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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mannahnin" data-source="post: 9649544" data-attributes="member: 7026594">I remember the Rose Estes and Endless Quest story, which was also related to TSR's abortive Educational department, but that was a few years earlier and a different product. I think it's a mistake to lump in the Endless Quest (and Super Endless Quest, and various other game books) series with the popular paperback fiction line.  Yes, Endless Quest was successful, Rose crushed it despite sexist TSR management having no clue was a gem she was, and the distribution to schools (and Scholastic book fairs?) was a big part of that. But I don't think game books are the same thing as novels.I think what we've seen in When We Were Wizards, Game Wizards, and Slaying the Dragon, and everything [USER=28003]@JLowder[/USER] has posted on these forums, that the fiction publishing arm was a vital and extremely successful part of late-era TSR, starting shortly before Gary left and expanding enormously from there.  I don't think you can describe that as an accident at all.  They experimented with Dragonlance, it was very popular, and they capitalized on that success by expanding into a huge line of novels which dominated their publishing category for more than a decade, right?Absolutely the Williams regime made some boneheaded management decisions in underpaying and eventually overworking and driving out talent like Weis and Hickman and later Salvatore, but their sales and the fact that the fiction publishing helped keep the company successful and afloat for years while they were bungling the sales and budget strategies for the game side of the company seems undeniable.</blockquote>

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