First of, since first post, hello to everyone on the other side of the internet.
So, I´m really looking forward for Starfinder, since I sort of missed out on the early years of Pathfinder, life got in the way around that time. So I have some catching up to do with the Pathfinder books.
Which is one of the reason I´m looking forward to be on board with Starfinder from the beginning, thinking about subscribing to all four Subscriptions. But I live in Sweden, so I come here asking for some advice, regarding shipment cost/time. Is it quicker/cheaper to buy local, or is Paizo´s Subscription service worth it for us in Europe?
I can't say anything specific about Sweden (Australia is about as far from Sweden as it's possible to get!)
However, in general subscribing internationally has the advantage of ensuring you don't miss anything, it's generally quicker and (if you like PDFs as well) you'll get automatic access to those things you subscribe to that have PDFs. If you subscribe to all four physical product lines you'll get 15% off purchases through Paizo (including subscription orders) plus the Starfinder society subscription perks for nothing - nonetheless, that often doesn't cover for the extra shipping:
The disadvantage tends to be on price as Paizo don't subsidise their shipping costs. I've also heard that many European countries face high import duties on games/accessories and so on. Besides the extra monetary cost, that can also result in delays.
You'll need a swede to confirm those kinds of specifics. :)
If you want to see an estimate of the costs - add all the "expected in August" products to your shopping cart and then go to the second numbered box to review your shipping options. It won't show you the 15% discount, but you'll be able to calculate what you're likely to pay (after that, you can backtrack to your shopping cart and empty it without spending anything). Then you could compare against local prices.
It's worth noting that Amazon will often be very cheap but they are somewhat unreliable in terms of meeting street dates for RPG products.
One big advantage of subscribing is that you have Paizo customer service to fall back on if anything goes awry. That happens rarely, but when it does they are all terrific at sorting out any problems quickly and fairly.
Another consideration for you might be who you want to support. Buying local means keeping local people employed and keeping a physical presence for gaming in your area. Subscribing likely means Paizo make more dollars (since they can be both publisher and retailer without needing to pay a distributor).
Paizo are happy to get sales through all the various distribution channels, so their view has always been that we customers should choose what works for each of us.
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I'm not sure about the costs for Sweden, but for me in the Netherlands it's cheaper for the hardcovers to buy the PDF when it's released and then the hardcover in a local store than to have those shipped by Paizo under a subscription.
The softcovers are just around the price that it's slightly cheaper to have a subscription to get both booklet and pdf.
So, your best bet is to check on the customs site to see how much extra costs you might end up with if you take a subscription and decide from there.
To clarify the cost/benefit of hardcovers for me:
Book: 59,99
Shipping: I'll use 10 here for easy of calculation since I'm not entirely sure anymore
Total costs 70 dollar (61,59 euro at current rates)
Because I'm importing from outside the EU anything over 22 euro (25 dollar) but under 150 euro I will get hit by duty tax (is that the correct word?) of 21% because it's a luxury good: 12,93.
Then as an extra kick in the wallet the postal company charges 13 euro for doing the filing of that tax for me.
This means I pay roughly 26 euro on top of the listed price for the hardcover, for a total of about 90 euro.
When getting the book at the store I'll most likely pay 60 euro (experience taught me that dollar price = euro price when comparing paizo.com to local stores), and can get the pdf for 10 dollar (currently 8,80 euro), which works out to be more beneficial for my wallet :)
So I was originally going to order off amazon prior to the subscription details being released, given I have prime shipping, and over all it was going to be less when compared to paizo's price + shipping.
Basically when buying from amazon the discount on the items + free shipping subsidized purchasing the pdfs in general from paizo direct.
What finally changed my mind was the supersubscriber status with the 15% off + free pdfs + free society pdfs + cheepest shipping, which ends up being about the same or slightly less than the amazon cost. I may have to purchase a couple items I otherwise wouldn't have via the subscription, but over time I think it works out better.
As for the particulars of shipping to the EU. You'll have import duties, and probably VAT which will suck. However, gifts from friends outside the EU may be exempt when under a certain threshold.
If you add the subscriptions it should cancel all the preorders automatically, so just place an order for the ones you want (if you want everything, order the four "physical" subscription and you'll get treated as having the SF Society subscription as a free perk).
Having said that, the system has been a little glitchy and I'm not sure if they've ironed out all the wrinkles yet so you'll want to check your sidecart to ensure everything looks correct. If not, CS can manually kick everything into shape for you - you'll just need to post a thread in the CS forum.