I've been trying to read up on Golarion for the contest and find myself puzzled by the pricing of various PDFs. I happily paid my $10 for the Inner Sea Guide, but then the Faction Guide cost $14, and was a fraction of the size. This needs some 'splaining.
The "core" book PDFs* are intentionally given a low price point to get people in the game. All other Paizo PDFs are priced at a percentage of the print copy version, which I don't remember off hand but can be easily worked out (by someone better at math than me, anyway).
In short, the $9.99 PDFs are the exception, and not the rule. Before the RPG line, all the PDFs followed the formula of being only a few dollars cheaper than the print editions.
So, people who want to get more into the game pay higher prices for less product than casual players? Still doesn't make sense.
All of the hardcover rulebook PDFs are $9.99, which is considerably less (as you noted) than our normal PDF pricing. The low price print makes it more accessible for people taking a first glance at the rules (and the world, in the case of the Inner Sea World Guide), hence the price difference.
I hope you also took a look at the fan-run Pathfinder Wiki as an additional free resource for your entry!
Think of it as the core books being "on sale." As I said, when the $9.99 price point was introduced for the rulebooks, people were amazed by how cheap they were. You've just come in too late to be impressed by the savings. ;)
For comparison, look at the old campaign setting book that the Inner Sea World Guide replaced. Its PDF version was (and is) $34.99 for the similarly-priced and -sized print version.
Well, still feels like a 'nerd tax' when the only way to access more in-depth Golarion info is to pay more and get less.
Here's Vic Wertz on PDF pricing. (The percentage I was looking for was 70%).
RPG Superstar 2014 Top 16, RPG Superstar 2012 Top 16
|
And again, like Joana mentioned, most of us here were buying the PDFs before the release of the core rulebooks or the inner sea world guide so we see it as "WOW, Great price!" Where as you newly arrived have decided to see it as a "nerd tax."
That's your choice but would you really have rather paid 70% of the hard cover price for the Inner Sea World guide just so that the pricing "made sense?"
I know your feeling bitter about the higher pricing on the Faction Guide and other books, just try not to think of it as a "nerd tax" or some other negative way you got a great introductory price and everything else is regular price.
Hope all of this helps and welcome to Pathfinder.
I have a great idea. Since you are complaining about the "core" products being too cheap, you can give Paizo $34.99 (70% of the book price) instead of $9.99. That way there is no nerd-tax on the Faction Guide.
-- david
Papa.DRB
ps. As I get older I find that I get crankier. Sooooooo glad that I am retired and don't have to deal with this kind of comments from my old company's customers anymore.
Well, still feels like a 'nerd tax' when the only way to access more in-depth Golarion info is to pay more and get less.
Obviously, I am not complaining about the price of the core books.
Also, of course I wouldn't want to pay 70% of cover.
I have bought 25+ pdfs, and I'm overall happy with the quality of the texts and artwork. However, as I attempt to learn more about Golarion, I am faced with the prospect of paying $14 for 50 pages of online content, and that feels like a bad deal.
At the same time, I don't seem to have anyone on the boards agreeing with me. Maybe I'm crazy, but making the beginner info cheaper than 'advanced' game info does constitute a 'nerd tax'- regardless of why the 'discount' is applied to the hardcover books.
Whatever the truth, I am a nerd, and therefore will pay my tax. The product has been good!
|
Obviously, I am not complaining about the price of the core books.
Also, of course I wouldn't want to pay 70% of cover.
I have bought 25+ pdfs, and I'm overall happy with the quality of the texts and artwork. However, as I attempt to learn more about Golarion, I am faced with the prospect of paying $14 for 50 pages of online content, and that feels like a bad deal.
At the same time, I don't seem to have anyone on the boards agreeing with me. Maybe I'm crazy, but making the beginner info cheaper than 'advanced' game info does constitute a 'nerd tax'- regardless of why the 'discount' is applied to the hardcover books.
Whatever the truth, I am a nerd, and therefore will pay my tax. The product has been good!
The problem with this is that it is not a tax at all. Here is a similar situation:
You buy a newish car from a friend for really cheap, like 40% market value. Now you want to go and get a new paint job and new tires. You have to pay the full price for those. Is that a "Make the Car Look Better" tax, no its you having to pay the full price for the "add ons" and a discounted price for the "core" product.
