How does WotC do its marketing?

[Incenjucar]

Of course, there -are- the nasty glitches that are going to lead to poor information.

For instance, right now, there's a number of people returning the PlHB, or, like myself, refusing to purchase it because it has some notable problems, both in unneeded changes from the past edition, and in mechanics (Planar touchstones are a great idea done horribly horribly poorly). Editing has been a -serious- problem, especially recently. This tends to frustrate players and tilts fence sitters against purchasing products.

But the message that they get isn't "You did it wrong, try again", it's "We don't want this".

We can only hope that they bother to find out WHY people aren't buying them as fast as they otherwise would.

 

[Mouseferatu]

For instance, right now, there's a number of people returning the PlHB, or, like myself, refusing to purchase it

Just out of curiosity--and definitely tied back into the general topic of this post--do you have actual data to support that, or are you drawing purely from anecdotal evidence?

I'm not necessarily doubting you. I've seen the same posts here that you have, though I personally was relatively happy with the PlHB. But as has been pointed out before, EN World is not always representative of the market as a whole.

So WotC may not be drawing any conclusions from the PlHB, because there may be no conclusions to draw. That's why I'm wondering if there's any actual data available regarding sales of this particular book.

 

[Incenjucar]

Go to the WotC boards. You'll find that some people have returned the book or are considering doing so.

I never said it was a huge number, but the WotC boards are a tiny sample of the overall D&D player population. One of the posters has also noted that they have found a number of PlHBs on ebay, and it hasn't exactly been a long time since the books were available.

Now I, personally, have only returned one book in my entire life -- a 1st edition AD&D source book on the wilderness, so I consider it a fairly dramatic statement.

I've actually pondered doing a poll to see how people have reacted to the PlHB, to see how many have loved it, liked it, shrugged at it, hated it, refused to buy it, gave it away, or returned/sold it off.

 

[dead]

That's not necessarily democratic, that's listening to the squeeky wheel.

Yeah, I guess you're right. Dragon/Dungeon should'nt be changing every little thing that their audience complains about like: what typeface to use, etc. But if they ask what direction the magazine should go in in broader terms like: should we revist old adventures?, should we do adventure paths?, etc. I think this is a good thing.