D&D 5E After 2 years the 5E PHB remains one of the best selling books on Amazon

[ccooke]

I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but relative position on Amazon doesn't equal volume. Right now the PHB is 28th in the Teens section, and if you look at what's selling better than it (several individual editions of the same book, an expensive audiobook version of the Hobbit (!) and some titles that I'd charitably simply describe as obscure) you can't help but wonder if that position translates into hundreds or dozens of copies (I suspect the latter).

Again, everything is anedoctal but if you get the chance to investigate the actual volume of Amazon sales, there's people who's been on number 1 of all books with volumes that ended up with 4,000 copies in lifetime sales.

We're talking of really small numbers here.
I wouldn't bat an eye if #25ish on the Teens chart translated in 10 copies a week.

We need a better metric. This is completely immaterial.

While the above is true, it misses the point slightly.

Saying that a book got to #1 in books on Amazon means that it has definitely had one moment of good sales.
Saying that a book has hovered around the top 100 for two years means that it has consistently outperformed almost everything else on Amazon. The point is, cumulative sales are what gets you volume, not peak.

Almost every book that gets into the top 100 - and even almost every book that hits #1 - vanish from the top list very quickly. Books that stay in the top list have consistently high sales. Cumulatively, it is safe to say that the PHB has outsold almost every book that has been #1 since it was released. Does that give us absolute sales figures? Of course not. You can't use the ranking on amazon to make precise statements about sales figures. What you can use it for is to make statements such as "The 5e PHB is one of the most popular books that Amazon has sold in the last two years". With a bit of investigation, you could make statements such as "The 5e PHB has had such consistently high sales that, over the two years since it was released, it is almost certainly in the top 20 books on amazon for gross volume shipped" (20 seems reasonable based on very simple investigation; the real answer may easily be ±20 of that).

To put that more into perspective... It is almost certain that the sales for the PHB have been so consistently high that Amazon will be having to treat it differently to the vast majority of their stock; making more frequent orders and keeping more stock distributed in their supply chain. It's likely that this is handled by their automated tools - after all, Amazon retail is basically a massively automated supply chain and distribution network - but it's within the bounds of possibility that someone has had to check the automated system is doing the right thing (or fix it when it didn't) specifically for the 5e PHB.

 

[Visanideth]

While the above is true, it misses the point slightly.

Saying that a book got to #1 in books on Amazon means that it has definitely had one moment of good sales.
Saying that a book has hovered around the top 100 for two years means that it has consistently outperformed almost everything else on Amazon. The point is, cumulative sales are what gets you volume, not peak.

Almost every book that gets into the top 100 - and even almost every book that hits #1 - vanish from the top list very quickly. Books that stay in the top list have consistently high sales. Cumulatively, it is safe to say that the PHB has outsold almost every book that has been #1 since it was released. Does that give us absolute sales figures? Of course not. You can't use the ranking on amazon to make precise statements about sales figures. What you can use it for is to make statements such as "The 5e PHB is one of the most popular books that Amazon has sold in the last two years". With a bit of investigation, you could make statements such as "The 5e PHB has had such consistently high sales that, over the two years since it was released, it is almost certainly in the top 20 books on amazon for gross volume shipped" (20 seems reasonable based on very simple investigation; the real answer may easily be ±20 of that).

To put that more into perspective... It is almost certain that the sales for the PHB have been so consistently high that Amazon will be having to treat it differently to the vast majority of their stock; making more frequent orders and keeping more stock distributed in their supply chain. It's likely that this is handled by their automated tools - after all, Amazon retail is basically a massively automated supply chain and distribution network - but it's within the bounds of possibility that someone has had to check the automated system is doing the right thing (or fix it when it didn't) specifically for the 5e PHB.

I think there's a lot of merit in your reasoning, but I wouldn't underestimate the impact that the slow and painful death of the brick and mortar bookstore had on D&D's persistance on Amazon charts.

What Amazon charts tell us is that more people are buying D&D on Amazon. We have no way to know if this offsets the fact that less people buy D&D in stores (a lot of store stopped carrying D&D completely before 5E's release, and WotC themselves allegedly choose to ignore certain, previously used channels).

Are people buying D&D more on Amazon because the general interest around D&D has increased, or people are buying D&D on Amazon because the number of viable alternatives has decreased?
Heck, let's ask another one: are people buying D&D on Amazon because it's almost 10$ cheaper than it is in most store?


My point is that there's a lot of factors that play into 5E's longevity on Amazon, and we don't have enough data to draw clear conclusions from those. I do think this is a good sign (but I don't own a bookstore, cough cough), but I'd be cautious with the sensationalistic conclusions, expecially those that lead to "RPGs are in an healthy state". The metrics we do know - budget, dedicated writers, advertisement and general confidence in the project - aren't exactly reassuring.

I suggest caution. I think it's early to celebrate. As an end user, I can't "perceive" this supposed success - the release schedule is anemic, the production values are really low (even when it comes to artwork, D&D is far from the prettiest game on the market right now) and I'm generally hurting for first-party content. This is subjective, of course, but as an end user 5E to me feels like D&D on life support. It's hard to be too optimistic.

