D&D 5E (2014) Amazon best and worst sellers for 5e so far

[JEB]

Was idly curious, and went to look at the current hour's sales ranks for books in the "Dungeons & Dragons Game" category on Amazon.com. Broke them up by year to see which have sold best to worst.

Year	Rankings
2014	PHB (#1) DMG (#5) MM (#7) Hoard of the Dragon Queen (#44) Rise of Tiamat (#121; had to look it up separately)
2015	SCAG (#23) Princes of the Apocalypse (#29) Out of the Abyss (#30)
2016	Volo's (#6) Curse of Strahd (#21) Storm King's Thunder (#34)
2017	Xanathar's (#4) Tales from the Yawning Portal (#19) Tomb of Annihilation (#22)
2018	Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes (#10) Waterdeep: Dragon Heist (#18) Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage (#24) Ravnica (#31)
2019	Essentials Kit (#11) Eberron (#13) Ghosts of Saltmarsh (#20) Baldur's Gate: Descent Into Avernus (#28) Acquisitions Inc. (#38) Rick and Morty starter set (#66)
2020	Tasha's (#2) Wildemount (#16) Theros (#25)
2021	Fizban's (#3) Candlekeep Mysteries (#14) Strixhaven (#17) Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (#26)

Curiously, five official D&D products don't appear to be ranked in the D&D category: the original Starter Set, the Stranger Things starter set, the Tyranny of Dragons compilation, Icewind Dale, and Wild Beyond the Witchlight.

Thoughts:

• Player's option books are king, followed by monster books. Not really a surprise there.
• The MTG settings are actually the worst sellers in each year (excepting 2021, where Strixhaven beat out Ravenloft). I would have thought crossover sales would have done more for them.
• D&D original settings tend to sell better than other books in their year (excepting, again, Ravenloft).
• Anthology-style adventures seem to sell better than other kinds of adventures.
• I wonder what will happen to sales of Volo's and MTOF once Monsters of the Multiverse is out? Though their rankings are so strong even years after release that even a sharp drop might not be noticeable, at least for a while.

 

[Lyxen]

• The MTG settings are actually the worst sellers in each year (excepting 2021, where Strixhaven beat out Ravenloft). I would have thought crossover sales would have done more for them.

I don't know how the sales of D&D percolate through the MtG world as I'm not a part of that, but I remember asking the question here and and having very few people here interested by the MtG settings for D&D, except as a vague source of ideas. Only a few (again, IIRC and then it's certainly not significant statistically) were actually running campaigns in those settings.

 

[Older Beholder]

Thoughts:

• Player's option books are king, followed by monster books. Not really a surprise there.
• The MTG settings are actually the worst sellers in each year (excepting 2021, where Strixhaven beat out Ravenloft). I would have thought crossover sales would have done more for them.
• D&D original settings tend to sell better than other books in their year (excepting, again, Ravenloft).
• Anthology-style adventures seem to sell better than other kinds of adventures.
• I wonder what will happen to sales of Volo's and MTOF once Monsters of the Multiverse is out? Though their rankings are so strong even years after release that even a sharp drop might not be noticeable, at least for a while.

Interesting read, thanks for putting it together.

A positive spin on the MTG setting books is that they’ve improved in rank each year.

It’ll be interesting to see if we start getting a greater ratio of anthology/shorter adventure books compared to the longer single adventures.

 

[TheSword]

Was idly curious, and went to look at the current hour's sales ranks for books in the "Dungeons & Dragons Game" category on Amazon.com. Broke them up by year to see which have sold best to worst.

