D&D (2024) 2024 Player’s Handbook is ‘Fastest Selling D&D Book Ever’

It’s only officially been out for a week, but according to Wizards of the Coast, the new Dungeons & Dragons Player’s Handbook has already surpassed Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything to become the fastest selling D&D book ever—in the entire 50-year history of the game. It has sold three times as many copies as the 2014 version of the books did at launch.

Not only that, the 2024 Player’s Handbook was the biggest print run in D&D’s history.

In a press release today, WotC claims more than 85 million D&D fans worldwide, and says that D&D Beyond, the game’s official online platform, has over 18 million users.

 

[Parmandur]

that would require 60M D&D players, I do not believe they have that. To me the undermonetization is more about merchandise, video games etc. I am sure they would want to sell more per D&D player too, but it is not limited to that, and for that part the are working on their VTT

Ain't talking about players, talking about fans: but a fan is a potential player, hence their focus on onboarding.

 

[mamba]

Otherwise we might as well make a youtube channel with big writing saying

sounds like you have a YT career ahead of you

 

[mamba]

Ain't talking about players, talking about fans: but a fan is a potential player, hence their focus on onboarding.

wasn't it you that said there are new 12 year olds every year? Being easy to onboard is valuable in itself, plenty of people go from non-fan to player in one step.

 

[Zardnaar]

PHB 2014 Bookscan numbers in the first four weeks were a mere 39k.

https://alphastream.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/09/1-Top-sales.jpg

It's actually not that bad.

Bookscans only a fraction of the outlets D&D is sold at.

That's 480k approx first year thats more than most editions first year. Obvious they're not going o do that every month.

Selling 2 k a week ever week for 10 years gives you a million in sales.

That's gangbusters numbers BTW from one distribution place.

 

[Hussar]

Let's be fair. These are clearly statements of taste and preference, not commercial success. Mocking them might be fun and make you feel good about yourself, because your tastes happen to align with current commercial success, but it is not kind.

(And you will one day find yourself disagreeing with a popular commercial choice--in fact, I dare you to say right now there's not one currently successful actor, musical artist, band, or TV show you don't like).

Being one of the popular kids and mocking others is not kind. Let's not be that person.

Hang on.

People have been claiming that WotC has been failing as a business, doing ever wrong, and that they have no idea how to sell DnD for years.

If only they would do X, DnD would be a smash hit.

That’s what I’m making fun of.

 

[SlyFlourish]

I know, that’s why we’ve been estimating based on Fritz’s experience and Mike Shea’s surveys (or rather, reports thereof).

Which surveys?

 

[SlyFlourish]

When Mike Shae does his surveys he gets about 50% DDB users I believe.

Thereabouts for those I can reach with a youtube poll.

Dungeons & Dragons Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook Poll Results

In October 2016 I ran a Dungeons & Dragons fifth edition survey of 6,600 dungeon masters to better understand how DMs prepare and run their games. I wasn't happy to stop there, however. Since then I'v...

slyflourish.com

 

[darjr]

Scott Thorne over at ICV2 chimes in. No new information unfortunately but I thought to note it icv2 covered it.

Rolling for Initiative – 3,773 Copies Sold?

Column by Scott Thorne

icv2.com

 

[DarkCrisis]

So for those of us not reading 37 pages...

It is ot is not the best selling D&D book ever?

 

[darjr]

So for those of us not reading 37 pages...

It is ot is not the best selling D&D book ever?

It probably is.

Likely inmho

But also these are initial sales. Probably phenomenal ones. I bet it continues to do well but the future is unknown.