So I'm just curious - has Paizo thought at all about "non-Paizo" subscriptions?
We currently have the Pathfinder Paper Minis, which track the Adventure Paths pretty well, and soon (I'm optimistically hoping) we'll have the Pathfinder Pre-Painted Minis line from WizKids. We already have pre-painted minis from Reaper, but I don't know if those are on a consistent release schedule.
But in any case, I'm thinking it would be cool if these other publishers/manufacturers could offer subscriptions though Paizo, in the same vein as the current Paizo subscriptions.
Has that ever come up before? Because I really like the idea :)
Chief Technical Officer
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So I'm just curious - has Paizo thought at all about "non-Paizo" subscriptions?
We currently have the Pathfinder Paper Minis, which track the Adventure Paths pretty well, and soon (I'm optimistically hoping) we'll have the Pathfinder Pre-Painted Minis line from WizKids. We already have pre-painted minis from Reaper, but I don't know if those are on a consistent release schedule.
But in any case, I'm thinking it would be cool if these other publishers/manufacturers could offer subscriptions though Paizo, in the same vein as the current Paizo subscriptions.
Has that ever come up before? Because I really like the idea :)
It has come up before, and while we love the *concept*, the execution has issues... not the least of which is that we treat a subscription as a sort of contract where you know what you're getting and—more or less—when you'll get it, at least for the near future. Unfortunately, we don't have the level of insight into—or control over—anyone else's products to allow us to feel confident in offering such a thing. In fact, for many companies, our first clue that a product has been released is that it has just arrived in our warehouse. I'm confident that we'd have a *lot* of new customer service issues that would involve us taking heat for things we have zero control over, and I don't like that one bit.
Additionally, we have fine control over our own release dates, and are able to ensure that subscriber copies of products go out well before they appear in stores. We just wouldn't be able to offer that for products for other companies. We'd probably have to treat them like sidecart items, which would mean that if they arrived the day after our own subs went out, they'd wait around for about a month—and that means that your friends could be buying them at retail for that entire time. Don't forget, we usually get other company's products *on* the release date, not before. (And if you're willing to live with that, you can achieve much the same effect right now by just preordering everything from the line you're interested in and adding it to your sidecart.)
There's also the whole issue of economics. For our own products, we have control over our costs as well as our pricing, and can design subscription benefits accordingly. We also have much higher margins on our own products that on products we're buying from distribution, or on consignments from other manufacturers. So we can give you perks like discounts or free PDFs on our own products, but we may not be able to present much in the way of value for items that we don't have publisher's margins on. In many cases, all we might be able to offer would be the convenience of not having to order stuff as it's announced.
Finally, there are other issues when it comes to specific lines or product types. Take miniatures: many customers want multiple copies of some minis (goblins, for example), and since they'd need to order those separately anyway, they're not even gaining very much in the way of convenience from the subscription.
In short, we really like the notion, but actually *doing* it doesn't make a whole lot of sense.
Perhaps an "automatic order" option would be possible? It would have it's own issues, I'm sure, but it would suit me down to the ground if I could set up a standing order with you for anything from one company/product line/etcetera (essentially mapping the paizo store categories) - on the expectation you'll just stick any such item into my side cart to go out with my next subscription.
I could imagine cancellations/resubscriptions might be an issue but maybe you could charge a 1 dollar fee for canceling or some such. I wouldn't expect any discount or other perks when it related to other suppliers - it would be purely a matter of convenience since I can't track all the different product lines I'm interested in.
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So I'm just curious - has Paizo thought at all about "non-Paizo" subscriptions?
We currently have the Pathfinder Paper Minis, which track the Adventure Paths pretty well, and soon (I'm optimistically hoping) we'll have the Pathfinder Pre-Painted Minis line from WizKids. We already have pre-painted minis from Reaper, but I don't know if those are on a consistent release schedule.
But in any case, I'm thinking it would be cool if these other publishers/manufacturers could offer subscriptions though Paizo, in the same vein as the current Paizo subscriptions.
Has that ever come up before? Because I really like the idea :)
If you like the guys over at Super Genius, you can sign up for the All Genius Pass at Dungeonaday.com
For $90, you get everything they put out that year, which amounts to a $4 PDF and usually a bonus $1 PDF. At a $250 value, you could use less than half and still get your moneys worth. AND you get the subscription to Dungeonaday, a 20 level dungeon built as you watch, at one encounter a day. It's fun, it's fungible, and the designers have taken their cues from Paizo and are fairly communicative.
I've probably gotten my money's worth and it's only been three months. I can't recommend it more.
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Personally, what I would like to see is the ability to get advised when the line is updated...especially the paper minis. Then I don't have to go into the minis line every once in a while to see what new stuff has been released. Then I can choose if I want to purchase, but know I'm not missing announcements.
Edit: I am hoping for the Legacy of Fire figures soon...I am nearly though House of the Beast
I'll admit, my main rationale here is the pre-painted minis - I'm hoping that with some sort of subscription basis both Reaper's prepaints and the upcoming WizKids stuff would get a lot better foothold in the market.
But I do understand Vic's concerns; I had half expected as much as an answer. Perhaps if the other companies offered subscriptions that were served by Paizo's ordering mechanism while not actually being Paizo products it would work. Hard to say.
