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Amazon: D&D at the start of 2018
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<blockquote data-quote="Mistwell" data-source="post: 7402952" data-attributes="member: 2525"><p>OK I was curious how close we could try and figure out the total PHB sales. </p><p></p><p>I went back through the past month of CamelCamelCamel, and ran the chart for just the past month and just the Player's Handbook and just for Amazon sales. I then ran each daily number (which is an estimate, it's kinda hard to figure out the precise day's rank but it's pretty close) and ran each of those daily rank numbers through the TCKpublishing Amazon Sales Calculator by BSR rank. </p><p></p><p>By that estimate, the Player's Handbook 5e sold about 56,732 that month on Amazon. </p><p></p><p>To get a total sales estimate, we'd need to know what the other book sellers are selling as a percentage of Amazon. </p><p></p><p>From there, estimates get more difficult to come up with. Over at Author Earnings, I found some stats that break it up into, "B&N" and "Walmart, Target, etc." and "Independent Bookstores" and "Amazon". </p><p></p><p>Barnes and Noble has, by one estimate I saw, 20% of the print book market, with 633 stores. So that's roughly 11,346 at B&N. However Author Earnings (which is a good independent group) had B&N at 60% of Amazon for print books, not 20% (though they have B&N a tiny fraction of Amazon for e-book sales, which isn't relevant to this discussion as we're not getting into digital sales). And for example, Books-A-Million has is 40% the number of stores of B&N but are included in "Independent" in that number (which is a tiny fraction of B&N in the Author Earnings chart). </p><p></p><p>So I am going to run a "low" estimate" and a "high" estimate based on the 20% number from one and the 60% number from the other (and extrapolate for all others as best I can for each estimate) and then at the end I will average the "low" and the "high".</p><p></p><p>For the low, I cut the Authors Earnings numbers into 1/3 to reflect the lowest possible estimate I saw for Barnes and Noble, and extrapolated that for all the other sales channels listed. Based on that low estimate, using the Amazon baseline, that would put the remaining sources of sales at about 21,146 for that month. For a total sales of PHB in that month of 77,878 copies of the 5e Player's Handbook sold in the past month. </p><p></p><p>For the high, I used the straight Authors Earnings numbers, which estimates all non-Amazon sales as adding up to about 112% of Amazon sales for print books (that's all channels of sales). That would be 63,540 PHBs sold through those channels, for a total (with the Amazon number) of 120,272 PHBs sold that month. </p><p></p><p>In terms of how typical the last month is? It looks high, but not totally off in terms of being a representative month. To be more conservative, it looks to me (eye-balling the chart) that the Amazon sales seem to hover roughly around #85 over the term of May 2014 to Mar 2018. #85 translates to roughly 10,659 sales at Amazon per month. By the low estimate, that would be 14,632 per month, and the high estimate would be 22,597 per month. Mind you, I am probably being too conservative. There were some much higher peak sales, particularly at launch, and I am mostly counting the more "norm" numbers and ignoring the peaks and valleys (and there are more peaks than valleys). </p><p></p><p>And now for some totals (since May 2014 to Mar 2018):</p><p>Low Estimate: 675,000</p><p>High Estimate: 1,039,462</p><p>Median Estimate: 857,231</p><p></p><p>So there is my best vague educated somewhat conservative guess as to the total number of PHB 5e sales so far: around 857,000.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Mistwell, post: 7402952, member: 2525"] OK I was curious how close we could try and figure out the total PHB sales. I went back through the past month of CamelCamelCamel, and ran the chart for just the past month and just the Player's Handbook and just for Amazon sales. I then ran each daily number (which is an estimate, it's kinda hard to figure out the precise day's rank but it's pretty close) and ran each of those daily rank numbers through the TCKpublishing Amazon Sales Calculator by BSR rank. By that estimate, the Player's Handbook 5e sold about 56,732 that month on Amazon. To get a total sales estimate, we'd need to know what the other book sellers are selling as a percentage of Amazon. From there, estimates get more difficult to come up with. Over at Author Earnings, I found some stats that break it up into, "B&N" and "Walmart, Target, etc." and "Independent Bookstores" and "Amazon". Barnes and Noble has, by one estimate I saw, 20% of the print book market, with 633 stores. So that's roughly 11,346 at B&N. However Author Earnings (which is a good independent group) had B&N at 60% of Amazon for print books, not 20% (though they have B&N a tiny fraction of Amazon for e-book sales, which isn't relevant to this discussion as we're not getting into digital sales). And for example, Books-A-Million has is 40% the number of stores of B&N but are included in "Independent" in that number (which is a tiny fraction of B&N in the Author Earnings chart). So I am going to run a "low" estimate" and a "high" estimate based on the 20% number from one and the 60% number from the other (and extrapolate for all others as best I can for each estimate) and then at the end I will average the "low" and the "high". For the low, I cut the Authors Earnings numbers into 1/3 to reflect the lowest possible estimate I saw for Barnes and Noble, and extrapolated that for all the other sales channels listed. Based on that low estimate, using the Amazon baseline, that would put the remaining sources of sales at about 21,146 for that month. For a total sales of PHB in that month of 77,878 copies of the 5e Player's Handbook sold in the past month. For the high, I used the straight Authors Earnings numbers, which estimates all non-Amazon sales as adding up to about 112% of Amazon sales for print books (that's all channels of sales). That would be 63,540 PHBs sold through those channels, for a total (with the Amazon number) of 120,272 PHBs sold that month. In terms of how typical the last month is? It looks high, but not totally off in terms of being a representative month. To be more conservative, it looks to me (eye-balling the chart) that the Amazon sales seem to hover roughly around #85 over the term of May 2014 to Mar 2018. #85 translates to roughly 10,659 sales at Amazon per month. By the low estimate, that would be 14,632 per month, and the high estimate would be 22,597 per month. Mind you, I am probably being too conservative. There were some much higher peak sales, particularly at launch, and I am mostly counting the more "norm" numbers and ignoring the peaks and valleys (and there are more peaks than valleys). And now for some totals (since May 2014 to Mar 2018): Low Estimate: 675,000 High Estimate: 1,039,462 Median Estimate: 857,231 So there is my best vague educated somewhat conservative guess as to the total number of PHB 5e sales so far: around 857,000. [/QUOTE]
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