D&D 5E DMG, PHB, and MM still in the Amazon top 100 sellers

[Gecko85]

These numbers are problematic.

If you looked, say, here, you get a very different range:

http://www.theresaragan.com/salesrankingchart.html

Amazon doesn't actually release this info, or I don't think they do, so that may be part of the problem.

Yeah, definitely "best guess". Interesting how the best guess for those two sites are so different. Reality is probably somewhere in the middle. Regardless, as has been pointed out, being in or around the top 100 for this long is a very good sign no matter what.

 

[Gecko85]

Here's a good article from Publisher's Weekly that attempts to make (and justify) another best guess:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/...-does-it-take-to-be-an-amazon-bestseller.html

They used a Zelda book as an example.

They used print sales and tracked those against Amazon sales rank. Evidently the industry believes that Amazon accounts for about 30% of print sales, so they used that guideline in their calculations.

They concluded that a title in Amazon's top 5 will sell on average 1,094 print copies across all channels, per day, and it takes around 300 copies per day to reach the Amazon top 5, depending on the day of the week and time of the year. (It could be over a thousand copies per day during the holiday season to be in Amazon's top 5.)

Those numbers seem much closer to the guestimates I posted earlier, than the other ones that were much higher. Still just guestimates, but educated guestimates.

 

[TerraDave]

To try to make some relatively fair comparisons:

(this is all overall sales rank)

4E PHB

Started at 33

Fell to 54

After six months its at 2,390

After one year: 6,435

That’s a big drop off. One issue could be other ways of getting it—there was a three book box set, a deluxe version, the pdf, and of course the character builder—but still, that’s a big drop.

We can also look at 3.5 PHB

After about 1 month its at 122

After 6 months 274

At the one year point it has dropped to 4844

But then rebounds, hanging around 1000, and reaching 969 two years after launch


5E is looking good compared to these, at least so far.

 

[Neonchameleon]

That's more impressive than I expected. I'm still wondering however, where the rest of the money is coming from. So if they sell a single core set to each player, then what? HotDQ is going to sell one per table at most so is LoT. It's a bumper 2014 for D&D, but what's left to sell in 2015?

 

[delericho]

That's more impressive than I expected. I'm still wondering however, where the rest of the money is coming from.

Tie in products for the movie: an adventure, maybe a setting, a board game, a video game, toys...

The downside being that at the moment they can't announce these - because of the ongoing lawsuit, they can't actually be certain there is even going to be a movie.

Just a guess.

 

[Coredump]

That's more impressive than I expected. I'm still wondering however, where the rest of the money is coming from. So if they sell a single core set to each player, then what? HotDQ is going to sell one per table at most so is LoT. It's a bumper 2014 for D&D, but what's left to sell in 2015?

If the RPG section of the DnD part of the WotC subdivision can bring in consistent profits... thats great news for Hasbro. People keep assuming that big companies only care about huge windfalls... the reality is they *need* consistent money to balance out the ups and downs of the big windfalls/crapouts.

The PHB/MM/DMG will continue to sell for the next several years, and the adventures and supplements will bring in more money. As long as they can stay consistently profitable, Hasbro will be happy. The fact that it enables other profits from games etc is just more icing for the cake.

 

[Mark CMG]

If, in a few years, Paizo remains a large player, and they design a whole new ruleset after much playtesting and fanfare, then we might consider comparing them.

You're calling 5E a "whole new ruleset?" 5E has been a repackaging of D&D for WotC, as PF is for Paizo, and 5E has some new rules but the vast majority of the game is revised rules or unchanged rules from previous D&D rulesets, much like PF is.

 

[TerraDave]

That's more impressive than I expected. I'm still wondering however, where the rest of the money is coming from. So if they sell a single core set to each player, then what? HotDQ is going to sell one per table at most so is LoT. It's a bumper 2014 for D&D, but what's left to sell in 2015?

I think they are looking at other hobby games on the one hand, which rely on an ever green model, with existing games being sold to new players and the occasional expansion for the fans.

And fantasy/toy IP management on the other, as delericho pointed out.

I am also a little sceptical. But book sales have been robust, on the one hand, and they did just announce a major new video game, on the other.

 

[Kramodlog]

To try to make some relatively fair comparisons:

(this is all overall sales rank)

4E PHB

Started at 33

Fell to 54

After six months its at 2,390

After one year: 6,435

That’s a big drop off. One issue could be other ways of getting it—there was a three book box set, a deluxe version, the pdf, and of course the character builder—but still, that’s a big drop.

We can also look at 3.5 PHB

After about 1 month its at 122

After 6 months 274

At the one year point it has dropped to 4844

But then rebounds, hanging around 1000, and reaching 969 two years after launch


5E is looking good compared to these, at least so far.

5e sells can be compared to 4e, but not 3.5. Online shopping was less of a thing back then.

 

[Kramodlog]

That's more impressive than I expected. I'm still wondering however, where the rest of the money is coming from. So if they sell a single core set to each player, then what? HotDQ is going to sell one per table at most so is LoT. It's a bumper 2014 for D&D, but what's left to sell in 2015?

They don't. They sell one per group. Maybe another PHB, cause someone wanted his PHB. In a group of 5 person, there is probably just one person who bought all the core books for the group too. Meaning that the idustry is sustained by about 20% of its players. At least this is what I get from this guy. http://blackdiamondgames.blogspot.ca/2015/01/dungeons-dragons-dilemma-tradecraft.html