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

[Zardnaar]

It is sold out... man. Is that really unusual? Did the 3e do that within the first few months? Wonder how long it is going to take to get it back in stock.

Amazon sells more products in one day now than they had customers in 2000. To be fair that is a good day but still.

3E sold 300k in the 1st month in 2000. Selling out and how good it is depends on how big the print run was.

 

[Uchawi]

Exactly, until you know the size of the print run, selling out does not mean much.

 

[Imaro]

Ok, a little confused here... [MENTION=6716779]Zardnaar[/MENTION] and [MENTION=6775000]Uchawi[/MENTION] in what scenario is a merchant selling out of your product not considered a good sign?

 

[Stalker0]

While it's great marketing, not good logistics. That means there is demand you are not meeting, which are sales left on the table.

Ideally you would always like to keep just slightly ahead in inventory

 

[Mistwell]

Amazon sells more products in one day now than they had customers in 2000.

No they do not. In 2000 they served 20 million customer with a $2.76 Billion in sales (according to their 2000 annual report). In 2012 they were selling an average of 3.5 million products per day. And of course quantity of customers is not quantity of products sold, as people buy more than one product (if they didn't, you'd be claiming the entire 7 billion world population was buying slightly more than one item from Amazon every year). Average product price is now $47 according to that link.

And of course they were almost exclusively books in 2000, but are very diverse in sales now. Book sales are not that different in 2014 than they were in 2000 for Amazon (they are different, but not nearly by the factors you're trying to imply). Amazon made $5.25B in book sales in the past year (according to Forbes). Compare that to their $2.76B in 2000 which was almost entirely from books, and you will see we are not talking about the kinds of exponential growth in book sales that you seem to think. And when you count only non-electronic books (PHB was not available in electronic version in 2000 or now) the differences become even smaller (20% of that current book sales number is kindle books). The year 2000 was a good year for Amazon book sales, and it was not nearly so different than now in terms of books.

I appreciate you want to know more about Amazon sales in 2000 versus now, as this is the third conversation we've had about this. But it's also the third time you've made clearly false statements about this topic, which could have easily been looked up. Amazon has grown a lot since 2000, but it's not nearly as much as you seem to think it is.

 

[Parmandur]

Probably what it means is that Amazon estimated sales volume to be similar to 4E, and under-ordered. Seems a number of FLGS made the same mistake. It's not Wizards who puts the orders in, it's the vendor.

 

[Grainger]

Probably what it means is that Amazon estimated sales volume to be similar to 4E, and under-ordered. Seems a number of FLGS made the same mistake. It's not Wizards who puts the orders in, it's the vendor.

The owner of my FLGS (I'm in the UK) was telling me that he surprised at how well the PHB has been selling. "I can't keep them on the shelf" were his words. Although, of course, this is just one case; sales could be highly variable by region/store.

 

[BoldItalic]

Monster Manual is up next. I wonder if there will be a similar trend?

 

[Zardnaar]

Ok, a little confused here... @Zardnaar and @Uchawi in what scenario is a merchant selling out of your product not considered a good sign?

Its a good sign but it is kind of relative. SOmeone earlier asked if 3rd ed sold out and I do not think they did. That was due to a huge print run though and they were selling the books for $20. 3.0 did not sell out AFAIK but they apparently sold 300k in a month. Selling out is not that great if they only made 10k copies using an extreme example.

I would not be surprised if they sold 100k+, slightly surprised at 200k and very surprised at 300k. The initial print run figures will likely come out eventually. I think 100k copies is the upper limit of some estimates of 4Es sales as well but I have not found what I consider reliable estimates of 4E sales, just D&D overall.

 

[Zardnaar]

No they do not. In 2000 they served 20 million customer with a $2.76 Billion in sales (according to their 2000 annual report). In 2012 they were selling an average of 3.5 million products per day. And of course quantity of customers is not quantity of products sold, as people buy more than one product (if they didn't, you'd be claiming the entire 7 billion world population was buying slightly more than one item from Amazon every year). Average product price is now $47 according to that link.

And of course they were almost exclusively books in 2000, but are very diverse in sales now. Book sales are not that different in 2014 than they were in 2000 for Amazon (they are different, but not nearly by the factors you're trying to imply). Amazon made $5.25B in book sales in the past year (according to Forbes). Compare that to their $2.76B in 2000 which was almost entirely from books, and you will see we are not talking about the kinds of exponential growth in book sales that you seem to think. And when you count only non-electronic books (PHB was not available in electronic version in 2000 or now) the differences become even smaller (20% of that current book sales number is kindle books). The year 2000 was a good year for Amazon book sales, and it was not nearly so different than now in terms of books.

I appreciate you want to know more about Amazon sales in 2000 versus now, as this is the third conversation we've had about this. But it's also the third time you've made clearly false statements about this topic, which could have easily been looked up. Amazon has grown a lot since 2000, but it's not nearly as much as you seem to think it is.

I did say that day was their best day they ever had which was Christmas last year where they were selling 400+ items a second.