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Pathfinder market is 70-80% US+CAN and Europe is just a part of the rest. It's simply not big enough to be a priority warranting stuff like the European branch of Paizo or dedicated warehouses+shipping.
For EU distributors, in the "fantasy RPG" category, the first priority is whatever is the favourite local game (DSA for Germany, Warhammer FRP for Poland etc.), the second is D&D and then comes Pathfinder.
Not going to happen, in other words. And I live in Europe.
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Most current Paizo products are in stock on Amazon.de, so not sure why they would take six weeks or more. Get Amazon Prime and the stuff arrives the next day. Hell, oder stuff like Ultimate Campaign from 1E is still there in stock.
i have a smal shop, but every distriburor who i'm working with told me that when i order for my shop it will take 8 weeks or more
Perhaps they mean for getting in a starting-out shipment if you have nothing right now? I'm sure that stores in Europe have new Paizo products on (and before) their release dates; I've seen Europeans on the boards say they've bought new releases from their FLGS on street date.
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First of all, 20-30% is the entire Rest of the World. Which includes Australia, New Zealand, Japan, entire South America, HK, TW, ROK, South Africa oh and US soldiers overseas. Europe is just a part of that.
Now, Europe. First of all, SPA/ITA/DE/FR/RU players will all expect their own language versions. So, you're partnering with local companies and license them out, which also means distribution and sales is out of your control.
You're left with people living in France and Germany who for some reason prefer English versions, Poland, NL, Scandinavia, places where people in your target market segment speak English better than Americans do. For sake of sanity, we're not looking at Luxembourg and Montenegro.
That's a slice of a slice of a slice. And even then, you're looking looking at countries like Poland, where Pathfinder plays 4th of 5th fiddle sales-wise, with Warhammer, D&D, Call of Cthulhu and One Local RPG Everybody Loves ahead.
Is there some small money to be made by installing a Paizo warehouse/branch in EU? Yes. Is it a good ROI? No.
BTW, back during the Dragon & Dungeon days, Paizo did have an EU warehouse to handle the shipping to Europe. It didn't go well.
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German versions tended to have pretty badly sounding translations (in the sense that classes and abilities didn't sound cool but rather dorky), so that's why there's a stigma against them in certain segments of the gaming population. My two groups and about everyone else I've played with in Hamburg only uses English materials. But there's a really large population of gamers who've grown up with DSA (Das Schwarze Auge, i.e. "The Black Eye") who prefer German materials, so I'm hardly representative.
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German versions tended to have pretty badly sounding translations (in the sense that classes and abilities didn't sound cool but rather dorky), so that's why there's a stigma against them in certain segments of the gaming population. My two groups and about everyone else I've played with in Hamburg only uses English materials. But there's a really large population of gamers who've grown up with DSA (Das Schwarze Auge, i.e. "The Black Eye") who prefer German materials, so I'm hardly representative.
Ulisses Spiele has the Pathfinder Licence and they literally use Google Translate without correcting the output to translate RPG books ! The translation is so lazy and bad that we prefer the original english version for American/British Systems. Ulisses Quality Control is also really lackluster ! A friend of mine has a Core Rulebook for the Iron Kingdoms RPG where right in the middle of magic chapter are pages from equipment chapter then the rest of the magic chapter and the missing pages from the magic chapter are in between the equipment chapter. He bought it from our Local Game Shop...
The Native German releases are usually fine as are releases from other publishers.
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That is totally false. Bashing is easy, doing it better, that is when you put your money where your mouth is.
I was a part of the Translation team for a long time, and I assure you, lazy was not the word used to describe our work.
There has been a learning process in the first books (ecspecially the CRB had some issues, yes, granted). But afterwards quality was always one of our main goals.
Iron Kingdoms is a completely different line with other persons for editing and proof reading. Bashing Pathfinder translations because of that book is like comparing apples and oranges.
After I had to leave the team because my workload demanded so much me that could not spare the time i needed to deliver quality product, the team had to readjust their workings. But this is the work of non-professionals working in their free time for an amount of money you'd normally find unaccaptable (there has been one exception now, i.e. the main translator Ulrich has now been hired by Ulisses).
So, why don't YOU help, to make it better. Saying "This is bad." is easy, making it better is the hard way.
A friend of mine has a Core Rulebook for the Iron Kingdoms RPG where right in the middle of magic chapter are pages from equipment chapter then the rest of the magic chapter and the missing pages from the magic chapter are in between the equipment chapter. He bought it from our Local Game Shop...
This sounds more like a printing error than anything else, and it does happen with Paizo's own books as well. Or at least it did once upon a time. Super rare, I imagine, but it's why I always page through my own books, when I get them. Just to make sure that there are no missing or wrongly inserted pages.
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Late to the party but I would love european shipping from Paizo :) In Romania we barely get PF2 content and D&D books are everywhere :( kinda sucks since im now switching to pf2 and i dont have from where to buy. PDFs dont cut it
I think most Europeans would be OK with english versions of the Books, no translation needed. I mean we play D&D in english (Rom-Glish aka Romanian English so a mix of both, but the source material is always in english since "fireball" sounds better than "bila de foc" )
I hope Paizo would find a way to send to the EU other than Amazon. Chaosium ships from their polish warehourse and they dont break the customers bank and it gets delivered fairly quickly in other countries
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I have seen Paizo products in some hobby stores in Warsaw, Poland actually.