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.

 

[mamba]

Well, a bit tautological, but there you go @darjr , three times the print run and a sellout again.

so if they sold out, how soon can they reprint with the other two core books still being in the queue? DMG might be mostly thru printing, but I doubt the MM is

 

[Staffan]

Not really that surprising given the growth over the last decade (and triple might even be a bit low, considering that). That said, I seem to remember similar things being said about 4e back in the day (possibly buoyed by a slipcase bundle containing all three core books being sold at some amazingly deep discount by Amazon, as I recall), so amazing initial sales do not necessarily translate to good long-term prospects. But it is a good sign.

Edit: I went back and found my old order confirmation e-mail, and it turns out I paid $66 for the gift set, whereas MSRP would have been about $100 for the three books. Even adding transatlantic shipping to that, it was still a better deal than the FLGS by a pretty wide margin (and I'm not sure I had much of a FLGS back in those days).

 

[Morrus]

so if they sold out, how soon can they reprint with the other two core books still being in the queue? DMG might be mostly thru printing, but I doubt the MM is

They didn't say they'd sold out.

Also, they don't print them themselves. Big print companies print for lots of simultaneous clients, many much bigger than any TTRPG. They don't have to join a special D&D queue.

If they've sold out, the print company will happily churn out another print run immediately. They have the files already. Shipping is more a problem than printing.

 

[CleverNickName]

Amazon doesn't have a sales rank for it yet (the 2014 version is still ranked #1), but the 2024 PHB is getting good reviews. There's a dozen one- or two-star reviews, mostly complaining about the races--there's either too many or too few, depending on the person writing--but most of the reviews (32 out of 50) give it four or five stars.

Anyway. This is great news! I had to mentally check out of the whole subject for a while there; all of the arguments and semantics were starting to damage my blood pressure. Hopefully now that the book is released and the reception has been good overall, things will calm down around here. It'll be nice to catch back up.

 

[DEFCON 1]

If they've sold out, the print company will happily churn out another print run immediately. They have the files already. Shipping is more a problem than printing.

The more interesting question though is whether WotC get another print run ordered and done immediately and out the door to capitalize on the early adopters, or do they take a person or two off of the DMG and MM design for them to bring together all the potential errata that has come in and get that into their files right away so their next run has the main fixes already in place?

 

[mamba]

They don't print them themselves. Big print companies print for lots of simultaneous clients, many much bigger than any TTRPG. They don't have to join a special D&D queue.

I understand that they do not print themselves, didn’t they say this print run was so big they needed to split it across printers though? I assume the individual printers also have their own queues, so slotting in a big unscheduled print run might not be that easy.

If they've sold out, the print company will happily churn out another print run immediately. They have the files already. Shipping is more a problem than printing.

So no queues at the printers, there is always free capacity?

 

[kittenhugs]

I'm not surprised that it's selling better than the 2014 PHB, considering the context that book was developed and came out during, but three times as many is pretty amazing. The hobby seems to be doing factually well, despite the general negative slant discussion has had about D&D itself since the OGL fiasco, and even D&D itself seems to be strong enough that we hopefully won't see a full "drop every old product for a new edition" event again for another decade. I just hope that WotC stops stumbling over its own corporate clown shoes, I would really like to enjoy discussing D&D online again.

 

[Morrus]

The more interesting question though is whether WotC get another print run ordered and done immediately and out the door to capitalize on the early adopters, or do they take a person or two off of the DMG and MM design for them to bring together all the potential errata that has come in and get that into their files right away so their next run has the main fixes already in place?

We're not in a shortage situation. There's likely no urgency.

(a) they haven't said the book has sold out
(b) the book is still clearly still on the shelves in large quantities

So the distributors have probably taken most of their initial stock. It's out there on store shelves and on pallets in stock rooms.

They can call the print company and say 'print another 100K' (or whatever). That will take a couple of weeks, plus shipping to distributor warehouses. It's not like the latest iPhones which take time to make and have shipping dates slipping back by months; they can replenish fast, especially in the US where they don't have worry about transatlantic shipping times (which is what always screws us up--damn you US customs and your 'let's make your pallets of books sit in our warehouse for 6 weeks for... fun?' games!)

I don't know what their errata/print process is, but I don't imagine you'd see a new errated print run one week after release. Just imagine buying it on day 1, and somebody two weeks later has the 'correct' version. That would be a PR nightmare. Not that I've checked, but I always assumed subsequent printings were months apart.

Anybody offhand know the historical timelines between errated print runs?

 

[Morrus]

So no queues at the printers, there is always free capacity?

Guess it depends on the printers. We've never really had a problem, and we're tiny. WotC has a lot more leverage than us.

Let's also be clear--they haven't sold out. They haven't said they sold out, and there is clearly plenty of stock in stores right now. They haven't sold out.

 

[Parmandur]

so if they sold out, how soon can they reprint with the other two core books still being in the queue? DMG might be mostly thru printing, but I doubt the MM is

So many giant "depends" factors there: MM wouldn't be at the printers for a while yet, anyways, and the DMG is probsvly humming along. No doubt the third party printers they use qill enjoy the large bulk orders.