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3 Years Later: D&D's total Domination on Amazon (and Earth in General)
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<blockquote data-quote="Zardnaar" data-source="post: 7187710" data-attributes="member: 6716779"><p>Except that number is a complete guess.</p><p></p><p> I'm not disputing that 5E is doing well, or even very well but if you look at Mearls language for exmaple we do not know what criteria he is using.</p><p></p><p> Saying for example 5E is going better than 3E dodesn't tell us much he might be talking about profit margins for example and I suspect 5E is doing very well there. </p><p></p><p> I suspect that D&D is also selling a disproportionate amount of books on Amazon due to price and lack of FLGS. I think there were several thousand in the 90's, a couple of thousand during 3E and perhaps 500-800 now in the USA so basic logic would dictate Amazon is probably the biggest source of D&D books. Our group for example bought all our books online (Amazon+Bookdepository).</p><p></p><p> Another thing is if Mearls claims 5E is outselling 3E it could also be in relation to 3.5 (which did not sell as well as 3.0) or even references the lifecycle. At this point in time in 2003 for example 3.0 was winding down or outright dead and we know that 3.0 was heavily front loaded in its lifetime sales so outselling 3.0 would not be to hard either. </p><p></p><p> I'm more or less convinced 5E has been a smash hit and it has high profit margins and is doing well and has sold hundreds of thousands of books. I'm not convinced it has outsold the life time sales of 3E and 2E and sooner or later its sales will plateau (everyone who wants a PHB has one). That is when they will probably do a splat book or setting per year, rerelease the PHB with errata+ new art or start on 6E.</p><p></p><p> Outselling 3.5, Pathfinder and 4E should not be very hard with any moderately successful D&D edition the only one that has not is OD&D. 5E is the 1st D&D since the golden age to outsell the previous edition although even Pathfinder pulled that off.</p><p></p><p> There are various sales estimates out there (Dancey, Mona, Gygax etc). Generally they agree on the following.</p><p></p><p>1E outsold 2E 2-1 (750k vs 1.5 million matches this)</p><p>3.0 sold heavily in the 1st month</p><p>No one knows exactly how many AD&D and BECMI sold (estimates of 1 million to 1.5 million), TSR records were very bad. </p><p>D&D peaked year was 1983, virtually bankrupt in 1985 (sales dipped 30% in 84, TSR guessed wrong and expanded instead)</p><p></p><p> I generally go with the low figures (3.0 500k, 3.5 250-350 Erik Mona vs 1 million Dancey).</p><p></p><p> No one knows exactly what 5E or 4E has sold, the 4E estimates are often around half the Pathfinder sales (250k 2014 Mona) and they pulled that edition fairly quickly more or less going out of print between 2010-2012. 3E estimates sometimes do not differ from 3.0/3.5.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Zardnaar, post: 7187710, member: 6716779"] Except that number is a complete guess. I'm not disputing that 5E is doing well, or even very well but if you look at Mearls language for exmaple we do not know what criteria he is using. Saying for example 5E is going better than 3E dodesn't tell us much he might be talking about profit margins for example and I suspect 5E is doing very well there. I suspect that D&D is also selling a disproportionate amount of books on Amazon due to price and lack of FLGS. I think there were several thousand in the 90's, a couple of thousand during 3E and perhaps 500-800 now in the USA so basic logic would dictate Amazon is probably the biggest source of D&D books. Our group for example bought all our books online (Amazon+Bookdepository). Another thing is if Mearls claims 5E is outselling 3E it could also be in relation to 3.5 (which did not sell as well as 3.0) or even references the lifecycle. At this point in time in 2003 for example 3.0 was winding down or outright dead and we know that 3.0 was heavily front loaded in its lifetime sales so outselling 3.0 would not be to hard either. I'm more or less convinced 5E has been a smash hit and it has high profit margins and is doing well and has sold hundreds of thousands of books. I'm not convinced it has outsold the life time sales of 3E and 2E and sooner or later its sales will plateau (everyone who wants a PHB has one). That is when they will probably do a splat book or setting per year, rerelease the PHB with errata+ new art or start on 6E. Outselling 3.5, Pathfinder and 4E should not be very hard with any moderately successful D&D edition the only one that has not is OD&D. 5E is the 1st D&D since the golden age to outsell the previous edition although even Pathfinder pulled that off. There are various sales estimates out there (Dancey, Mona, Gygax etc). Generally they agree on the following. 1E outsold 2E 2-1 (750k vs 1.5 million matches this) 3.0 sold heavily in the 1st month No one knows exactly how many AD&D and BECMI sold (estimates of 1 million to 1.5 million), TSR records were very bad. D&D peaked year was 1983, virtually bankrupt in 1985 (sales dipped 30% in 84, TSR guessed wrong and expanded instead) I generally go with the low figures (3.0 500k, 3.5 250-350 Erik Mona vs 1 million Dancey). No one knows exactly what 5E or 4E has sold, the 4E estimates are often around half the Pathfinder sales (250k 2014 Mona) and they pulled that edition fairly quickly more or less going out of print between 2010-2012. 3E estimates sometimes do not differ from 3.0/3.5. [/QUOTE]
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