Year	Rankings
2014	PHB (#1) DMG (#5) MM (#7) Hoard of the Dragon Queen (#44) Rise of Tiamat (#121; had to look it up separately)
2015	SCAG (#23) Princes of the Apocalypse (#29) Out of the Abyss (#30)
2016	Volo's (#6) Curse of Strahd (#21) Storm King's Thunder (#34)
2017	Xanathar's (#4) Tales from the Yawning Portal (#19) Tomb of Annihilation (#22)
2018	Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes (#10) Waterdeep: Dragon Heist (#18) Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage (#24) Ravnica (#31)
2019	Essentials Kit (#11) Eberron (#13) Ghosts of Saltmarsh (#20) Baldur's Gate: Descent Into Avernus (#28) Acquisitions Inc. (#38) Rick and Morty starter set (#66)
2020	Tasha's (#2) Wildemount (#16) Theros (#25)
2021	Fizban's (#3) Candlekeep Mysteries (#14) Strixhaven (#17) Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (#26)

Curiously, five official D&D products don't appear to be ranked in the D&D category: the original Starter Set, the Stranger Things starter set, the Tyranny of Dragons compilation, Icewind Dale, and Wild Beyond the Witchlight.

Thoughts:

• Player's option books are king, followed by monster books. Not really a surprise there.
• The MTG settings are actually the worst sellers in each year (excepting 2021, where Strixhaven beat out Ravenloft). I would have thought crossover sales would have done more for them.
• D&D original settings tend to sell better than other books in their year (excepting, again, Ravenloft).
• Anthology-style adventures seem to sell better than other kinds of adventures.
• I wonder what will happen to sales of Volo's and MTOF once Monsters of the Multiverse is out? Though their rankings are so strong even years after release that even a sharp drop might not be noticeable, at least for a while.

So it’s worth noting that Amazon sales rank isn’t simply a league table of sales ever made. It is strongly inferred by outsiders (Amazon doesn’t explain its calculation) that recent sales have greater weight than older sales. So it throws a bit of light on why Candlekeep has a higher ranking than Curse of Strahd.

It also explains why later MtG appear to be better sellers.

 

[JEB]

So it’s worth noting that Amazon sales rank isn’t simply a league table of sales ever made. It is strongly inferred by outsiders (Amazon doesn’t explain its calculation) that recent sales have greater weight than older sales. So it throws a bit of light on why Candlekeep has a higher ranking than Curse of Strahd.

Interesting. That would have a few implications:

• If a book is newer and high-ranking, it may not stay there very long if sales aren't sustained.
• If a book is older and high-ranking, it likely continues to sell very well years after its publication. Or it had a recent and very significant spike in sales. (Or both.)
• If a book is newer and already low-ranking, it might be selling more poorly than it seems, relative to older books with steadier sales.

 

[TerraDave]

I didn't understand the table at first.

These are current sales, organized by year of release. So PHB is #1 right now, and released 8 years ago. Cool way to do it.

So it confirms, rules (and monsters) do well, adventures OK, and this push for settings, not so sure, unless it has a loss (or as the $s gush in, make not quite as much) leader function.

 

[Morrus]

It would also depend when in the year they were released. The earlier in the year, the longer they have to sell. Something released in Jan 2018 has a big advantage over something released in December 2018 if you're counting 2018 sales.

A rolling 12 month might be interesting to see!

[edit - oh wait. Current sales? Now I'm confused! In that case presumably newer stuff has the advantage?)

 

[JEB]

So it confirms, rules (and monsters) do well

If by "rules" you mean "player options", yes. I suspect that a rules-centric book that didn't have player options (or monsters) would be a bit of a harder sell.

 

[TerraDave]

Just for reference

PHB is...

#179 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#1 in Puzzle & Game Reference (Books)
#1 in Dungeons & Dragons Game
#28 in Reference (Books)

Tashas is....

#296 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#2 in Dungeons & Dragons Game
#2 in Sword & Sorcery Fantasy (Books)
#3 in Short Stories Anthologies

Dropping down a bit...

TftYP is

#1,484 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
#15 in Dungeons & Dragons Game
#21 in Puzzles & Games

Which in the olden days, would have been considered amazing for an adventure released 5 years ago.

 

[TerraDave]

If by "rules" you mean "player options", yes. I suspect that a rules-centric book that didn't have player options (or monsters) would be a bit of a harder sell.

Well there is the DMG and the MM. But otherwise we have no way of knowing.