D&D 5E Amazon US book sales rank.
Parmandur
Book-Friend
Yeah, it doesn't necessarily mean a universal sell-out. But Amazon might not have more coming in.
Hussar
Legend
@darjr started this thread about 18 months ago and I know there were earlier versions of this as well.
I'm getting awfully tired of picking my jaw up off the floor. Remember the days when WotC breaking 30 or 40 thousand sales for a book was astonishing? The past five or six years (or is it more) of 5e sales has been nothing less than constantly amazing. We're now at a time when there are gamers that have no idea what it was like to play D&D when it wasn't this popular. For whom D&D started at 2016 levels, which for old folks like me were still astronomically high, and that was the worst D&D has ever done. :shock: :boggle:
I'm getting awfully tired of picking my jaw up off the floor. Remember the days when WotC breaking 30 or 40 thousand sales for a book was astonishing? The past five or six years (or is it more) of 5e sales has been nothing less than constantly amazing. We're now at a time when there are gamers that have no idea what it was like to play D&D when it wasn't this popular. For whom D&D started at 2016 levels, which for old folks like me were still astronomically high, and that was the worst D&D has ever done. :shock: :boggle:
Mod Note:
Noting what is going on with sales rankings does not qualify as cheering for Amazon - it qualifies as watching how a game does at one of the largest retailers.
The implied accusation here is not helpful. Take your guilt trips elsewhere in the future, please and thanks.
Hussar
Legend
It's just the little engine that could. Wow. Could you imagine, back in 2014, telling someone that not only would the 5e PHB outsell pretty much any core book by a significant margin, but also would STILL be one of the best selling books on Amazon ten years later?
Parmandur
Book-Friend
Crazy.
see
Pedantic Grognard
I might have believed it outselling any previous edition's PHB, actually. IIRC, back in 2014 I thought 5th had hit a sweet spot, design wise, and was well suited to be the baseline reference edition for Hasbro efforts to license the brand. More logical/systematic than AD&D ever had been, much less build-a-character complexity (and better internal math) than 3rd edition, far more respectful of the game's legacy than 4th.
But the sales curve for 5th edition has just been bonkers. No edition of the PHB, from the founding of Amazon to 2015, ever shows up on Amazon's hundred best-selling books of the year. And then in 2016, the 5e PHB, in its third year, suddenly shows up at #92. Then it posts #40 in 2017, #21 in 2018, and #38 in 2019. The slide down to #100 in 2020 and then off the list for 2021 was sorta normal-looking, but then it bounced back on at #74 in 2022.
