JEB
Legend
Was idly curious, and went to look at the current hour's sales ranks for books in the "Dungeons & Dragons Game" category on Amazon.com. Broke them up by year to see which have sold best to worst.
Curiously, five official D&D products don't appear to be ranked in the D&D category: the original Starter Set, the Stranger Things starter set, the Tyranny of Dragons compilation, Icewind Dale, and Wild Beyond the Witchlight.
Thoughts:
Year | Rankings |
2014 | PHB (#1) DMG (#5) MM (#7) Hoard of the Dragon Queen (#44) Rise of Tiamat (#121; had to look it up separately) |
2015 | SCAG (#23) Princes of the Apocalypse (#29) Out of the Abyss (#30) |
2016 | Volo's (#6) Curse of Strahd (#21) Storm King's Thunder (#34) |
2017 | Xanathar's (#4) Tales from the Yawning Portal (#19) Tomb of Annihilation (#22) |
2018 | Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes (#10) Waterdeep: Dragon Heist (#18) Waterdeep: Dungeon of the Mad Mage (#24) Ravnica (#31) |
2019 | Essentials Kit (#11) Eberron (#13) Ghosts of Saltmarsh (#20) Baldur's Gate: Descent Into Avernus (#28) Acquisitions Inc. (#38) Rick and Morty starter set (#66) |
2020 | Tasha's (#2) Wildemount (#16) Theros (#25) |
2021 | Fizban's (#3) Candlekeep Mysteries (#14) Strixhaven (#17) Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft (#26) |
Curiously, five official D&D products don't appear to be ranked in the D&D category: the original Starter Set, the Stranger Things starter set, the Tyranny of Dragons compilation, Icewind Dale, and Wild Beyond the Witchlight.
Thoughts:
- Player's option books are king, followed by monster books. Not really a surprise there.
- The MTG settings are actually the worst sellers in each year (excepting 2021, where Strixhaven beat out Ravenloft). I would have thought crossover sales would have done more for them.
- D&D original settings tend to sell better than other books in their year (excepting, again, Ravenloft).
- Anthology-style adventures seem to sell better than other kinds of adventures.
- I wonder what will happen to sales of Volo's and MTOF once Monsters of the Multiverse is out? Though their rankings are so strong even years after release that even a sharp drop might not be noticeable, at least for a while.