mechascorpio
First Post
The information on sales ranks to units sold is out there if you google it. Generally speaking, the top 5 ranks means it is selling thousands of copies per day and several tens of thousands per week. The way it works is roughly an hourly decay rate based upon copies sold versus time released, such that previous best sellers "decay" in rank so that new best sellers can take their place. It is a "What's popular now" list.
So what this means is that WOTC's moving probably 20,000 to 30,000 units this week on Amazon alone and they're on track for potentially a couple hundred thousand copies in the first month.
I'm familiar with some of the sales rank numbers which you're referring to and based on what I've read, I think you are for the most part correct. But from what I've read, IIRC, those who have deciphered the numbers have said that it's thousands per day overall, not just Amazon. Thousands per day includes everyone who reports to Nielsen Bookscan (which is how they translated Amazon ranking into units). So, yes, 20k-30k per week, but not Amazon alone. But these figures also don't include the pre-order that have been going on since May, and the Starter Set and PHB have been in and out of the Top 100 a few times, even off peak. We'll never know for sure, but I do think 150k-250k is likely by the end of August. With a few more spikes when the MM and DMG are released, along with the holidays, I think 500,000 PHBs sold by the end of the year is entirely likely.
Maybe someday we'll get lucky and Mearls will tell us how many Basic D&D downloads (per revision) there were, because I could see that being two to three times more than that. Not everyone who downloads will play, not everyone will buy the books. But split it into thirds (1/3 download and leave, 1/3 download and buy, 1/3 download and play, but don't buy), and you could imagine 5E having at least a million new players in 2014 alone.