Paizo Publishing has 26 full-time employees according to CEO Lisa Stevens.
I had no idea. Everyone tells me how dead and dying this industry is that I assumed that other than WotC, no other publisher had more than a few core (2-3) full-time employees, and maybe a half-dozen companies were at that level.
I had no idea. Everyone tells me how dead and dying this industry is that I assumed that other than WotC, no other publisher had more than a few core (2-3) full-time employees, and maybe a half-dozen companies were at that level.
Steve Jackson talks about things like that on the Daily Illuminator sometimes, so I knew roughly how many employees he has. Still, it was interesting to hear Lisa and others talk some numbers. I guessed higher than you, but the numbers they give are astonishingly low!
ReplyDeleteI'd guess that certain toy soldier company is probably twice as big as everyone full time employed in our hobby. If that isn't humbling I don't know what is.
26 full time employees is pretty darn small. One software firm that makes niche applications can easily have 200 staff. At around the 500 person mark a business is considered "medium sized", 26 is still probably considered a microbusiness.
ReplyDeleteit might be small in the sense of a software company, but in the realms of this niche hobby of ours 26 is damn big.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the "full time" employee part is something not to overlook. When I wrote for the Motley Fool, it was a multi-million dollar revenue operation with maybe 40 or 50 full-time employees. The rest were all contract, part-time, or freelance workers.
ReplyDeleteFor a business model like Paizo, you could have a much larger number of contributors feeding into the operation without being counted as FT employees.