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Which one was your, um, musical magnum opus written for? ^_^Also, for folks doing the math at home, it's important to remember that back in the Dungeon and Dragon days, we were mostly pretty poor. I taught night classes and frequently ate out of dumpsters during my early Paizo tenure, and not just because it was cool and bohemian (though it kinda was).
Nowadays, ten years later, I pretty much *never* eat out of dumpsters, and instead of 6 roommates in a falling-apart flophouse I have 7 roommates in an actually pretty nice house. MOVING ON UP, BABY!
All of them. Some things never change. :)
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(sans-ad)
Dungeon was roughly 50% ads, as was Dragon.
Neither Dungeon nor Dragon were ever anywhere close to 50% ads. We should have been so lucky.
For some reason I recall that figure being bandied about during the Dungeon/Pathfinder transition. I can no longer find a citation for it. It has been 8 years.
I apologize for the inaccuracy.
If they had been anywhere near 50% ads, they never would have folded.
They never did fold, actually—the license wasn't renewed. The magazines were actually doing better than they had in a long time when WotC took them back in-house.
That said, yeah, 50% ads would have been *decadent*.
Americans complaining.
Yeah, most of us have it pretty good (white males especially -- but once again, that's another thread).
That said, yeah, 50% ads would have been *decadent*.
Have you ever opened up a Cosmo (the magazine, not the person)?
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Opening up Cosmo sounds like the plot to a module.
Or GenCon 2010.
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All of them. Some things never change. :)Which one was your, um, musical magnum opus written for? ^_^Also, for folks doing the math at home, it's important to remember that back in the Dungeon and Dragon days, we were mostly pretty poor. I taught night classes and frequently ate out of dumpsters during my early Paizo tenure, and not just because it was cool and bohemian (though it kinda was).
Nowadays, ten years later, I pretty much *never* eat out of dumpsters, and instead of 6 roommates in a falling-apart flophouse I have 7 roommates in an actually pretty nice house. MOVING ON UP, BABY!
I could have used that song a couple of years ago. Then again, when I finally got them to do their !@#$ing dishes someone put an entire pan of au gratin potatoes in the dishwasher without scrapping the leftovers out. The dishwasher never worked right again and I ended up kicking them out a month or so later.
Good times.
SM
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I prepped Here There Be Monsters from Dungeon #142 this week for some throwback gaming planned for Memorial Day weekend.
Page 32 through 60. Not a single ad!
That certainly colored my perception of the ad density since I essentially opened to page 32 and read through straight to 60 and closed the magazine.
(Nobody dares put ads in a Bulmahn adventure!)
(To be fair, there was an ad on page 61 for Reality Simulations following the adventure)
The biggest pricing change, unfortunately is mandated by the changes in the Pathfinder Tales line. Until now, as a subscriber, I paid $8.49 for the book, including ebook versions in PDF and DRM-free ePub.
Now, in the line now handled by TOR, I'm paying $10.49 for the book, but no ebook is included. The only way I can get the ebook now is via Amazon, it seems, for €11.88, which amounts to $13.60—more than the book itself!—for a total of $23.09, so almost THREE TIMES what I have been paying before, and then I can only get a DRM-infested digital version of the book.
I can't really see anything positive in the change of the Pathfinder Tales line to TOR, which is very sad and disappointing.
I can't really see anything positive in the change of the Pathfinder Tales line to TOR, which is very sad and disappointing.
Well, they're bigger, so the shipping will... oh.
You're right though. There doesn't seem to be a single consumer-friendly advantage associated with this change. "Bigger print" might be, for the small fraction of people whose eyesight is just poor enough that a tiny increase in font size will help, but not poor enough that they'll still need glasses.
Wider distribution is fine, but I doubt that Pathfinder Tales is that appreciated that the book-buying populace is going to be happy paying trade paperback price instead of mass-market paperback price. It's not like we're talking about the latest opus from Neal Stephenson or Stephen King or something.
I wish Paizo well, but this isn't a business decision that seems to make any sense from the outside.
Working with Tor means better distribution, better promotion, and better placement in bookstores. Plus the ability to sell electronic versions in more places.
Ultimately, those things mean more books sold. Or at least a good shot at more books sold.
I agree it isn't the fairest thing for existing subscribers, but it's disingenuous to say it makes no sense.
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Working with Tor means better distribution, better promotion, and better placement in bookstores. Plus the ability to sell electronic versions in more places.
