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.

 

[Tales and Chronicles]

I thought I had bought a book, but I'm clearly mistaken.

I'm pretty sure you are a liar, because:
1) you don't have a youtube channel.
2) your experience doesn't fit my preferences.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

I think Canada is included in the USA numbers, but could be wrong.

That's true of Hollywood, but I'm not sure that it's true of books. Maybe. But I'm not sure that I could report to "bookscan", for example, even if I wanted to.

 

[FitzTheRuke]

Wait.

Do you know if distribution orders all of their possible books for a given printing? Or do they generally order what they think they can make a profit on?

As an aside I do notice that my FLGS still has special cover copies in their store, but I think they ordered a lot of them.

Distributors order just like stores do - we collect preorders and then guess (based on experience) what kind of demand a thing will have above and beyond what orders we've collected (usually quite a bit greater, sometimes dwarfing the preorders).

You see, to be good at my job, I need to know what my customers will buy better than they do. Across a vast array of entirely different (and often unusual) people! There's a reason that it's an art, not a science. Though math helps, it doesn't help as much as one might think.

Then, when we're wrong (on the low end), we need to go back to our source and see if we can get more. I go to my distributor, and they're out, they go to WotC. Some stores (in particular the ones in and around Seattle, AFAIK, use WotC directly as their distributor.)

My store finally has more copies, BTW, for those curious. We were out for nearly three weeks.

 

[bedir than]

“The English language version of the 2024 Player’s Handbook alone achieved in just one month what took nearly two years for the 2014 edition across all language versions available in that timeframe.” vice president of franchise and product Jess Lanzillo in a recent interview, per Polygon.

Year one of the 2014 PHB sold 127k.

Some other notes;
D&D core will be back in Target and Walmart next year
Other languages will be available next year.

Wizards of the Coast says it ordered a whole bunch of copies of the Player’s Handbook to meet demand

Compared to 2014, Wizards ordered three times as many copies in the initial run — then ordered even more

www.polygon.com

 

[Zardnaar]

Year one of the 2014 PHB sold 127k.

Wizards of the Coast says it ordered a whole bunch of copies of the Player’s Handbook to meet demand

Compared to 2014, Wizards ordered three times as many copies in the initial run — then ordered even more

www.polygon.com

Markets about 10 times bigger than 2014. Maybe bit smaller.

I don't think they're making up porkies or whatever. Spin yes.

Link mentions 2-1 take up on beyond. Similar to old games ratios at conventions with 1E to 2E.

 

[bedir than]

Markets about 10 times bigger than 2014. Maybe bit smaller.

I don't think they're making up porkies or whatever. Spin yes.

You say 10 times, but Jess is saying nearly 24 times.

 

[darjr]

Says there is a special
Collectors edition for Oct 29th? Different than the one already out there?

 

[bedir than]

Says there is a special
Collectors edition for Oct 29th? Different than the one already out there?

Collectible DMG comes out the 29th

 

[Zardnaar]

You say 10 times, but Jess is saying nearly 24 times.

RPG market.

 

[mearls]

Huh.

It would be a lot simpler to say this is the biggest success ever for D&D. Why aren't they just doing that?

They keep referring back to 2014, and I'm scratching my head trying to figure out who in 2024 would use that as a metric. That's 10 years ago and a very, very different tabletop world.