how much has COVID-19 impacted production?
We know that most Paizo employees work from home, but what about printers? and things being shipped TO paizo warehouse(s)?
I don't work for Paizo, but I do know that many non-Paizo items have had their release dates delayed, and no already existing product in my sidecart has shipped since this whole situation began.
On the Paizo side, they have struggled to complete monthly shipments in the usual shipping window, but I have seen little evidence of products being delayed at the Paizo end solely because of the current situation. (Shipment to other countries is a whole other situation, as you can see in the associated sticky thread in Customer Service.)
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Since March, there has barely been any physical product on sale across major European territory outlets such as Amazon or BookRepository. Very few listings on Amazon, and BookRepository which holds complete product line until the end of the year listed takes preorders but doesn't ship anything, claiming to await production for each of them.
Amazon had cancelled sale on many products (such as Bestiary 2 Special Edition) despite ongoing preorder, and no one lists new Paizo products there for two months now. Paizo products have unrealistically high prices (above MSRP) on Adventure Paths but even ordering them will result in temporarily out of print status.
It seems that production is yet completely halted and backorders are not respected, and there's no clue when the whole back ordered catalog from March until now will be produced, if ever (or whether in smaller print runs resulting much more difficulty acquiring product).
I am happy that PDFs are released on time, but unless we have clear idea what is going on with physical products, it doesn't look good.
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Since March, there has barely been any physical product on sale across major European territory outlets such as Amazon or BookRepository. Very few listings on Amazon, and BookRepository which holds complete product line until the end of the year listed takes preorders but doesn't ship anything, claiming to await production for each of them.
Amazon had cancelled sale on many products (such as Bestiary 2 Special Edition) despite ongoing preorder, and no one lists new Paizo products there for two months now. Paizo products have unrealistically high prices (above MSRP) on Adventure Paths but even ordering them will result in temporarily out of print status.
It seems that production is yet completely halted and backorders are not respected, and there's no clue when the whole back ordered catalog from March until now will be produced, if ever (or whether in smaller print runs resulting much more difficulty acquiring product).
I am happy that PDFs are released on time, but unless we have clear idea what is going on with physical products, it doesn't look good.
In fairness, Amazon is always like that.
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Erik Mona was on the glass cannon podcast “cannon fodder” a few weeks back and indicated there’d been very minimal impact. He mentioned that their printers in China are big enough so that as regions were shut down there they were able to move the production to other factories.
(I believe the delays in the various Absalom products were due to him being stretched thin, creatively rather than any production delays.)
No doubt there has been a slowdown in freight times, but I know the warehouse has still been receiving product pretty consistently. I think the delays and so on are more to do with Paizo -> us, rather than printer -> Paizo.
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Since March, there has ***
Amazon also had the whole "only keep essential products in stock" thing going.
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No doubt there has been a slowdown in freight times, but I know the warehouse has still been receiving product pretty consistently. I think the delays and so on are more to do with Paizo -> us, rather than printer -> Paizo.
Paizo is in a good location as far as this is concerned. Being right there in Seattle means that the truck only has to go an hour or so from the port to them, as opposed to halfway across the country. Even if freight time is increased by 200%, it would be barely noticeable from the consumer side.
I understand the negative sentiment towards Amazon killing the brick and mortar and the LGS. but for the European market there is no other stable distributor that can get you the books.
Now even that source is not reliable. The smaller game-industry focused distributors do not get the books either. Nobody in Europe gets them at the moment. I have preorders waiting for months with no clear indication that they would be fulfilled.
As for Paizo subscriptions unless they have European distribution warehouses, the shipping on products to even major European addresses (not counting Central or Eastern Europe) is not feasible. S&H costs have jumped close to 20% this year on US threatening to leave the UPU) to a point where the shipping costs more than the book.
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The ugly truth is that Europe is 10-20% of D&D/PF market at best. Unless that changes, the amount of money, time and energy put into getting the books quickly in the Yurpeen hands will amount to "well, Amazon sells there and we do ship some stuff to Esdevium/Pegasus/Rebel".
