Pathfinder 1E Why Didn't Paizo Do their Own "Dragon/Dungeon?"

[Mark Plemmons]

Just chiming in with my two cents...

I'd say that James' and Erik's comments on the difficulties of magazine publishing are pretty much right on.

Our Knights of the Dinner Table gaming magazine has been around for over a decade, giving it a good subscription base and name recognition that would be hard to match by a new startup gaming mag (without spending the aforementioned lots-of-money on advertising). But even with that, it's still not cost-effective for us to put it on the magazine racks in the big chain bookstores.

Magazine publishing on a huge scale demands a huge investment of time and money which, IMHO and as others have said, could be better put into other aspects of the company.

 

[JDJblatherings]

Magazines are an expenisve and time consuming product. I've been a small magazine publisher on and off for years. You can get onto newstands rather easily but only ones you can reach. And there is the rub...how the heck do you reach thousands of newstands, all the time? You ultimately need a distributor.

I've published, edited or given advice for a fair numebr of zines tryign to make the jump from limited distribution to widescale distribution and it's a hat trick. One magazine was doing very well, had managed to get into the borders and barnes and noble systems (in a very limited fashion but still pulle dit off) but the publisher couldn't find a distribution deal publsiher liked...I was disapointed the publisher could have made a meager living if it took off in it's first year of wider distribution but that also required the publisher to change her publsihing methods and take on greater responsibilities.

Producing a periodical is a horrible grind also. You can't really work on just one at a time and hope it will be a success. You have to work on a couple of issues at a time and that costs the publisher money. Even if yuo can get articles in that are good and yuo dont' have to pay the auhtors ntil date of publication you still need art and proof readers and editors and someone to manage physical production. you need to have printing times scheduled in advance. You need to sell ads. Every month for this month, next month, three months from now all of the time for the life of the periodical.


As for the path of print to digital...from what I've seen it's always been a failure. Digital media can supplement and archive or be the original point of production but folks don't really follow from print to digitial, it just doesn't happen (at least not yet). Publishers get lazy without the demands of print forcing them to move their butts, revenues dry up as ads decrease and there is less funds to produce as before.
How many "issues" of Dragon or Dungeon have been produced since they were no longer in print? One and a half? Are they holding back until they can charge?

As for Dragon and Dungeon I know how I'd deal with that situation were I a publisher with moderately deep pockets but I'm saving that for other venues.

 

[EATherrian]

I'll be very curious to see how well Pathfinder does, on a subscription basis, once all of the Pathfinder subscriptions that were carryovers from Dragon/Dungeon subscriptions wear off. I suspect a lot of their initial subscriptions were from these carryovers, from people whom Paizo already had money from.

In my case, my carryover subscription got me the first three Pathfinder installments. I was very impressed with the quality...but the theme and tone weren't something that interested me, and I didn't re-up the subscription to complete this first adventure path.

Mine ended with issue 4 and I re-upped for 5. Since, for me at least, Dungeon and Dragon are dead and gone (I absolutely refuse to read them online because I physically can't) I need a monthly fix. I'm also looking at Kobold Quarterly.

 

[Scribble]

I don't have much time right now, so I'm going to try to cover this as swiftly as I can.

Thank you very much for taking time out of your day to explain that. I figured that you'd done the research (obviously) but was simply curious as to what that research told you. I never realized how insane the magazine market is.

 

[freyar]

Mine ended with issue 4 and I re-upped for 5. Since, for me at least, Dungeon and Dragon are dead and gone (I absolutely refuse to read them online because I physically can't) I need a monthly fix. I'm also looking at Kobold Quarterly.

I got the first two on transition and decided to subscribe through #6 for the whole AP. Even if I never run them, I am sure getting my money's worth of enjoyment just reading them. FWIW, they are even higher quality and more tightly put together than the magazines. I wish I had the shelf space to get more, but I am seriously thinking about just buying the PDFs each month. KQ is also excellent so far, so, if you're jonesing for a magazine, go buy a back issue for cheap on PDF. You might be convinced to subscribe -- I know I was.

 

[balterkn]

Listening to the discussion, there seems to be some feeling as to how much a magazine should cost in print, that gets into stores. However, many people don't subscribe to "non mass market" magazines (those being things like Time). Here are three that I purchase on rare occasions. These are the PER-ISSUE, non-subscription, cover prices.

Harvard Business Review (monthly, http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/hbr/hbr_current_issue.jhtml): 16.95
Journal of International Affairs (monthly, http://jia.sipa.columbia.edu): 10.00
Make Magazine (hobby technology, quarterly, http://makezine.com/magazine/): 14.99

HBR has a significantly larger subscription basis than Dragon or Dungeon would ever have had.

