Does Enworld have a major impact in the D20 market?

[broghammerj]

This topic was stimulated by Crothian's thread on what does a company have to do to lose you as a customer and gain you back.

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=141453

I was curious as to how En-World affects the D20 market in general. Some people have commented that personalities on these boards have caused them to boycott certain companies, hence reducing sales. I assume the frequency of this is relatively rare. Certainly this website acts as a vehicle for press releases, product schedules, and generally free advertising which should promote the sales of products. There are tons of companies I would have never known of or purchased from without this fabulous website. However, with good press comes bad press. Enworld has saved me from a number of stinkers with good covers and well written introductions. I was wondering what people thought of Enworld's impact on the ebb and flow of the d20 market as a whole?

 

[Crothian]

We are pretty imporant in the PDF market, but I imagine we have a small effect on the print companies. Or possible more accurate, the smaller the companies the bigger impact EN World can have.

THis is my guess, but really what do I know?

 

[Turjan]

I was wondering what people thought of Enworld's impact on the ebb and flow of the d20 market as a whole?

As I heard from some publishers, it's not very much. The site is valuable if you want to hear some feedback about your products, and there may be a few gained or lost customers, but I don't think that most customers who buy their stuff in a game shop care about EN World.

This might be different for pdf's, though.

 

[DaveStebbins]

My hunch is the same as Crothian's. The PDF market is small and necessarily dependent upon online customers, so EN Worlders make up a more significant portion of potential customers. Thus, generating positive buzz here can have a noticeable impact upon sales. Print publication sales are orders of magnitude larger and the majority of the customer base doesn't use the internet to find out about those products (just because we do, don't assume everyone who uses the internet uses it the way we do), so EN World would have a pretty small impact there.

Just my guess.
-Dave

 

[the Jester]

All I can tell you is that ENWorld has caused me to purchase Heroes of High Favor: Halflings (it was the only HoHF book in stock at the time- dwarves and half-orcs are the two that I really want), Of Sound Mind, If Thoughts Could Kill, Fields of Blood, DMG 2 and Tournaments, Fairs and Taverns, as well as the pound o' dice you can order from, er, Chessex I think?

It's also warned me away from a thing or two that I might have otherwise sight unseen ordered on faith.

Most important for my buying habits, it has given me a much better awareness of 'name' designers. Mike Mearls is a great example- I wouldn't have known his name from Adam's without ENWorld. Robin Laws is another.

 

[Steel_Wind]

D&D? No.

D20 -yes. Proportional to the size of the publisher, as Crothian has already noted.

 

[trancejeremy]

Well, how many regular visitors does ENWorld get? Probably 10-20 thousand at most. OTOH, the RPG market is what, probably at least a couple million.

In the grand scheme of things, it probably doesn't make much of a difference, but OTOH, I'm sure it makes something of a dent.

 

[philreed]

I would have to agree that EnWorld's impact is greater on the PDF industry than it is the RPG industry as a whole. In fact, EnWorld's affect on PDF sales is strong enough that I've always wondered why they never started their own PDF sales site. To me it just made perfect sense.

Redesign the messageboards to include product thumbnails/links down one side and poof, instant catalog on every page on the site. Who knows, maybe they did consider it but the server requirements were too great.

 

[philreed]

Well, how many regular visitors does ENWorld get? Probably 10-20 thousand at most. OTOH, the RPG market is what, probably at least a couple million.

I would be completely amazed if the regular RPG buying population is greater than 200-250,000.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

Don't know of any way to know for sure, thought I do know this: out of my group, I'm the only one that hangs out here on a regular basis. None of them buy PDFs, and they buy relatively few print books. But what stuff they do buy is heavily influenced by me, and this place is my primary source of info.

I suspect that ENWorld is disproportionally populated by DMs, and that it's influence is greater than the raw numbers would indicate, simply because in my experience the DMs are the ones that buy the books.