The problem with your analogy is that the paint and tires cost more than the car (by 40%!). That is rarely a good thing:)
|
|
Your missing the point. The point is that the Campaign & Companion lines are not 40% more its that the Core line is 60% less. So really the Campaign & Companion lines are about 60% the cost of the Core line and have less material. I don't see the problem.
The other option would be that they sell the Core line for the actual price it would cost as a PDF, being around 30 instead or 10.
I haven't missed a thing. Look- discounts, markups, sales...it's all distraction - an illusion. People charge what they think the market will bear. Regular players will pay $10 for a nice, big pdf. Nerds will pay twice that for half the content. We're paying a nerd tax, and I'm just pointing it out. If I wasn't on vacation I wouldn't have had the time or inclination to do so. I for one will likely continue paying it. Pathfinder rocks!
The old rule of drug dealing says that the first hit should always be either free or heavily discounted.
Exactly.
The old rule of drug dealing says that the first hit should always be either free or heavily discounted.
Fortunately, we provide both (for the rules at any rate). :P
|
Obviously, I am not complaining about the price of the core books.
Also, of course I wouldn't want to pay 70% of cover.
I have bought 25+ pdfs, and I'm overall happy with the quality of the texts and artwork. However, as I attempt to learn more about Golarion, I am faced with the prospect of paying $14 for 50 pages of online content, and that feels like a bad deal.
At the same time, I don't seem to have anyone on the boards agreeing with me. Maybe I'm crazy, but making the beginner info cheaper than 'advanced' game info does constitute a 'nerd tax'- regardless of why the 'discount' is applied to the hardcover books.
Whatever the truth, I am a nerd, and therefore will pay my tax. The product has been good!
I get what you saying. I think others have missed it or maybe I have. Your problem is not with the 10 buck PDF's or that they are cheaper. It is you think the others are priced to high period regardless of the other prices.
If I am indeed right and that is what you think. I will point out that likely the PDF's are as low as they can go and still insure Paizo is likely to have enough sales to pay for everything and turn a profit. They use high quality art and pay from what I hear very well to their free lancers to get quality work. Which in turn drives the cost they pay to make products way up. So they basically need to charge X amount to insure they can stay in business.
A good example of how this can come crashing down is Alluria publishing who did books on par with Paizo and where still priced cheaper in PDF's than Paizo was(other than the core books). The problem is Alluria didn't sell enough, so didn't make enough to break even so they went bankrupt sadly.
So really the 10 buck core books are lose leaders, to get people into the hobby to buy their other books where they actually make their money at. They have said the bulk of their money comes from the adventure path and not their core rule books.
Hopefully this explains things for you Adam, assuming I guessed what the real issue is. :)
Creative Director
|
| 4 people marked this as a favorite. |
There actually IS a fair bit of "the first one's free" concept going on here. We do price our entry product PDFs—things like the Core Rulebook or, in the case of the Golarion products, the Inner Sea World Guide, VERY lowly so that it's easier for a newcomer to spend money to try Golarion out. If you like that, then the theory is that you WILL pay more for more information on the world, and so we can charge more realistic prices for the rest of the books in the line.
Again... it's important to remember that printing and shipping and storing print books, while expensive, isn't the ONLY expense a publisher incurs when making a book. The words, and to a much more significant amount the art and layout of Paizo products is NOT an insignificant cost.
We might be a bunch of gamers who get a kick out of producing game books that lots of other gamers like... but Paizo is also a business that not only wants to make enough money to keep doing what it's doing... but in a best-case scenario, make enough money to reward our employees and writers and artists for all their hard work.
Doesn't paizo need a certain quantity of print books to make them worth printing to get the per unit cost of each book down? If they lowered the cost of the pdfs of the little books relatively more people will buy them as they are saving more money compared to the print edition which would make it more expensive to the people who want physical books. I prefer physical books.
Sony did the same thing for years with the playstation. They sold it below cost value and made up te difference in the games being sold on the console. It's a fairly standard business move to make ge cost of entry as low as possible if they have something to sell once you enter. A bit like carnivals which sell cheap tickets to enter, but then charge you for each ride.
|
|
I understand what Adam's saying, as I have said it before myself. The problem with the loss-leader philosophy in this case is that when someone sees what they can get for $9.99, they are put off by what they can get for $14.99, which is less content for a higher price.