Be fair. Better distribution is vastly offset by the fact the product just became (significantly) more expensive to purchase and to ship. That it may appear in more bookstores is of no consolation to any of the people who currently have interest in the product.
Also, the ability to sell the electronic version elsewhere is a pointless boon. The ePub version Paizo sold was the ideal product. Two clicks in Calibre (book repository software compatible with basically every book format and every book reader ever) and it's a MOBI, which is what the Kindle wants.
Ultimately, those things mean more books sold. Or at least a good shot at more books sold.
You say that. I doubt it. I know I've been mostly buying them when on sale, but given the product changes, that's going to stall out. While that's just me, there've been plenty of threads in customer service with people cancelling this subscription.
People who drive a Prius don't want to hear that the manufacturer has refreshed the product line, and now it's an SUV, costs more, is made in Alaska incurring a shipping up-charge, comes with a shorter warranty (equivalent to ePub), but oh, hey, now members of the SUV-of-the-Month-Club can buy them with their membership.
I agree it isn't the fairest thing for existing subscribers, but it's disingenuous to say it makes no sense.
Oh, it's clear it makes sense. Just not to the consumer. For all I know sales were poor, and this change was the only way to continue making the books. Dunno. Don't really care. What is obvious is that there's been a drastic change not only in pricing, but in the product offered, and the benefits for existing purchasers is effectively nonexistent.
Please note: I'm not complaining about any other price change in any other product line.
Sadly this is my tipping point. I'll have to cancel my adventure path subscription. I've no doubt the reasons are perfectly justifiable. It's just past the point of sustainability for me :/
- Torger
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Also, the ability to sell the electronic version elsewhere is a pointless boon. The ePub version Paizo sold was the ideal product. Two clicks in Calibre (book repository software compatible with basically every book format and every book reader ever) and it's a MOBI, which is what the Kindle wants.
I disagree. You're assuming that the customer is as tech savvy as you are. Or as motivated as you are.
The is a difference between:
1) Open Kindle store on a Kindle
2) Buy book
3) Read it on Kindle
and
1) Open paizo.com on a desktop computer
2) Download ePub
3) Install Calibre
4) Convert ePub to .mobi
5) Download to Kindle
6) Read on Kindle
I mean, I don't even have my Paizo PDFs on my iPad because I don't feel like being bothered to download and unzip them on one machine, then drop them into iTunes to read on my iPad. If I couldn't at least download the ePub directly from paizo.com onto my IPad, I would have a hard time being bothered with those.
Also, the ability to sell the electronic version elsewhere is a pointless boon. The ePub version Paizo sold was the ideal product. Two clicks in Calibre (book repository software compatible with basically every book format and every book reader ever) and it's a MOBI, which is what the Kindle wants.I disagree. You're assuming that the customer is as tech savvy as you are. Or as motivated as you are.
The is a difference between:
1) Open Kindle store on a Kindle
2) Buy book
3) Read it on Kindleand
1) Open paizo.com on a desktop computer
2) Download ePub
3) Install Calibre
4) Convert ePub to .mobi
5) Download to Kindle
6) Read on KindleI mean, I don't even have my Paizo PDFs on my iPad because I don't feel like being bothered to download and unzip them on one machine, then drop them into iTunes to read on my iPad. If I couldn't at least download the ePub directly from paizo.com onto my IPad, I would have a hard time being bothered with those.
iZip app is your friend. Download from Paizo directly onto iPad, unzip on iPad, read in iZip, or "Open with..." iBooks (which is what I do). All the hassle of moving them onto your iPad removed with one free application.
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All of them. Some things never change. :)Which one was your, um, musical magnum opus written for? ^_^Also, for folks doing the math at home, it's important to remember that back in the Dungeon and Dragon days, we were mostly pretty poor. I taught night classes and frequently ate out of dumpsters during my early Paizo tenure, and not just because it was cool and bohemian (though it kinda was).
Nowadays, ten years later, I pretty much *never* eat out of dumpsters, and instead of 6 roommates in a falling-apart flophouse I have 7 roommates in an actually pretty nice house. MOVING ON UP, BABY!
I could have used that song a couple of years ago. Then again, when I finally got them to do their !@#$ing dishes someone put an entire pan of au gratin potatoes in the dishwasher without scrapping the leftovers out. The dishwasher never worked right again and I ended up kicking them out a month or so later.
Good times.
SM
Oh god. I salute your survival of the beautiful trench warfare that is shared housing. :)
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Here's the tricky part, and the irony is that this is a price testing anti-pattern.
As subscribers to the books decline, there will be questions:
1) Was it because the books increased in price substantially?
