I honestly think if Paizo provided a $5 PDF to ONLY THOSE WHO BOUGHT THE PHYSICAL COPY (i.e, their profits are the profit for a book +1/2 of a PDF) they would be making more money.
hell, I'd even wager that if every single person who bought a physical copy bought a $2 PDF they would be making more.
You making a lot of assumptions there.
You're assuming everyone would buy a PDF at $2 or $5.
You're assuming most of those people wouldn't buy a PDF at the current discounts (30% off print copy + 15% for AP subscribers)
You're assuming no one would cancel their subscriptions (or future customers would avoid subscribing) because they prefer to pick-and-choose, even if the cost per book is slightly higher.
Paizo has said, repeatedly and emphatically, that subscriptions are what keep the lights on, and they won't do anything to jeopardize that.
Seriously, take a look at the subscriptions. It could be you're saving money by subscribing by getting free PDFs, even once you account for getting a couple books a year you don't really want, because once you've purchased a couple PDFs you've already 'paid' for that one book you don't want.
I know you said a lot of stuff, but a PDF that is 30% cheaper than a print copy is not a discount. It's cheaper to make, so it's worth less.
also giving me a DISCOUNTED PDF does not jeopardise the FREE PDF that comes with subscription
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It is not cheaper to make. It still requires art, layout, editing, and all the other pieces that go to producing a quality product. When you get right down to it, print costs are a small part of the price to produce a book.
also giving me a DISCOUNTED PDF does not jeopardise the FREE PDF that comes with subscription
Actually, it does. I see you buy a 40 dollar book and get a discount on the PDF. Meanwhile, I'm getting two 40 dollar books with free PDFs, but I only want one of those books. So I cancel my subscription and start only buying the books I want, subscription sales go down, and Paizo starts having trouble making rent.
I honestly think if Paizo provided a $5 PDF to ONLY THOSE WHO BOUGHT THE PHYSICAL COPY (i.e, their profits are the profit for a book +1/2 of a PDF) they would be making more money.
hell, I'd even wager that if every single person who bought a physical copy bought a $2 PDF they would be making more.
also giving me a DISCOUNTED PDF does not jeopardise the FREE PDF that comes with subscription
Subscribers do more than guarantee paizo profit each month.
There are some for whom the free PDF is the main reason for subscribing. If there were an alternate way to get a cheap electronic copy along with a hard copy version, that incentive to stay subscribed would be less which would lead to some unknown number cancelling their subscription. For paizo, that's a very bad thing.
Even if the overall profit didn't change (maybe the likely increased sales via other sellers plus cheap PDF sales would equal the loss of subscription revenue) there is a cash flow issue. Subscriber money comes in as the book is released. It covers the ongoing costs of running the business (printing the next product, paying the staff, running the warehouse, etcetera) Deferring that revenue until the product has worked it's way down the supply chain is a big risk to paizo's ongoing operations.
Running a business is more than just chasing profit. Even if operating a non-subscription discount PDF scheme didn't have an effect on profit (or had a positive effect) that doesn't make it the right strategy.
Also, as pointed out above, bear in mind you're viewing $2 or $5 for a PDF as just extra revenue. Whatever earnings would be gained by that strategy would be offset by the lost income from those of us who would otherwise be willing to pay full price now getting it much cheaper.
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also giving me a DISCOUNTED PDF does not jeopardise the FREE PDF that comes with subscription
Yes, it does. It reduces the amount of benefit subscribers get compared to not subscribing. That makes people less likely to subscribe.
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I can think of one time when Paizo could do this: when you buy the physical book directly from Paizo, they know for sure that you bought it. Under those circumstances, I could see doing either free or discounted PDFs.
It'd be a nice incentive to actually buy the physical book from Paizo, too.
But if Paizo decided to throw in a DISCOUNTED copy of the PDF when I buy a hardback from them, well, that would certainly be a lot more tempting! Instant access means shipping time is irrelevant; and I just bet that Paizo gets a higher profit margin out of direct sales than they do via any other outlet, since there are no distributors or other middle-men taking a cut.
This actually seems like a pretty good idea ... note that I changed 'free' to 'discounted'.
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It is not cheaper to make. It still requires art, layout, editing, and all the other pieces that go to producing a quality product. When you get right down to it, print costs are a small part of the price to produce a book.
