D&D 5E D&D product sales numbers on Amazon, etc.

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Amazon numbers only include sales on their website. Many things, including WotC products, Amazon is willing to sell at close to their wholesale price. And even with the discount, it still only takes one or two books to get free standard shipping. So while their sales numbers may not accurately reflect overall sales postioning from all sources combined, the core books are still really good sellers. According to today's Sage Advice column, the PHB is into a sixth printing.

 

[darjr]

Sith printing........



Does it include errata?

 

[Azzy]

Sith printing........



Does it include errata?

Yes, each printing includes any errata released up to that point. So, the sixth printing of the PHB includes all the new errata that's been recently released (as well as older errata).

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

Sith printing........



Does it include errata?

No, it still claims the Death Star is functioning and the Emperor is alive.

 

[Zardnaar]

It's interesting to look at what Mearls actually said and we have numbers for older editions and a program was used to get the 5E numbers (about 4k a month IIRC)

Mearls never claimed 5E had outsold TSR era D&D. It would be selling faster than 1E but would need to keep this rate up for the next 4 years.

Mearls also claimed 5E has not outsold 3.0+3.5 he said it was individual.sales. So 5E has sold somewhere in the 500k to 750k range.

At that rate it's the fastest selling D&D ever with maybe the original red box and 1982/83:being exceptions.

D&D novels have been going downhill for years since 2008 IIRC. Spell plague killed them. Last good Drizzt book may have been 1999 or over a decade ago.

How well are Game if Thrones books doing?

 

[Ath-kethin]

It's also interesting looking at known bestsellers through this lens. The 2000 printing of the Dragonlance Chronicles are still moving 5-25 books per day (for some reason volumes 1 and 3 of the series move much faster than volume 2) on Amazon alone. That's staying power, I guess.

Though it's a little funky that for the Legends trilogy the second volume sells far better than the first and third.

Interesting stuff.

 

[JeffB]

"Printing" as as a numerical value is vague.

There are hard numbers out there for TSR editions and former TSR staff in various places on the net have discussed print run sizes. Some of the old Basic set print runs were huge. Roughly a million copies were sold of the old Black Box from the early 90s.

No doubt it's doing well. But every dood in charge of D&D @ WOTC over the years (Slav, Rouse, Mearls) has said how awesome the game has sold and twisted some statistic to their advantage. It's their job to promote and tell us everything is better than it has ever been before.

 

[TerraDave]

No doubt it's doing well. But every dood in charge of D&D @ WOTC over the years (Slav, Rouse, Mearls) has said how awesome the game has sold and twisted some statistic to their advantage. It's their job to promote and tell us everything is better than it has ever been before.

The whole point of these threads is not to rely on what they have been saying.

 

[TerraDave]

I have been skeptical about the non-mm they are releasing. But, initial sales are strong. CoS strong.



(And no, not everything they release does this well).

We will see what happens when people actually get their hands on it.

 

[JeffB]

The whole point of these threads is not to rely on what they have been saying.

Of course. The first paragraph of my post directly relates to the second paragraph you did quote, so I'm not sure what you are getting at.. Print runs of the 5e PHB were being discussed. Until sizes of print runs are known, the number of them are meaningless. 6 runs at 10k per? 20k per? 5k per?