The Playstation analogy is not particularly apt, because from a consumer standpoint, the hardware is still the single most expensive investment you make, regardless of how much more expensive it could be. When you pay $250 for a system, $50 for a game (which has the upside of being thought of as the thing in the equation that the consumer actually enjoys) seems cheap.
Don't get me wrong, I totally understand James's point as well, and completely respect Paizo's right to price things how they need to in order to make money. But Adam's viewpoint is not wrong. From the consumerist standpoint, it's 100% reasonable.
|
Adam,
OK, you want a different analogy, how about ...
The clothing industry and economy of numbers.
You can pay very little for an off-the-shelf pair of pants. Mass produced, not customized, common, generic, run of the mill (not that I would call any of Paizo's products that).
And you can pay a fortune for very limited editions, customized, rare, even unique pants.
The non-core books are not going to sell as many copies as the core books in any market. For PDFs, since the cost of writing and art is basically fixed, the publisher needs to price the PDF at a point they believe will cover the cost to produce it based on how many they expect to sell. A much more expensive to produce core book can be priced low since many copies are expected to sell. A specialized book that far fewer people will purchase must be priced higher in order to cover the cost to produce it.
You say that "Pathfinder rocks!" and "I for one will likely continue paying." Yet you continue to complain about how Paizo sells their content to you after it has been explained why they do it this way. These are real, hard-working people who respond a lot better to praise and encouragement rather than insults and insinuations that they are doing something bad.
|
I haven't missed a thing. Look- discounts, markups, sales...it's all distraction - an illusion. People charge what they think the market will bear. Regular players will pay $10 for a nice, big pdf. Nerds will pay twice that for half the content. We're paying a nerd tax, and I'm just pointing it out. If I wasn't on vacation I wouldn't have had the time or inclination to do so. I for one will likely continue paying it. Pathfinder rocks!
I will just throw in that the cost of the PDFs is a disincentive. If you think it is unfair, then I believe yourself to be right.
However, if you delve a little deeper into Paizo's history you will discover that they made their claim to fame based on subscribers to their magazines like Dungeon and Dragon magazine. Just putting aside their notoriety, you will see that the magazine business prefers subscribers.
They prefer subscribers because they get a very accurate picture as to how many copies they need to fulfill. By doing so, they have less lost revenue. They won't get stuck with absurd numbers of volumes nor will they miss sails because they prematurely ran out.
Usually a magazine offers discounts in the half price range and Dungeon and Dragon magazine were no different.
However, if Paizo did that with Pathfinder...then they would be at odds with every local hobby shop in America.
And by Paizo not running all their lines as if they were a magazine, they allow you the choice of going to them direct or just buying it where you feel most comfortable.
Now that I have said all that, I will get to the real heart of it all. Paizo doesn't offer discounted prices by directly going through them, and buying their PDFs may not be worth the price because you can almost get the magazine/book for a little more just by going to your hobby store. And though this may seem prohibitive, it is a fair deal for those running hobby shops that want to sell Paizo Products (who otherwise would not).
But, if you subscribe to any of their lines, Paizo gives you the PDFs for free.
That's right, free PDFs for those that are subscribers. That is their magazine angle of building in the value. That is why I am a superscriber. I am doing it strictly for the PDFs, which I feel will one day be worth more than the silly books themselves. We are about 2-3 years away from having tablets that can fully display all PDFs. Pretty quick, I will have every Paizo Pathfinder Product with me at the gaming table. There is no backpack that could fit all that crap and I would certainly not want to go back and retro buy all those damn PDFs just so I can enjoy them in my near future.
Paizo did a PDF sale of all their Pathfinder supplements like two years ago. I bought a lot of PDFs during that free-for-all, but I regretfully say that has not happened again. I was hoping it would be a yearly thing, but it wasn't. They know their PDFs have a value now and that it keeps us loyal as subscribers. To run another PDF sale would make a mockery of the last two years I have been loyal to them, so I think they never will again. FYI.
More discussion than you would ever want to read on Paizo's PDF pricing policies:
My understanding is that the reasoning is that low-cost PDFs cut into sales for the physical product and that, in the case of products with low print runs (e.g. Halflings of Golarion), that could make the difference between profitability and unprofitability. A print copy of Halflings of Golarion is already expensive enough as it is ($11 for a 32 page book) -- I don't think it needs to be made even more expensive by making the print run even smaller!