Well, to be fair, print costs are actually a pretty big part of the price to produce a book. However, what you say is still absolutely true otherwise. The PDF and the printed copy book both require all the same things - quality art, layout, writing, editing etc. The only difference is that you have to add things like printing costs on top that.
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It is not cheaper to make. It still requires art, layout, editing, and all the other pieces that go to producing a quality product. When you get right down to it, print costs are a small part of the price to produce a book.Well, to be fair, print costs are actually a pretty big part of the price to produce a book. However, what you say is still absolutely true otherwise. The PDF and the printed copy book both require all the same things - quality art, layout, writing, editing etc. The only difference is that you have to add things like printing costs on top that.
The .pdf also costs some manpower in adding necessary hotlinks, encoding it, and making sure it displays correctly (lest we all be forced to be equipped again with "buttery knives"), both for "full" and "lite" versions. And someone at some point had to write the watermarking code, even if it is now automated, as well as implement whatever anti-piracy measures are in there, if any. And you need to be able to afford the storage and bandwidth needed so people can download them--and manage the massive server hit when we subscribers start getting our emails that our .pdf is ready for download and all jump at once to get them. Notably, we don't get charged for "shipping" (storage and bandwidth uses) separately the way you do for ordering a print copy, so that means those costs are incorporated into the cost of the .pdf.
Still not the same as print costs, but producing the .pdf doesn't end when the book is finished and laid out--work continues to get put into the .pdf version to make sure it is a finished, usable, and useful product in its own right.
I said this before and I'll say it again, for length and content, the .pdfs are actually undercosted in my opinion, the RPG line in particular, quite a bit. Basically everyone gets a discount.
If you can't afford them, that's what the PRD is for. Since the OP is an AP subscriber, he gets the free PDFs of the APs, and most OGL mechanical content of the other lines can be found on other fan sites, so I do not see the continued issue, personally.
I think really the OP wants us all to go, "Oh yes, you're right, they ARE too expensive, let us FORCE Paizo to sell all the .pdfs for free/a few dollars" and that just ain't gonna happen, no matter how much many of us would like it to be otherwise (Paizo, to a degree, included, I would imagine).
I know you said a lot of stuff, but a PDF that is 30% cheaper than a print copy is not a discount. It's cheaper to make, so it's worth less.
Also, it's worth pointing out here that retail prices have several layers of markup in them over the actual cost of goods. If the manufacturer, distributor, and retailing each have a 100% markup (which is fairly standard), then the actual manufacture cost of the book is 12.5% or less of the eventual retail price. (That is, a $20 retail item was bought from distributor at $10, who bought it from manufacturer for $5, who hopefully paid $2.50 or less to have it printed because they want to make a profit.)
So that 30% discount more than pays for not having the book printed up.
Chief Technical Officer
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I wish the people that directly order from Paizo could at least get a discount on PDFs of physical books they buy directly at this website when they don't have a subscription...The problem with this plan is that it strongly encourages people to buy their books direct from Paizo, rather than any other distributer (although your friendly local gaming store (FLGS) is the one that matters here). From a purely financial perspective, it would obviously be best for them if everyone bought direct - cutting out the middleman brings in extra revenue that would otherwise be the middleman's cut.
However, the FLGS is a big part of the RPG ecosystem. They provide things you can't get online - physical products you can look through before buying, physical space to get together and play, local community, demos, etc. No one is going to randomly visit Paizo's website and go "Oh, what's this Pathfinder thing? That looks like it might be interesting." But that happens in a FLGS all the time. So part of Paizo's strategy is to keep the FLGSs happy with the company. Which means not undercutting them. See the first post I quoted from Vic about that.
Thanks for bringing that up—it's actually a *REALLY* big deal. There are retailers out there who hate the fact that we sell direct, sell PDFs, sell subscriptions *at all*. It's a balancing act: we need to offer customers *some* reason to buy from us, but not so *much* reason that it creates unfair competition for retailers who carry our products. And that's a big reason why we've drawn a clear line: the big benefits go to subscribers. A lot of retailers understand that subscriber benefits are a trade: subscribers give us security for future products, and the added value we offer is in exchange for that. If we gave people benefits *without* a consideration like that, it would be a big problem.
I for one am able to buy Paizo products purely because you do direct sell PDFs to consumers... so please don't stop :)
While I'd personally also love a PDF only subscription, I completely understand the reasons why that won't happen.