Subscription and early PDF suggestion

[SpoiledEntertainment]

So with some, if not all, subscriptions you get the PDF for free once your order ships. However, there is no guarantee when your order will ship.

Instead of doing 'When your order ships you get the PDF' why not do something like
'2 weeks before the release date, your order is locked in (no canceling after that point) and you get the PDF'?

Since the order includes digital content anyway, I'm fairly certain you can't refund it to begin with, and if there is the disclosure of being locked in on a certain date there should be no issue. Or even have an option to opt-in/out of this feature (Though I get that would be more work).

But would it not incentivize more people to subscribe if they KNOW they'll get the PDF early, rather than just hope they get it early?

[Steve Geddes]

It would be an incentive, but it would also annoy the a FLGS owners (many of whom have historically had something of an issue with Paizo’s subscription model). Paizo could, after all, make “getting it early” a perk of subscribing and send us our books a month before releasing them to the world. They need to balance keeping lots of different groups happy as they want sales through all their distribution channels.

The fact we sometimes get a PDF early is not actually a perk, it’s more an unintended consequence of the way their IT system deals with things (having been developed when the volume of subscription orders was way, way smaller and the shipping window shorter). If Paizo were to move to an “all-at-once PDF release” it would be on streetdate.