For me, the PDF is always free. I subscribe. Nerds for Pathfinder are often subscribers, so I don't think "PDF prices are too high", I think "PDFs are a perk of nerd-dom "
But if I were to get into Pathfinder now, for the first time, and want to buy PDF back-issues I agree that the jump from a $10.00 Inner Sea Guide to a $14.00 Faction Guide would give me pause, and I think the people attacking you for stating your opinion are being a trifle boorish.
Even if I thought you were wrong, I would still find the tone of some of the replies hostile and abrasive, and I am very impressed that you haven't risen to the bait.
Stay frosty.
Thank you Taliesin, I have tried to stay positive, though some took my point as an attack.
To Don Walker...I don't think your replacement analogy using the clothing industry works either. Mass produced, limited edition...it's all Levi's, so who's gonna pay that much more?
I am definitely not trying to insult the creators of any Pathfinder product, as my comments you quoted indicate. It really is just a simple question as the thread title says, "PDF Prices, what's the formula?" I haven't meant to "continue to complain," it's just that I hadn't heard an adequate explanation.
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
It might be worth considering what the alternative is?
Presumably you're of the view that the players companions (or similar) should be less - or at least that those products being cheaper would "make sense". From Paizo comments, no insider knowledge, I think a cheaper price like $8 or something wouldn't be enough to cover their costs so isn't sustainable. Thus the only alternative I could see would be to charge more for the "entry products" - does that really seem an improvement?
If you accept that the APs, campaign supplements, player companions, etcetera can't sustainably be priced any lower than they are what would you suggest they do? Rectifying an apparent price discrepancy may be good, but if the only way to do that is to jack up the price of their low margin products, aren't they likely to do more harm than good?
FWIW, I don't consider your posts at all aggressive or inappropriate, I'm just puzzled that you don't see the posts above this one (particularly from Paizo employees) as "adequate explanation".
I hadn't heard an adequate explanation.
Can I try?
Luxury options generally cost more, period. Buy a car. Now click on a few of the options and watch the price go through the ceiling. A sunroof really adds $1,500? HID headlights really add $800? Leather seats really add $2,000?
Basically in the physical world this is explained by the relative rarity. There are economies of scale that apply when every single car of a given model uses the exact same wheels, dash, body panels, and so on. When you pick an option, you're in a minority. There are costs beyond the physical product involved, such as having to inventory a second type of seat or radio and so on. The upgrades require additional testing and paperwork at the factory level. What I'm saying is that there are hidden costs that aren't obvious.
Well, in Paizo's world with their PDFs something similar happens. They know that when they create their blockbuster products such as a Bestiary, the audience for that book is huge. The art costs, development costs, author costs, editorial staff costs are much larger than with the smaller books, but those fixed costs can be spread over a vastly larger number of sales. You know they expect to sell thousands upon thousands of Bestiary 3. The smaller books are cheaper to create because of smaller page counts in many ways, but those costs are spread over far, far fewer sales.
If Paizo wants to make $x on a given product in profit, they can do so with blockbuster products at a lower per-page price than they can specialty products. Dropping the price on a $15 PDF to $10 reduces the profit on that product by 33%. If Paizo projected to sell 1,000 copies, they're suddenly looking at $10,000 instead of $15,000. If their production costs on the product were $5,000 they're suddenly looking at a mere $5,000 in profit. Perhaps that product isn't worth bothering. Yes, $5,000 is $5,000 but really, perhaps that's human time that could have been spent better. Such as working on a blockbuster product that they expect to sell 5,000 copies of. Yeah, at $10 each that's $50,000 and yeah, production costs might be more like $20,000 but suddenly you're looking at $30,000 in profit for such a product. It might take twice as long to produce, but even then it might still be triple the profit.
The real point is this:
Paizo aren't getting rich on us.
You don't read about Lisa being in the top 10 richest people in the US. Or the top 100. Or even the top 1,000. I'm sure she's comfortable. It's very likely her house is paid off. I'm sure she's got a nest egg stashed so she doesn't need to worry about the price of gasoline ever again. But there's no private jet, no personal island in the Caribbean, no fleet of daughters with debutante lifestyles hanging out on "reality" TV shows flaunting their latest diamond-encrusted Porches.
