Paizo Price of Paizo PDFs goes up in 10 days

[Reynard]

Yes, I acknowledged that in my post. My argument is all about the cost of producing the physical product vs. the PDF. I explicitly excluded the art writing and editing and related.

Emphasis mine.

The only way to know which is more profitable is to know how much (if at all) the publisher increases the print product cost over the actual cost of printing, storing and shipping to the customer.

 

[Koloth]

Possible that part of the reason for the price increases is to cover the costs of the Remaster/ORC rewrites of many of the PF2/SF2 lineup. ORC remaster was an unplanned expense and the money has to come from somewhere. Could also explain why much of the lineup is staying the same price. Don't need to do an ORC remaster of a flip map.

 

[Dire Bare]

Appeal to authority?...

No, I'm not in publishing, but I know how financials work, I know how math works and I know that producing a non physical product is almost always less expensive than producing a physical product (direct labor, materials and overhead in producing the book itself vs. producing a PDF.) Note, I'm not talking about the cost of the content itself (art, writing, editing, etc), which as far as I'm aware would be the same regardless of the media)

Appeal to authority? No. Appeal to expertise? Yes.

You have no idea what you are talking about. You have no expertise, and don't listen to those with expertise.

 

[Micah Sweet]

I don't think it is particularly inconsistent. They had a threshold for where they decided the price should and could increase, and the things with lower page counts than that were exempt.

But again, the factors that go into the price increases per their announcement are the same for all PDFs they produce. Why raise some and not others? Why do so without explanation?

 

[cranberry]

Emphasis mine.

The only way to know which is more profitable is to know how much (if at all) the publisher increases the print product cost over the actual cost of printing, storing and shipping to the customer.

I'm simply talking about producing a book vs a PDF with all other factors held constant. If you want to discuss other cost and their impact on profitability, pull out a p&l and let's review.

 

[Morrus]

But again, the factors that go into the price increases per their announcement are the same for all PDFs they produce. Why raise some and not others? Why do so without explanation?

Well, none of us know exactly how they arrive at their prices—and we may want to know exactly how a company prices its products, but we’re not entitled to an explanation. 99% of things we buy in this world we won’t have access to a fraction of the info we have about game companies.

 

[Reynard]

I'm simply talking about producing a book vs a PDF with all other factors held constant. If you want to discuss other cost and their impact on profitability, pull out a p&l and let's review.

Let's review
You made the claim

Pdfs cost less to produce than physical books, allowing companies to increase their margin, that's why the do it. Just like PC gaming, digital distribution is cheaper than producing physical copies of their game. On a $20 item, $3 is 15 percent which is a decent margin differential between physical and digital.

It's not printing free money, but it's certainly more profitable than physical books.

My point is there is nothing inherently more profitable inherent in a PDF than in a print product. Both have costs associated with production, and both have a price point that the market will bear. I am curious why you think, then, that PDFs are inherently more profitable than a physical book if you yourself are ignoring all other costs.

Paizo is a game book publisher. That is their core business. Their support of the PDF market and Open Gaming is an adjunct to their primary business: selling you physical books. More specifically -- directly selling you physical books. They will sell you a PDF, but what they really want you to do is subscribe to the physical books and in return they will give you the PDF. That in itself strongly suggests that they don't sell PDFs "because they are more profitable."

 

[cranberry]

Let's review
You made the claim

My point is there is nothing inherently more profitable inherent in a PDF than in a print product. Both have costs associated with production, and both have a price point that the market will bear. I am curious why you think, then, that PDFs are inherently more profitable than a physical book if you yourself are ignoring all other costs.

Paizo is a game book publisher. That is their core business. Their support of the PDF market and Open Gaming is an adjunct to their primary business: selling you physical books. More specifically -- directly selling you physical books. They will sell you a PDF, but what they really want you to do is subscribe to the physical books and in return they will give you the PDF. That in itself strongly suggests that they don't sell PDFs "because they are more profitable."

To your first point, I think it's indisputable that pdfs are less expensive to produce than physical books. If you wish to believe otherwise, That's on you.

To your second point, selling pdfs may not be their primary business, but that doesn't change the fact that the pdfs they sell cost less to produce than books

 

[Jahydin]

Sad the Core books are going up. The really low cost was great to get people interested to take the initial plunge.