Comparison with Time ($4.95 cover) is not applicable, because Time has a wider audience appeal, MANY more subscribers, and thus much larger ad revenues. Even something like Macworld (monthly, ~$7.99) is more heavily subscribed, backed by a company (Apple), and has significant ad revenue. PC Magazine supports the sale of products from many vendors, so those companies advertise because people who are about to buy a computer may buy the magazine (we techno-elite may not, but many people do). Thus, these magazines are not really comparable to a gaming/d20 magazine.

Browse your magazine rack at your local B&B/Borders. Look at the more "Journal" style products, which focus more on articles than news or product reviews. $10-20 is not uncommon.

Hence, my feeling for years that Dungeon and Dragon Magazines were a "steal" given their content to advertisement ratio. The fact that something like Pathfinder is a "Book" for $20/month - the price isn't surprising to me. Being a book, it can stay on shelves. It can also be reprinted (magazines/periodicals cannot typically), so if you want to run an AP, you will likely still be able to buy it for a long time.

 

[apotheon]

Listening to the discussion, there seems to be some feeling as to how much a magazine should cost in print, that gets into stores. However, many people don't subscribe to "non mass market" magazines (those being things like Time). Here are three that I purchase on rare occasions. These are the PER-ISSUE, non-subscription, cover prices.

Harvard Business Review (monthly, http://www.hbsp.harvard.edu/b01/en/hbr/hbr_current_issue.jhtml): 16.95
Journal of International Affairs (monthly, http://jia.sipa.columbia.edu): 10.00
Make Magazine (hobby technology, quarterly, http://makezine.com/magazine/): 14.99

HBR has a significantly larger subscription basis than Dragon or Dungeon would ever have had.

You seem to be missing an important point, here: people are talking about a magazine that has much the same market characteristics as those mass-market magazines, with the exception of actual market size.

Time, People, and Car & Driver are all magazines with incredible market volatility. Harvard Business Review and Journal of International Affairs are both magazines that have an almost fixed market -- the same number of people will buy it, with only very minor variance, regardless of changes in cover price (within very broad limits). In fact, considering the market for Harvard Business Review (I'm a little less familiar with JIA), you could probably gradually increase its cover price to about $24 over the course of the next few years, even assuming no inflation (yeah, right), and still sell to about 98% of the current market.

Something like Time, and even more so for something like People or Car & Driver, and even more so than that for something like Dragon, is a lot more susceptible to variance in demand based on the price. There's a far greater dilettantism factor at play for these magazines, which is the reason they have to maintain much lower magazine cover prices than something like Harvard Business Review.

As for Make Magazine, the shine hasn't even worn off yet, so there isn't really a lot that can be said for its long-term market demand characteristics at this time. Give it another three or four years before we start seeing reliable enough data on its long-term market demand.

 

[balterkn]

You seem to be missing an important point, here: people are talking about a magazine that has much the same market characteristics as those mass-market magazines, with the exception of actual market size.

Time, People, and Car & Driver are all magazines with incredible market volatility. Harvard Business Review and Journal of International Affairs are both magazines that have an almost fixed market -- the same number of people will buy it, with only very minor variance, regardless of changes in cover price (within very broad limits). In fact, considering the market for Harvard Business Review (I'm a little less familiar with JIA), you could probably gradually increase its cover price to about $24 over the course of the next few years, even assuming no inflation (yeah, right), and still sell to about 98% of the current market.

Something like Time, and even more so for something like People or Car & Driver, and even more so than that for something like Dragon, is a lot more susceptible to variance in demand based on the price. There's a far greater dilettantism factor at play for these magazines, which is the reason they have to maintain much lower magazine cover prices than something like Harvard Business Review.

As for Make Magazine, the shine hasn't even worn off yet, so there isn't really a lot that can be said for its long-term market demand characteristics at this time. Give it another three or four years before we start seeing reliable enough data on its long-term market demand.

I see your points. I guess I feel that Dragon and Dungeon were more in the HBR category because their were niche publications with a fairly fixed audience also. Of course, HBR is probably considered to be an "essential publication" for people involved in executive leadership. If the demand for Dragon/Dungeon is as elastic as you indicate, then I'd fully agree that the $5-8 range/issue is the average range. I just don't have much evidence to go on.

I was thinking that hobbyist magazine pricing was the better route for a comparable. Unfortunately, other than Make, I realized I didn't have any here at home to compare with. I avoided things like QST (Ham Radio), as it is part of a membership price and not marketed on shelves (as far as I know). I thought of HBR because it tends to focus more on articles and less on advertising space than Time (after years of Dungeon, I picked up Time recently and was stunned at the extreme number of ads).

I'm probably wrong, but just though I'd see if we could get a different perspective on this debate.

*shrug*