Meaningful Sales Analysis?

Filcher · Oct 4, 2008

So I've been poking around in Amazon, looking at sales ranks for the later adventures. My reasoning is that, sure everyone bought the KotS, but whether or not they bought the others in the series should offer an indication if folks are actually playing the game.

As of Oct 4:

Keep on the Shadowfell (H1): #4,770 in Books

Thunderspire Labyrinth (H2): #5,702 in Books

Pyramid of Shadows (H3): #5,302 in Books

It appears, to me, that sales are holding, thus folks that are interested in 4E, continue to play it.

The Goodman Games releases seem to be holding their own, with Sellswords of Punjar at #84,415 in Books, and Dragora's Dungeon at #90,971 in Books. Meanwhile, Goodman's last "regular" 3.5 adventure, Vault of the Iron Overlord, is at #344,759 in Books. This would lead one to believe that Goodman made the right choice in supporting 4E.

Frustratingly, I couldn't find any of the other 3PP releases on Amazon. Wraith Recon gave me "available in November" while Expeditious Retreat's AGP isn't listed.

JoeGKushner · Oct 4, 2008

Time will tell.

Without hard numbers, these threads pretty much evolve into "think", "he said/she said" etc...

Glyfair · Oct 4, 2008

Also remember the "long tail" principle as it applies to Amazon. As explained elsewhere (by Ryan Dancey, IIRC) Amazon operates under this principle. Essentially, at a certain point all the "best seller" ratings tend to blur together.

Fir example, Amazon might only have to sell 1 copy a week to reach the top 10,000 in a specific week. I expect that there is no meaningful difference between either of Goodman Games entries because of this principle (i.e. the 100,000 place and 350,00 place have little statistical difference in sales).

That makes it very hard to actually judge how well something is really selling based on their ranking.

ki11erDM · Oct 5, 2008

I am thinking the later ones are a bit harder to judge by because they depend on people finishing an adventure per month. And in my group we take 2 or more months... : (

justanobody · Oct 5, 2008

Are those ranking numbers or number of books sold? If they are number of books sold it seems 4th adventures are doing better with each new one.

Hunter In Darkness · Oct 5, 2008

I don't know about amazion I do know that my books a million has sold 3 of 40 and they sit there while there 3e stuff is now out of stock. The manger said they just dont sale well at all.

many of the sold units from wizard have found there ways to stores like this, I dont know we'll see in 3 or 4 years down the line.

Filcher · Oct 5, 2008

justanobody said:
Are those ranking numbers or number of books sold? If they are number of books sold it seems 4th adventures are doing better with each new one.

Sales ranking. So Pyramid of Shadows didn't do as well as Keep on the Shadowfell (which makes sense), but did better than Thunderspire Labyrinth (which is encouraging). I know that the Amazon context doesn't extend to the larger market, but it does seem like we can look at the rankings an infer that:

"Among those that purchased KotS, 4E was well received."

The line of inference gets shaky from there. But that part III of the series is doing almost as well as part I is a sign that people are at least following the series.

Umbran · Oct 5, 2008

Meaningful? No. If I might suggest a bit of reading, try this article on Amazon sales rankings.

The basic point can be summarized with the quote: "You're not supposed to find the sales rankings informative or helpful. You're supposed to find them interesting." I would not use them to try to divine anything about actual sales performance. The numbers have been munged and sanitized to the point of only being vaguely indicative.

Filcher · Oct 5, 2008

Just for my own reference as I try to wrap my head around the equations:

2,000,000+ Perhaps a single inventory/consignment copy has been ordered

1,000,000+ Current trends indicate total sales will most likely be under 40

100,000+ Current trends indicate total sales will most likely be under 200

10,000+ Estimate between 1 - 10 copies being sold per week.

1,000+ Estimate between 10 - 100 copies being sold per week.

100+ Estimate between 100 - 200 copies being sold per week.

10+ Estimate between 200 - 1000 copies being sold per week.

Under 10 Estimate over 1,000 copies per week

JoeGKushner · Oct 5, 2008

Hunter In Darkness said:
I don't know about amazion I do know that my books a million has sold 3 of 40 and they sit there while there 3e stuff is now out of stock. The manger said they just dont sale well at all.

many of the sold units from wizard have found there ways to stores like this, I dont know we'll see in 3 or 4 years down the line.

And the other thing I hate about these threads.

My store.

Heck, by that standard, Black Sun Games, a new Chicagoland store, hasn't sold a single pack of Dungeons of Dread. Must be time to close the WoTC headquarters.

Localities unless possessing of total transparency, are useless.