Amazon: A deeply discounted PHB heads towards the top 10 and overall rankings still really high

[Zardnaar]

Send pics to WoTC customer services and they'll send you a free one. They did for me (MM too) - and it was only a few months ago.

Link to CS? I have 2 books in meh condition.

 

[Jester David]

Link to CS? I have 2 books in meh condition.

http://wizards.custhelp.com/

Reached by going to http://dnd.wizards.com/ and scrolling to the bottom, where most customer service links are found.

 

[Parmandur]

WotC has said that something like 10 million Americans have played D&D in the last year. I doubt they have sold anywhere near 10 million PHB yet. So, many people have probably been playing with a friend's book, the basic rules or the Starter Set rules, maybe for years. Such a person sees the PHB on killer sale, well...natural impilse buy.

 

[darjr]

I’ve been waiting to find a way to soft leather bind it. Any pod do that?

 

[Zardnaar]

WotC has said that something like 10 million Americans have played D&D in the last year. I doubt they have sold anywhere near 10 million PHB yet. So, many people have probably been playing with a friend's book, the basic rules or the Starter Set rules, maybe for years. Such a person sees the PHB on killer sale, well...natural impilse buy.

Also depends on how they count it ie do they count the players, games etc.

Its like some games that cont 160 milion players but that includes bot account, people with multiple accounts, people who have ever played even 1 game etc.

Its up from 6 million players late 90's how they guess that number I have no idea.

 

[Parmandur]

Also depends on how they count it ie do they count the players, games etc.

Its like some games that cont 160 milion players but that includes bot account, people with multiple accounts, people who have ever played even 1 game etc.

Its up from 6 million players late 90's how they guess that number I have no idea.

They have their methods, I'm sure. At any rate, I've never been in a group where everyone had a PHB, so I'd guess many of these sale surges are from people who have been playing without one for some time.

 

[Hussar]

What floors me isn't so much the PHB, (although that's fantastic), but the MM and DMG doing so well. We're almost 4 years in and the books are still selling pretty much as well as they were years ago. For a print product that's absolutely fantastic. Talk about a major win here.

Just to put this in a bit of context, Starfinder, after roaring out of the gate, is sitting at #19302 in books. It hasn't even been a year and Starfinder is pretty much done. Nice tail, sure, but, nothing to write home about. As a comparison, Princes of the Apocalypse is sitting at around 14000.

Yikes. Used to be the 600 pound gorilla. Now, it's gorillas all the way down.

 

[delericho]

WotC has said that something like 10 million Americans have played D&D in the last year. I doubt they have sold anywhere near 10 million PHB yet.

This. The PHB is probably somewhere between 1 and 2 million units sold - if they'd hit even 2 million I would expect WotC to be shouting it from the rooftops, since that would make 5e by far the best-selling edition ever. (The 1st ed book is estimated at 1.5m copies sold, but the historical data makes it hard to be certain.)

It's also worth noting that WotC's target is for their supplements to each sell 100,000+ units, and while they've said Xanathar's was the fastest selling supplement ever, they haven't claimed it's the best selling supplement ever (yet). So it's also probably somewhere between 100k and 200k units sold.

So based on the simple numbers, it looks like the old pattern is still true: the majority of people playing the game still buy nothing, and the next largest buy the PHB and then nothing else. (And the next largest after that was a PHB plus one class book. So it will be interesting to see how the next player-side supplement does if and when that comes out.)

(And, yes, there are a lot of 'estimate's and 'probably's there. Only WotC have the data to say for certain.)

So, many people have probably been playing with a friend's book, the basic rules or the Starter Set rules, maybe for years. Such a person sees the PHB on killer sale, well...natural impilse buy.

Agreed. It's a smart move.