2) Was it because the books are covering tales that are generally less interesting, so they are selling less?
3) Did the multiple price increases of the other books "squeeze" out the tales from people's budgets?
The problem with doing these all in the same quarter is demand will certainly change, but you won't have an isolated variable to identify as the cause.
Chief Technical Officer
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Oh, it's clear it makes sense. Just not to the consumer. For all I know sales were poor, and this change was the only way to continue making the books. Dunno. Don't really care. What is obvious is that there's been a drastic change not only in pricing, but in the product offered, and the benefits for existing purchasers is effectively nonexistent.
Reposted from here:
I will be frank: one of several primary goals for the Pathfinder Tales line is to attract fiction-loving non-gamers to the world of Pathfinder. And we believe that Tor has the ability to advance that goal farther than we ever could on our own.
Without partnering with Tor, the future of the line would likely not rise above "more of the same." And sure, that's great. But if Tor is able to expand the readership, we might be able to do more and bigger and better things in the future. We might be able to mix things up and do something special outside of the bimonthly paperback novel run. We might be able to attract authors that we can't get right now.* I can't make any promises, of course, but we wouldn't be doing this if we didn't think it gave the line a better future than it would have otherwise.
*Addendum to repost: James tells me that the Tor deal has already allowed us to secure at least one author that we’d been wanting to secure for a while.
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iZip app is your friend. Download from Paizo directly onto iPad, unzip on iPad, read in iZip, or "Open with..." iBooks (which is what I do). All the hassle of moving them onto your iPad removed with one free application.Also, the ability to sell the electronic version elsewhere is a pointless boon. The ePub version Paizo sold was the ideal product. Two clicks in Calibre (book repository software compatible with basically every book format and every book reader ever) and it's a MOBI, which is what the Kindle wants.I disagree. You're assuming that the customer is as tech savvy as you are. Or as motivated as you are.
The is a difference between:
1) Open Kindle store on a Kindle
2) Buy book
3) Read it on Kindleand
1) Open paizo.com on a desktop computer
2) Download ePub
3) Install Calibre
4) Convert ePub to .mobi
5) Download to Kindle
6) Read on KindleI mean, I don't even have my Paizo PDFs on my iPad because I don't feel like being bothered to download and unzip them on one machine, then drop them into iTunes to read on my iPad. If I couldn't at least download the ePub directly from paizo.com onto my IPad, I would have a hard time being bothered with those.
If you can stand to read off of a backlit screen. I can't. I have a Kindle Touch for a reason.
My main problem with the iPad is that it's too heavy. I tend to use the kindle because it's light enough to not bother me.
Have you looked into Pathfinder Legends?
Presumably there's a difference between audio books and audio dramas (?) but I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the first AP. I believe they are also pricey (as such things go) but I found them worth it.
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The problem with doing these all in the same quarter is demand will certainly change, but you won't have an isolated variable to identify as the cause.
There's never going to be an isolated variable. Even if we only changed a single thing, a change in subscribers could be because:
A really good rash of movies leave less money in people's pockets. Or it excites them to get into fiction more.
The books are covering tales that are generally less interesting. Or more interesting. Or randomly hit the same theme as a popular video game in Korea.
A new Kickstarter run by a different company drained spare cash. Or inspires greater interest in fantasy rpgs and their tie-ins.
The rising price of health insurance squeezed the tales out of people's budgets. Or an improving economy boosts it.
The increasing popularity of some other fiction line by some other company left less interest in Pathfinder Tales. Or causes more retailers to carry more fiction overall.
Or... or... or...
The market is always changing and adapting and moving. As the the economy overall (and the world economy along with ti), the culture of buying various products, and the efficiency of distributors who have a huge impact on sales, but are well beyond the publisher's ability to control. The amazingly difficult job people who run companies like this have is to judge the few dozen data points they have in a given month, then make a plan they think has the best long-term impact. Whether it works or not, they'll never know for certain why.
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Reposted from here:
I will be frank: one of several primary goals for the Pathfinder Tales line is to attract fiction-loving non-gamers to the world of Pathfinder. And we believe that Tor has the ability to advance that goal farther than we ever could on our own.
Without partnering with Tor, the future of the line would likely not rise above "more of the same." And sure, that's great. But if Tor is able to expand the readership, we might be able to do more and bigger and better things in the future. We might be able to mix things up and do something special outside of the bimonthly paperback novel run. We might be able to attract authors that we can't get right now.* I can't make any promises, of course, but we wouldn't be doing this if we didn't think it gave the line a better future than it would have otherwise.