 

[Uchawi]

And the hardest thing to determine is how PHB sales translates to playing the game long term. It is one thing to have a copy, which is great as the first step into the door, but how many people are staying. It is good regardless for those that want the RPG industry to get a kick in the leg, for example GURPS is releasing a new dungeon fantasy kickstarter based on the momentum.

 

[pemerton]

As an end user, I can't "perceive" this supposed success - the release schedule is anemic, the production values are really low (even when it comes to artwork, D&D is far from the prettiest game on the market right now) and I'm generally hurting for first-party content. This is subjective, of course, but as an end user 5E to me feels like D&D on life support. It's hard to be too optimistic.

I think you're looking at the wrong "end user" signals. Eg the fact that there are no adventures for you to buy doesn't meant that the PHB is not selling gangbusters.

The right sort of end user questions to ask are things like "Am I having trouble finding a group?", "Am I having trouble holding my group together?", "Have I encountered any new players recently?", etc.

I don't know what your answers are, but these are the end user signs of an edition/game selling lots of core rulebooks.

 

[TerraDave]

We have been through this many times before.

We know that the 5e books have vastly outsold the 3.5e and 4e ones. We know from other data that rpg sales through stores have grown by many million dollars as d&d has returned to the top position.

As for Amazon. Thousands and thousands of books are available, in including a vast number of rpgs. For two years the PHB has outsold almost all of them.

 

[Visanideth]

I think you're looking at the wrong "end user" signals. Eg the fact that there are no adventures for you to buy doesn't meant that the PHB is not selling gangbusters.

The right sort of end user questions to ask are things like "Am I having trouble finding a group?", "Am I having trouble holding my group together?", "Have I encountered any new players recently?", etc.

I don't know what your answers are, but these are the end user signs of an edition/game selling lots of core rulebooks.

I didn't comment on that because anedoctal evidence is even more fiddly. If I had to do so, then I'd be calling 5E a disaster: it's the first time none of the groups I DM or play with are playing a single game of the most recent edition of D&D (there's an active 4E game, a couple Pathfinder games, two AD&D games, another 4E game starting soon).

Extending to the local gaming community the situation doesn't improve much: there's actually one (!) active 5E game currently (across a pool of about 100 active gamers). But I'm the first to say that our situation is very peculiar: we're a mix of "old" gamers (30 to 50 yo) who still have their favourite D&D edition and weren't won over by 5E, and a large pool of younger gamers (15 to 25) to whom roleplaying is broader than high fantasy and massively favour games like Savage Worlds and CoC to D&D.

I'd strongly refrain from using my personal experience to judge 5E's success. If I had to do so, I'd argue D&D is dead.

 

[Helldritch]

If had to judge, 5ed is doing quite fine... Nope, it's doing great. I am DMing one group, had to turn down two other groups of 6 but I do hrlped them out by sharing a few of my adventure to help their DM start. 10 other groups, all teenagers, just started with an other one composed of the teenagers of my players that will be partially over seered by me as a support DM if needed. That is more than in the previous two decades. And this is only what I am aware of. So if I had to judge only from what I see in my little town, yes 5ed is doing really great.

 

[Valetudo]

I didn't comment on that because anedoctal evidence is even more fiddly. If I had to do so, then I'd be calling 5E a disaster: it's the first time none of the groups I DM or play with are playing a single game of the most recent edition of D&D (there's an active 4E game, a couple Pathfinder games, two AD&D games, another 4E game starting soon).

Extending to the local gaming community the situation doesn't improve much: there's actually one (!) active 5E game currently (across a pool of about 100 active gamers). But I'm the first to say that our situation is very peculiar: we're a mix of "old" gamers (30 to 50 yo) who still have their favourite D&D edition and weren't won over by 5E, and a large pool of younger gamers (15 to 25) to whom roleplaying is broader than high fantasy and massively favour games like Savage Worlds and CoC to D&D.

I'd strongly refrain from using my personal experience to judge 5E's success. If I had to do so, I'd argue D&D is dead.

I have seen the slow death of pathfinder and its name is 5th edition. And 4th never made it where i live. Theres a couple holdouts but i see more 2nd edition players than pathfinder lately.

 

[Mageman]

I didn't comment on that because anedoctal evidence is even more fiddly. If I had to do so, then I'd be calling 5E a disaster: it's the first time none of the groups I DM or play with are playing a single game of the most recent edition of D&D (there's an active 4E game, a couple Pathfinder games, two AD&D games, another 4E game starting soon).

Extending to the local gaming community the situation doesn't improve much: there's actually one (!) active 5E game currently (across a pool of about 100 active gamers). But I'm the first to say that our situation is very peculiar: we're a mix of "old" gamers (30 to 50 yo) who still have their favourite D&D edition and weren't won over by 5E, and a large pool of younger gamers (15 to 25) to whom roleplaying is broader than high fantasy and massively favour games like Savage Worlds and CoC to D&D.

I'd strongly refrain from using my personal experience to judge 5E's success. If I had to do so, I'd argue D&D is dead.

Tell that to the 160 000 subscribers to the DnD subreddit it's not dead at all.

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[Gilladian]

All I can say is that as a librarian, the teen librarian is being inundated with eager teens signing up for his Spring rpg game sessions. He's had to recruit a second GM already! So at least here, there are young people happy to play.