But it likely won't change, as D&D and its offshoots are "the roleplaying games" in the US and "just another fantasy game, but we have DSA/Warhammer for that" in EU.
Sure, I still don't understand why Amazon, BookRepository, even Blackfire/Asmodee are not getting product.
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Sure, I still don't understand why Amazon, BookRepository, even Blackfire/Asmodee are not getting product.
In Australia, one of the first things that happened was that the air freight companies slashed their capacity. That had a spill-in effect to other, slower methods of shipping as well (as some people opted for those methods, in lieu of queuing for a nebulous air freight delivery date). Even though those slower methods didn’t drop their volume by as much.
The upshot being that a lot of product is still coming to us, but much, much slower than we’re used to. That looks like companies are “out of stock” when, in fact, they’re labelling shipping delays in that way. Maybe there’s a similar phenomenon occurring in trans-Atlantic shipping?
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Sure, I still don't understand why Amazon, BookRepository, even Blackfire/Asmodee are not getting product.
Because they're getting their books from Diamonds/Alliance, US largest distributor of comic books and TTRPGs, which has mostly halted operations due to COVID-19. Paizo is way too small to deal directly with Amazon or Bookdepository, they all get their books from distributors.
You're lucky Paizo didn't halt doing new books, like comic book companies had to, faced with a complete shutdown of physical distribution.
Erik Mona was on the glass cannon podcast “cannon fodder” a few weeks back and indicated there’d been very minimal impact.
Are you sure this is the source? I see the last Cannon Fodder episode as being uploaded in June of 2019.
Yeah they've moved to patreon exclusive now.
Later episodes of cannon fodder (rebooted this year) are only available via crowdcast now and you need to back at the $10 level, I believe, to access them.
Sure, I still don't understand why Amazon, BookRepository, even Blackfire/Asmodee are not getting product.
Well...
Since March, there has ***Amazon also had the whole "only keep essential products in stock" thing going.
Amazon isn't the only one doing that, and others are either closed, or at reduced capacity. then there is the whole transportation of non-essential goods issue.
Thanks a lot for your explanation. It is good that RPGs have moved almost completely to PDFs for immediate distribution fo content, with books being more or less luxury and a sign of support for great product. However I am a bit anxious that I might not be able to buy books printed during this "transformation" period, and mainly worried how this would affect printing runs (probably a lot of H1 2020 product will be printed in less numbers due to missed opportunity with distribution).
... maybe this was the wrong sub-forum to ask...
how much has COVID-19 impacted production?
We know that most Paizo employees work from home, but what about printers? and things being shipped TO paizo warehouse(s)?
... maybe this was the wrong sub-forum to ask...
No, it was the right forum.It's just that you're asking for private information from a private company.
When you post on public boards, you're going to get public input, not corporate data from the CEO or anyone else further down the hierarchy.
In fact, I'll even bet that if you wrote them a nice private email, they still wouldn't give you that information.
how much has COVID-19 impacted production?
We know that most Paizo employees work from home, but what about printers? and things being shipped TO paizo warehouse(s)?
... maybe this was the wrong sub-forum to ask...No, it was the right forum.It's just that you're asking for private information from a private company.
When you post on public boards, you're going to get public input, not corporate data from the CEO or anyone else further down the hierarchy.
In fact, I'll even bet that if you wrote them a nice private email, they still wouldn't give you that information.
Not asking for exact numbers or info...
Not in terms of Paizo, but as an 'essential' worker in a retail environment, I can safely indicate that the supply chains have been messed up quite a bit the past four or five months.
This has not been helped by folks 'panic buying' everything and denuding our shelves of product for nearly two months.
...and we're a brick and mortar grocery/drug store.
Our overall Corporate over-people have been trying to get saleable items of *any* sort in that entire time, and some of the brands folks never heard of before this.
Meanwhile, things like 'Chlorox' wipes, 'Dial' handsoap, 'Softsoap' are non-existent.
So if we've been seeing and are continuing to see an impact, there is a good chance that a publisher is also going to see that.