*Addendum to repost: James tells me that the Tor deal has already allowed us to secure at least one author that we’d been wanting to secure for a while.
I hear you Vic, and I really don't mean to sound like a curmudgeon. More importantly, I don't mean to be one. I absolutely wish you well.
Thing is, this is New Coke. I hear you that the Tor partnership might allow you to do more and bigger and better things. It's a novel line. We want novels. Not bigger and better things. You might do something special. It's a novel line. We want novels. You might be able to attract authors you can't currently get. You know, I can't name a single author (who is still alive) whose contribution would justify the changes... to me. You've got an established stable of very good authors and luring in Hickman and Weiss or Neil Gaiman or Muhammad Ali isn't as attractive to me, the reader, as it sounds on the outside.
New And Improved Tide is fine to write on the outside of the box, but really, we just want a laundry detergent that gets our clothes cleaned. I'm not entirely sure how a line of excellent novels gets meaningfully improved, when there are visible drawbacks.
Again, I wish you well, and intend this only as dialogue, not as argument or bashing. I suspect you've already seen my perspective (Paizo isn't run by short-sighted people), but the All-New 2015 Whatever, "now with none of the things you love and instead a bunch of other things you don't care about"... is a common marketing error.
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I am actually very happy with the TOR publishing Pathfinder books. I have avoided getting a single Pathfinder book because I mostly use my Kindle to try out new fiction. Also, I rarely see any Pathfinder books for sale in book stores, even those with gaming material. There is a pretty large segment of the population that the current book like just never reaches.
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There's never going to be an isolated variable. Even if we only changed a single thing, a change in subscribers could be because..
Yes, but we're talking about subscription services. The majority of customers don't terminate a subscription for a month (or permanently) just because they want to see an extra movie or back a Kickstarter. Additionally, if there is a group that does cancel, then the demand was already soft for that segment and their termination was inevitible - so you had already realized the max LTV of those customers regardless.
There's steps that are normally taken to understand pricing sensitivity and minimize cannibalization. For example, if you wanted to test the price sensitivity to Tales subscribers, you wouldn't raise prices on all other subscriptions at the same time. If you saw demand drop in the first month, you'd do your research to see if there's external influencer(s), and if you found some (usually in the churn data for that cohort), you'd maintain your experiment for another period when the external influencer(s) weren't present.
Paizo is likely fine since they employ a customer-must-contact-customer-support-to-cancel practice, so you can hopefully see in Tales churn data that "subscription became too expensive" and not wholly attribute that to just the Tor/Tales increase but overall subscription cost increases for their entire base. I'm also uncertain about the size of the Tales subscriber base. If it's only like 5K subscribers, then it's probably too small to matter as any data you'd have would be fairly spikey within a given month and your potential risk to margin is only like 15K/mo, so you might as well experiment with the entire base rather than spend 30K+ rolling out a more finely crafted pricing strategy over a quarter.
If you can stand to read off of a backlit screen. I can't. I have a Kindle Touch for a reason.iZip app is your friend. Download from Paizo directly onto iPad, unzip on iPad, read in iZip, or "Open with..." iBooks (which is what I do). All the hassle of moving them onto your iPad removed with one free application.Also, the ability to sell the electronic version elsewhere is a pointless boon. The ePub version Paizo sold was the ideal product. Two clicks in Calibre (book repository software compatible with basically every book format and every book reader ever) and it's a MOBI, which is what the Kindle wants.I disagree. You're assuming that the customer is as tech savvy as you are. Or as motivated as you are.
The is a difference between:
1) Open Kindle store on a Kindle
2) Buy book
3) Read it on Kindleand
1) Open paizo.com on a desktop computer
2) Download ePub
3) Install Calibre
4) Convert ePub to .mobi
5) Download to Kindle
6) Read on KindleI mean, I don't even have my Paizo PDFs on my iPad because I don't feel like being bothered to download and unzip them on one machine, then drop them into iTunes to read on my iPad. If I couldn't at least download the ePub directly from paizo.com onto my IPad, I would have a hard time being bothered with those.
Well, yes, but I was specifically addressing the point that having to unzip on a computer and transfer the PDFs via iTunes to get them onto an iPad isn't actually necessary.
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Reposted from here:
I will be frank: one of several primary goals for the Pathfinder Tales line is to attract fiction-loving non-gamers to the world of Pathfinder. And we believe that Tor has the ability to advance that goal farther than we ever could on our own.
