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Not sure if this is the right thread for this question or not but here it goes anyways.
Why are the prices on Paizo's website so different form the prices on Amazon.com?
For example, I can get the print edition of Starfinder Adventure Path: Incident at Absalom Station for $15.63 plus tax on Amazon.com. On paizo.com I can get the print edition for $22.99 or the pdf version for $15.99. The print version on Amazon is even cheaper than the pdf version on Paizo. Side note, prices for this item in games stores matches the price on Paizo.com. It makes it hard to support local game shops when the item is so much cheaper on Amazon.
Paizo also charges a shipping charge on top of this cost where on Amazon I can spend $25 and get free 3-5 day shipping. I have also checked and most of the products are sold and shipped directly by Amazon and not another seller.
This price difference is pretty similar across all products.
I am assuming that Paizo sells their products directly to Amazon. Does Paizo give a huge discount to Amazon or is Amazon just taking a loss on these sales? If Paizo is giving this disount to Amazon, why do they charge so much on their site? I feel like this is somehow disrespecting the people who want to directly support Paizo or local game shops?
A member of Paizo's excellent customer service staff will be able to give a far better answer than I, but generally speaking, Paizo doesn't want to undercut all of the game stores and other retailers that support Pathfinder/Starfinder/Etc. and thus sell products at the same price they suggest retailers sell at.
Amazon, on the other other hand, not only doesn't care about undercutting retailers, but actively wants to do so in a bid to become the world's one stop shop.
This last bit is just my personal opinion, but yes, one can get products cheaper than one can through a retailer or directly through Paizo, but in so doing, one could argue that it is not supporting the community that has allowed the game to thrive in the first place.
Hi Psilo Anthro,
To add some more detail to coyotegosel's post (thanks for chiming in):
We don't sell our products directly to retailers. Any retailer carrying our products gets them through a distributor(s), including Amazon. Amazon sets their own prices.
While Amazon is able to offer the lowest prices they can, many retail gaming stores rely on our prices to be fair in order to allow them to sell copies as well. If we were to lower our prices past the MSRP many people would buy the books through us directly instead of supporting their local retail providers. While they might not be buying the books directly from us they are still buying our products which helps to support us, the same goes for books purchased through Amazon.
As for shipping - the shipping prices we offer on our website are the amount we pay for shipping, as its not our goal to make profit on the costs of shipping. We only have one warehouse here at Paizo that we ship all of our products from, whereas Amazon has many, many warehouses globally which allow them to ship from a large range of locations, significantly reducing their cost of shipping since they're shipping from a much closer location.
While we try to offer the best deals we can for our products from our website, we can't always offer the best deal to everyone compared to other retailers. If you end up buying from Amazon, or any other retailer, you are still buying our products which helps support us, and we appreciate that!
Thanks!
~Sharaya