Meaningful Sales Analysis?

[justanobody]

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.

Other than ranking not being valid, short term sales of a product tells you nothing ever. It just states that people jumped to grab the new product. Look at Cabbage Patch Kids dolls these days as well as Beanie Babies.

Only time short term sales numbers mean anything is with limited edition stuff.

Rankings are novel just to tell you what people are buying now, just like TV ratings just tell you what those select 1000 people are watching at that time.

Unless it a NY Times best seller list I don't think rankings mean anything and hope they don't to execs.

 

[RFisher]

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

I know people who collect RPG stuff like crazy but don’t get to play very much.

I know people who play in multiple campaigns per week but buy maybe one book a year.

I know people who buy whatever new book is out but use it with whatever system their group is currently interested in.

I think sales data on 4e adventures may tell you little about how many people are playing 4e.

(^_^)

 

[JoeGKushner]

I know people who collect RPG stuff like crazy but don’t get to play very much.

I know people who play in multiple campaigns per week but buy maybe one book a year.

I know people who buy whatever new book is out but use it with whatever system their group is currently interested in.

I think sales data on 4e adventures may tell you little about how many people are playing 4e.

(^_^)

And if we had any real numbers, I think I'd agree with ya.