners are *very* unhappy about Amazon undercutting them. But there are a couple of reasons why they can't blame *us* for it. First, we don't actually sell to Amazon—we sell to a distributor who sells to Amazon. And second, we sell to distribution at a consistent price, regardless of where that product is heading. (So Amazon probably isn't paying less than the FLGS for the book—they're just choosing to make a smaller margin.)

Essentially, what's important to the FLGS is that we provide a level playing field, and that's exactly what we do.

Liberty's Edge

Pathfinder Battles Case Subscriber; Pathfinder Maps, Pathfinder Accessories Subscriber; Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Charter Superscriber; Starfinder Charter Superscriber
Vic Wertz wrote:


Many FLGS owners are *very* unhappy about Amazon undercutting them. But there are a couple of reasons why they can't blame *us* for it.

I am not a FLGS... But can I blame you guys for all my other problems?...;-)


Vic Wertz wrote:
hogarth wrote:
I'm not sure why FLGSs would be happy with Paizo selling a product to Amazon for $30 so that Amazon can sell it for $32, yet they would be unhappy if Paizo sold the same product for $32. But maybe FLGS owners have a different way of looking at things than I do.
Many FLGS owners are *very* unhappy about Amazon undercutting them. But there are a couple of reasons why they can't blame *us* for it.

My point was that I don't see how having to compete with Amazon + Paizo selling books below "cover price" would be any worse than having to compete with just Amazon selling books below "cover price". But I'm not a game store owner.

RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32

hogarth wrote:
Vic Wertz wrote:
hogarth wrote:
I'm not sure why FLGSs would be happy with Paizo selling a product to Amazon for $30 so that Amazon can sell it for $32, yet they would be unhappy if Paizo sold the same product for $32. But maybe FLGS owners have a different way of looking at things than I do.
Many FLGS owners are *very* unhappy about Amazon undercutting them. But there are a couple of reasons why they can't blame *us* for it.
My point was that I don't see how having to compete with Amazon + Paizo selling books below "cover price" would be any worse than having to compete with just Amazon selling books below "cover price". But I'm not a game store owner.

Simple. A game store owner who is mad at Amazon can steam all he wantsm but he can't do anything about it. A game store owner who is mad at Paizo can stop carrying Paizo products. To Paizo, that's a big difference.


Ross Byers wrote:

Simple. A game store owner who is mad at Amazon can steam all he wantsm but he can't do anything about it. A game store owner who is mad at Paizo can stop carrying Paizo products. To Paizo, that's a big difference.

Ah...now I understand my confusion. If I were a business owner, I'd stock products based on how profitable I thought they would be, not based on how lovable the manufacturer is. ;-)

Sovereign Court

Vic Wertz wrote:
Uzzy wrote:
I'm also confused as to why I'm paying more for one less item then Zaister.

Uzzy,

I've looked into it. For some subscribers, this month's shipment weighs in over the 4-pound limit for international standard shipping, which would mean subscriptions would have to go Priority Mail, which is more expensive.

Gary wrote some new code to break down overweight shipments into multiple packages when it makes sense to do so. That code correctly broke down Zaister's order, but it *didn't* break down yours, and it should have. We're looking into it; once we figure it out, we'll make adjustments to your order (and to those of everyone else in that situation) that will likely decrease your shipping cost a bit.

Many thanks Vic. :)


Well I was slightly amazed to see the charge on the bank report for today, since I know none of the books will be shipped for awhile, and since I was caught off guard I'm poor as alabama mud for 2 weeks but anyways I have to support pathfinder no matter what I mean A: I want the stuff anyway, like now. B: Paizo is now in my universe the only game in town as far as DnD goes, so I HAVE to support them.

Scarab Sages

aylengyr wrote:
Well I was slightly amazed to see the charge on the bank report for today, since I know none of the books will be shipped for awhile, and since I was caught off guard I'm poor as alabama mud for 2 weeks but anyways I have to support pathfinder no matter what I mean A: I want the stuff anyway, like now. B: Paizo is now in my universe the only game in town as far as DnD goes, so I HAVE to support them.

Won't that just be the test charge to make sure they can put the payment through ok? I don't think you should get an actual charge until the products actually ship... though admittedly that could happen at the beginning of this week *glee*

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