Without partnering with Tor, the future of the line would likely not rise above "more of the same." And sure, that's great. But if Tor is able to expand the readership, we might be able to do more and bigger and better things in the future. We might be able to mix things up and do something special outside of the bimonthly paperback novel run. We might be able to attract authors that we can't get right now.* I can't make any promises, of course, but we wouldn't be doing this if we didn't think it gave the line a better future than it would have otherwise.
*Addendum to repost: James tells me that the Tor deal has already allowed us to secure at least one author that we’d been wanting to secure for a while.
I hear you Vic, and I really don't mean to sound like a curmudgeon. More importantly, I don't mean to be one. I absolutely wish you well.
Thing is, this is New Coke. I hear you that the Tor partnership might allow you to do more and bigger and better things. It's a novel line. We want novels. Not bigger and better things. You might do something special. It's a novel line. We want novels. You might be able to attract authors you can't currently get. You know, I can't name a single author (who is still alive) whose contribution would justify the changes... to me. You've got an established stable of very good authors and luring in Hickman and Weiss or Neil Gaiman or Muhammad Ali isn't as attractive to me, the reader, as it sounds on the outside.
New And Improved Tide is fine to write on the outside of the box, but really, we just want a laundry detergent that gets our clothes cleaned....
Simply put, you're not the target group. Paizo aims at People Who Never Heard Of Pathfinder Before with this move, not at Pathfinder Charter Oversubscribers. Likely their calc is that for each one dedicated customer who quits their Tales sub they're getting two new thanks to the increased outreach and visibility of the new setup.
Hmm, well I read the PF tales and it really doesn't bother me all that much.
I appreciate it if we can read them on Kindle, but since I typically look for them as deals, we'll see.
On the otherhand, I used to buy a TON of books from TOR, but more recently they've become the ones to avoid. I'll get books from Orbit or other publishers, but TOR seems to have lost it's edge for the type of books I read.
However, I can't see Paizo changing it's authors or style just because TOR has or says so, so I don't see any thing pushing me away from reading PF books for the moment when I find them on sale.
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Simply put, you're not the target group. Paizo aims at People Who Never Heard Of Pathfinder Before with this move, not at Pathfinder Charter Oversubscribers. Likely their calc is that for each one dedicated customer who quits their Tales sub they're getting two new thanks to the increased outreach and visibility of the new setup.
Exactly this. I can't imagine any way that the TOR deal doesn't end up increasing sales, even if subscriptions decrease. This is a big deal.
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I have never, ever read a Pathfinder Tales novel. I stopped reading game world fiction after the piles of drek that flooded the market in the 90s. My tastes have changed significantly in the last 15 - 20 years so now I find new authors by word of mouth. I still have my gotos that I buy just because but I usually wait until I can get them on sale or used. If you can get Gaiman or Alan Dean Foster or Gibson or Walter Jon Williams then I might take the plunge. (Unfortunately, Zelazny's not an option...)
SM
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I have never, ever read a Pathfinder Tales novel. I stopped reading game world fiction after the piles of drek that flooded the market in the 90s. My tastes have changed significantly in the last 15 - 20 years so now I find new authors by word of mouth. I still have my gotos that I buy just because but I usually wait until I can get them on sale or used. If you can get Gaiman or Alan Dean Foster or Gibson or Walter Jon Williams then I might take the plunge. (Unfortunately, Zelazny's not an option...)
SM
Well, with those tastes you might give Dave Gross a try.
OR, if you just want to dip your toes in the water you can read the free stuff they have right here
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Yeah, Dave is great. Every book I've read of his has been excellent and/or fun reading. I really loved Master of Devils especially. Usually when the story splits up I'm always very engrossed in one of the story lines, but Dave's pretty good at making each of his characters very interesting so that when they split I'm never really disappointed in checking in on the other guys. That's a departure from a lot of fantasy authors I've read. Really good characters.
I think Plague of Shadows is a better entry point if you aren't already familiar with Pathfinder. But if you're already on this website, then yes, grab Prince of Wolves or Hell's Pawns and get going.
Dave is great!
But if your tastes run dark, and you generally dislike tie-in fiction, I'd recommend Liane Merciel's Nightglass as an entry point. It doesn't read like it's written for a shared world, and it's elegantly written, deeply atmospheric, and disturbing as hell.
Well since we're doing recommendations, I've never read a Tales novel either, but I might consider it. Which ones might you recommend that have a badass female in charge of an ensemble cast, Shepard style?
Plague of Shadows fits this description.