Paizo is doing well. Not stupid-well. Well. And a lot of freelance artists and authors are doing well because of that. It's not excessive, it's reasonable.
So maybe the profit isn't unreasonable. And if the profit is reasonable, that strongly implies the pricing that allows it is also reasonable. Which means... we either get the products we do at the price point we do, or we get significantly different products.
I'd far rather have only a few blockbuster must-have products each year plus a bunch of "do I really care about Secret Furry Societies of Golarion" products. Yiffy. The current pricing allows that.
Does this help?
Thanks to everyone for your thoughtful responses to a fellow Pathfinder fan.
Many people have said that lowering the price of smaller pdfs would require a price increase for pdfs of hardcovers. Maybe this is true, but it seems awkward. I think this would mean that small pdfs are actually subsidizing large ones.
I am a strictly PDF person (except the core book). There are any number of perspectives I could take on this issue- just be grateful for the big $10 pdfs; my savings on big pdfs offset small pdf price; it's normal to pay more for a smaller market product; think about the poor little game stores, etc. Whatever the reality is behind all this, as a pdf consumer, the current pricing structure deincentivizes my purchase of small pdfs.
I prefer to think of it as Paizo giving me a very generous discount on a beautifully illustrated and organized pdf of content they've already generously provided free of charge via the PRD. I realize the PRD doesn't included the contents of the Inner Sea World Guide, but in the above context that just makes Paizo even more generous for pricing the ISWG pdf the same as the pdfs of their other hardcovers.
Now that I subscribe though, I do appreciate getting the free pdfs.
|
Chief Technical Officer
|
| 1 person marked this as a favorite. |
Paizo did a PDF sale of all their Pathfinder supplements like two years ago. I bought a lot of PDFs during that free-for-all, but I regretfully say that has not happened again. I was hoping it would be a yearly thing, but it wasn't. They know their PDFs have a value now and that it keeps us loyal as subscribers. To run another PDF sale would make a mockery of the last two years I have been loyal to them, so I think they never will again. FYI.
I wouldn't say that we'll never do such a sale again (although we don't currently have any plans to do so). But whenever we do *any* sale, we're always careful not to undercut the cost/benefit ratio that subscribers had at the time a product was released. That is to say, whatever deals we come up with are never quite as good as the deal that subscribers received at the time. Because we never want you to think "I shouldn't have subscribed!" Rather, we want you to think "I should have subscribed sooner!"
|
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
|
Adam, in a way, you're right, the smaller PDFs are subsidising the larger ones. At the end of the day Paizo (or any business) cares about their total profit across all of their products. (When particular products fall below a certain profit threshold, then it matters a lot - but assuming all products are above that minimum, then it really doesn't matter how the profit is spread around different products and lines.) Therefore, Paizo could level set all of their PDF prices so that hypothetically they're all priced at 50% of the print price, and that would bring in the exact same amount of revenue and profit at the end of the year as their current pricing.
The reason this wouldn't be a good business decision is because of network externalities. Since the value of Pathfinder as a whole increases with the number of players, Paizo is using pricing on the core hardcover PDFs to increase the number of players. The more players, the easier it is for all of us to find other gamers to join our Pathfinder group, and the longer we'll remain active fans and active, paying customers for future Paizo products as well. The more players and purchasers, the greater economies of scale Paizo can realize with future products. Because of this, it makes sense to price gateway products like the core rulebook, bestiary, and inner sea world guide as low as possible, to remove price as a barrier of entry for new players. They can't reasonably lower the price of the physical books, but for the PDFs, they can. I'd actually argue that if they priced all of their PDFs equally, they'd have fewer players, make less money, and potentially have to raise prices over time across the board, and you'd actually pay more in the long run than with their current strategy of getting as many people playing as possible.
Personally, I'd limit the $10 PDFs to only the Core rulebook, bestiary 1, and the Inner Sea World guide, and jack the other hardcovers up to 70% of the physical book price, since those other products are no longer the ones new players are going to be buying to get into the game, but Paizo cares about their customers enough that they're effectively giving up potential profit on the other hardcover PDFs, because they're awesome like that.
Vic and Joel, I appreciate both your points. I can't begrudge Paizo for making decisions that respect early subscribers. Also, I do want as many people playing Pathfinder as possible (even if I have to buy those broke players their pizza;).