D&D 5E PHB is #3 right now on "Amazon's Hot New Releases"

[Plane Sailing]

It seems that the initial sales of D&D 5th Edition are very strong. Asked about how they compare to 3E and 4E, WotC's Mike Mearls says that "Raw numbers are stronger, but that's not the complete picture. end of year 1 is the key." The Player's Handbook has now topped the hardcover nonfiction sellers list at Publishers Weekly. As of right now, it's #1 in Fantasy Gaming at Amazon, and a week ago it was the #1 book on Amazon!

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In other news, prompted by some discussion about the gaps between D&D edition releases, I whipped up this quick info-graphic showing the dates that each edition was released. [threadcm]http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?359004-So-I-have-been-out-of-town-for-a-few-weeks-did-I-miss-something[/threadcm]

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[TerraDave]

Sure, all this thread shows is that the phb is selling about as well as any book can at early release.

I dont think an rpg book has done that in recent decades. Or come remotely close. For example, see

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?243902-Amazon-Sales-Rankings-amazing-data!

http://paizo.com/threads/rzs2jwhb?Amazon-ranks-Congrats

So, its the best selling rpg book out of the gate in decades. Could mean "nothing" if you dont care its best selling. But then this whole thread would probably not be of interest to you.

 

[TerraDave]

Also found this (a few months before the actual phb came out)

http://www.amazon.com/selling-books-Puzzles-Games-category/lm/R778LPKQVX6E3

Look at what is there. Look at what is freaking there.

So much for edition wars, I know who the real enemy is: people who can spell.

 

[Zardnaar]

Also note 4E had a good launch on Amazon as well. It is to premature to call it IMHO. Come back this time next year or even 2016.

 

[TerraDave]

Also note 4E had a good launch on Amazon as well. It is to premature to call it IMHO. Come back this time next year or even 2016.

Please confirm it. I posted what little I could find above, not even remotely the same order of magnitude. I can find nothing that says 4E was in the top 100 at amazon, but again I may have missed it.

But sure, see you next year.

 

[TerraDave]

as of right now #2/#4/#1.

 

[Gundark]

Also note 4E had a good launch on Amazon as well. It is to premature to call it IMHO. Come back this time next year or even 2016.

I remember Scott Rouse pointing out that 4e was doing well on Amazon. I don't remember the actual spot.

Here where I live the 5e phb and Hotdq has been selling, this surpised me as I thought Pathfinder had killed D&D and taken it's stuff (locally speaking I mean)

 

[Zardnaar]

I remember Scott Rouse pointing out that 4e was doing well on Amazon. I don't remember the actual spot.

Here where I live the 5e phb and Hotdq has been selling, this surpised me as I thought Pathfinder had killed D&D and taken it's stuff (locally speaking I mean)

Maybe it was keeping the seat warm.

 

[M.L. Martin]

The 4E core set sold out its original print run before release, and that was a larger print run than the original 3.0 run. People were definitely interested.

It's a new D&D; it's going to dominate the market with anything short of an obvious disaster. That doesn't mean 5E is a failure or anything close to it; it just means that it's too early to tell what the long-term prospects are like.

 

[SavageCole]

I've heard from a couple of FLGS here that they did not go all in on stock of 5e materials, because they got killed and wanted to play wait and see. They confessed they were blown away by demand that they did not anticipate and were out of stock opening weekend.

And the other thing I've started to hear are a lot of people who had preordered on Amazon, but then couldn't wait and ran out to FLGS and tried (some successfully) to get an early release copy. Some canceled their Amazon preorders and others are kept the orders alive to gift their 2nd PHBs.