Starfinder Why Did Paizo Never Make A Pathfinder/Starfinder Magazine?

[Joshua Randall]

This was the massively fortuitous advantage they had — the whole subscription base of Dragon and Dungeon magazine

Yes. Getting the client list is hugely valuable, and it's pretty shocking Wizards was willing to give that up.

Somebody negotiated a very good deal for Paizo, either in the original negotiations when they started publishing Dragon / Dungeon magazines, or in the negotiations when they stopped publishing those.

 

[Staffan]

Yes. Getting the client list is hugely valuable, and it's pretty shocking Wizards was willing to give that up.

Somebody negotiated a very good deal for Paizo, either in the original negotiations when they started publishing Dragon / Dungeon magazines, or in the negotiations when they stopped publishing those.

The former, I think. As I understand it, Paizo operated as a separate company from Wizards from the start, and published the magazines under a license from Wizards. They did not publish the magazines for Wizards. So they inherited the original subscriber list when they took over publishing the magazines, but after that they maintained it on their own.

 

[Henry]

The former, I think. As I understand it, Paizo operated as a separate company from Wizards from the start, and published the magazines under a license from Wizards. They did not publish the magazines for Wizards. So they inherited the original subscriber list when they took over publishing the magazines, but after that they maintained it on their own.

Yeah, the reason WotC gave up the magazine publishing in the first place was a desire to divest it completely, so they sold all that to Paizo along with the licensing contract. As to why Paizo didn’t continue a magazine, it was already not a great money-maker for them to produce in that format (paper costs, subscription prices, etc.) they already had the vending web site by the time the license was being pulled, so just continuing to produce a magazine with the same form factor and no official D&D license, as far as Paizo knew, was business suicide.

So as Russ said, perfect storm of subscriber lists, vendor site, writing staff, and the burgeoning adventure paths that were just showing signs of taking off (Shackled City, Age of Worms, that-sea-one-I-can-never-remember).

 

[Hussar]

[MENTION=158]Henry[/MENTION] - Savage Tide.

But, yeah, the print magazines were brutal, apparently. The US Postal service and the distribution channels were insane. Something like a 6 month lead in time - a magazine is published in January and you don't get paid until June sort of thing. Meaning you have massive amounts of capital wrapped up that you can't actually use. Constant issues with delivery and whatnot. From the editorials from [MENTION=42043]Eric[/MENTION] Mona and posts that I used to see around, the whole magazine business was just brutal as heck.

And, really, it shows. Most of the genre magazines are gone now or have gone mostly or totally digital. It's just far too much money to try to publish a magazine on the scales of Dungeon or Dragon.