Perhaps some sort of customizable product update notification by category? It's not a sub in the auto pay/ship arena, but it would serve all the other needs and allow for new product awareness, preview and preordering.
You can use the RSS feeds for each category so that you will be notified of additions - they're listed at the top of the page in the store: Top Sellers, New, and Upcoming. :)
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Chief Technical Officer
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Perhaps an "automatic order" option would be possible? It would have it's own issues, I'm sure, but it would suit me down to the ground if I could set up a standing order with you for anything from one company/product line/etcetera (essentially mapping the paizo store categories) - on the expectation you'll just stick any such item into my side cart to go out with my next subscription.
Essentially, you're talking about a subscription model that—in theory—eliminates my objections regarding economics—which it does—and regarding us taking heat for publishers missing ship dates—which it would probably ameliorate slightly, but certainly wouldn't remove entirely. It also has the problem that it relies almost completely on data provided by our distributor, and that data can be flaky sometimes.
Or sometimes a product isn't *really* new—it's just been out of print for a while. You probably wouldn't want it, but our system would (in some circumstances) assume you would. Or sometimes there's a new edition of something; if the publisher has given it a new product code, we count it as a new product, but if the publisher has reused the old code, it wouldn't trip the "new" flag. (And in either case, we might not be doing what you want.)
Or, in the case of a publisher that we carry in print and PDF, we'd count that as two new products—the print edition would show up as soon as it's announced to distributors, and the PDF would show up as soon as the publisher releases it. Maybe you want them both, but maybe you don't.
I think it's a much more viable idea than the standard notion of subscriptions, but it's still not without problems and complexity, and would still increase the amount of issues that our customer service team has to deal with.
Perhaps an "automatic order" option would be possible? It would have it's own issues, I'm sure, but it would suit me down to the ground if I could set up a standing order with you for anything from one company/product line/etcetera (essentially mapping the paizo store categories) - on the expectation you'll just stick any such item into my side cart to go out with my next subscription.Essentially, you're talking about a subscription model that—in theory—eliminates my objections regarding economics—which it does—and regarding us taking heat for publishers missing ship dates—which it would probably ameliorate slightly, but certainly wouldn't remove entirely. It also has the problem that it relies almost completely on data provided by our distributor, and that data can be flaky sometimes.
Or sometimes a product isn't *really* new—it's just been out of print for a while. You probably wouldn't want it, but our system would (in some circumstances) assume you would. Or sometimes there's a new edition of something; if the publisher has given it a new product code, we count it as a new product, but if the publisher has reused the old code, it wouldn't trip the "new" flag. (And in either case, we might not be doing what you want.)
Or, in the case of a publisher that we carry in print and PDF, we'd count that as two new products—the print edition would show up as soon as it's announced to distributors, and the PDF would show up as soon as the publisher releases it. Maybe you want them both, but maybe you don't.
I think it's a much more viable idea than the standard notion of subscriptions, but it's still not without problems and complexity, and would still increase the amount of issues that our customer service team has to deal with.
Yeah, I can't really see a way for it to work for you. The PDF / reprint issues were not something I'd thought of. The flaky distributor data would be less of an issue as I see it - I'd essentially just expect a copy once it was "available" on your website. I wouldn't be expecting forewarning, nor scheduling information.
It's probably all too hard (especially given how few people would be likely to use the service). Nonetheless, you're clever folk so I figured it can't hurt to tell you what would make my rpg life even easier. :)
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Chief Technical Officer
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The flaky distributor data would be less of an issue as I see it - I'd essentially just expect a copy once it was "available" on your website.
We wouldn't want to count on the shift between "not available" and "available" as the trigger to order an item for you, as that sort of thing happens at times other than the initial release (and the distinction between "preorder" and "not available" is one of those things that our distributor doesn't always do correctly, so relying on that would be bad). The only way our system would even *possibly* be able to do it is if it's the distinction between "not existing" and "existing" that triggers the order. Which would mean that the order would be created when the product is announced, and it would sit in your sidecart until it gets released. And then all those prior problems apply.
My suggestion is just to follow the RSS feed for New Releases for the section of the store you're interested in, but realize that it isn't perfect, so sometimes stuff shows up there that isn't really new.
The flaky distributor data would be less of an issue as I see it - I'd essentially just expect a copy once it was "available" on your website.We wouldn't want to count on the shift between "not available" and "available" as the trigger to order an item for you, as that sort of thing happens at times other than the initial release (and the distinction between "preorder" and "not available" is one of those things that our distributor doesn't always do correctly, so relying on that would be bad). The only way our system would even *possibly* be able to do it is if it's the distinction between "not existing" and "existing" that triggers the order. Which would mean that the order would be created when the product is announced, and it would sit in your sidecart until it gets released. And then all those prior problems apply.
My suggestion is just to follow the RSS feed for New Releases for the section of the store you're interested in, but realize that it isn't perfect, so sometimes stuff shows up there that isn't really new.
Cheers. I have another avenue for watching those products (my local store are pretty clear about what to put aside for me on spec) I was just looking for a way to automate it some more.