Meant to reply to this, but life happened. Just remembered. So, yay insomnia?
I don’t know, but I’m sure they had fairly accurate sales figures in the 80s. They had later endemic problems, but I don’t know that keeping records of sales figures was one.
Keep in mind that in the mid-1980s TSR also struggled. A lot.
In 1983 TSR actually lost money and survived via a bank loan, which carried with it the stipulation of staff reduction. Eventually they ended up laying off three-quarters of its 400 employees. This led to the executives in charge of the company being let go (the Blumes), which saw the brief return of Gygax before being ousted by Lorraine Williams in 1985.
While Williams ended up making some pretty bad decisions in the mid-90s, all throughout the height of the D&D boom of 1980-85 the company was terribly managed.
Pretty much what you'd expect with a publishing company being run by a cobbler who hadn't graduated from high school, as well as and a 23-year-old* who persuaded his father to invest in the business and then hired his younger brother**, neither of which had an education in business or management experience.
*Brian Blume, born in 1950 and joined TSR in 1973, writing
Eldritch Wizardry.
** Kevin Blume, born 1952, hired to help manage the money and who became President of Operation in 1981
https://medium.com/@increment/the-ambush-at-sheridan-springs-3a29d07f6836
One particular quote of note from the above:
TSR’s accounting and fiscal reporting in this period were irregular, and sometimes problematic, but even within a considerable margin of uncertainty the company’s growth was unmistakable. TSR’s gross sales stood around $2M in 1979. By one internal account, sales the following year reached $16M, a 5,233% increase over just five years before—it was on the strength of this figure that Inc. Magazine awarded TSR sixth place in its 1981 list of the one hundred fastest-growing privately held companies. That eightfold leap in sales seems unlikely, however, as later TSR statements peg 1980 revenue at only half that, $8.7M, a number that conforms far better to the company’s overall growth curve.
Figures later in that do suggest something [MENTION=22779]Hussar[/MENTION] wondered about, with the starter set pegged at selling 12,000 copies per month, several years prior and before a decline. So the 750k figure is probably total books sold, not Player's Handbooks.
