Nikosandros
Golden Procrastinator
Do they also have data for the more recent books?
D&D 5E 5E Lifetime Sales in North American Big Box Stores Revealed
Hussar
Legend
I believe you were reading that wrong.I do not think this is true. Slaying the Dragon has supposed 1st edition sales numbers, according to them Basic D&D (which would be the red boz) was selling 500,000 units a year in the early 80s and the 1st edition PHB and DMG at the time were each selling over 200,000 units a year.
Here is one post from the past on this:
D&D General - TSR D&D sales numbers compiled by Benjamin Riggs
D&D historian Ben Riggs--author of the upcoming Slaying the Dragon, which is a history of TSR-era (not that TSR, the real one) D&D--compiled some sales figures of AD&D 1st Edition's Player's Handbook and Dungeon Master's Guide from 1979-1990. Behold! Some actual D&D sales numbers! While...www.enworld.org
The PHB was only in the 2-300 000 range for three years. Most of the lifespan of 1e, it was selling in the 1-200k range.
Zardnaar
Legend
Yeah something like half of the sales of 1E happened in 1/3rd of the time.
Took 5E around 4-5 years to ramp up to that level.
No one believed me when I pointed out years ago the Amazon rankings could be a comparatively few books per day but all day every day over 7-10 years adds up to a whole lotta books.
That and people took estimated player numbers put of context eg all players all editions over 45 years.
Hussar
Legend
I don't think there's any doubt that 5e is the most popular version of D&D. I don't think that can be disputed.
What blows my mind though is that it keeps growing. We still haven't peaked. Year on year of fantastic growth and it's still chugging along.
I remember when 5e was the Hail Mary edition to try to keep the lights on.
What blows my mind though is that it keeps growing. We still haven't peaked. Year on year of fantastic growth and it's still chugging along.
I remember when 5e was the Hail Mary edition to try to keep the lights on.
Azzy
ᚳᚣᚾᛖᚹᚢᛚᚠ
Heh, when I was a kid in the mid-to-late 80s, just about all my D&D books came from Waldenbooks. I never knew back then that there were gaming stores.
Zardnaar
Legend
May have peaked a year or two ago hidden by dollar signs. Good problem to have though.
Newer adventures are selling around half the older ones in their first few weeks. Not sure what that indicates. Edition fatigue maybe or to many adventures if you've been buying for a while idk.
Personally I think they've been meh fir a while and stopped buying a couple of years ago. Even then it was with store credit others paid for.
Hussar
Legend
Why are you saying that?
Zardnaar
Legend
I watched the 2 hour video which included the sales for the first 4 weeks.
Older adventures will generally have higher lifetime sales.
The newer adventures aren't selling as well comparatively.
Nikosandros
Golden Procrastinator
I've also read the claim that the newest releases are selling less well, but I haven't waded into the 2-hours+ video and that's why I made my earlier post. I was hoping someone had watched it and could corroborate or confute.
Nikosandros
Golden Procrastinator
Thanks.
