Pathfinder 2E Release Day Second Edition Amazon Sales Rank

[Parmandur]

I'm going to reprint what Erik Mona wrote when on Aug 16 the core rulebook was at 11 on Amazon's Best Fantasy Gaming list and the Bestiary was at 23 (see post #106 in this thread for the full text).

"The recent dip may not look great, but I think PF2e is still stabilizing after the initial boom caused by the release and finding its place in the top 100. My guess is it’ll secure a spot somewhere in the top 15 (or maybe even the top 10 or top 5?) and stay there for a few years, if everything goes well. To be honest, the Bestiary is doing a bit worse than I thought it would. Not sure why that is."

Now, the Core is at 32 and the Bestiary dropped off the top 100 altogether yesterday and is at 100 today. As has been stressed before, you can't take the exact number to mean too much, but this is missing their expectations. What is happening with the Bestiary? That can't be good if the second book I'd tell people to buy to play the game is dropping this fast.

My guess is that the Bestiary is the DM book, so it is probably going to consistently sell at 20-25% of the Core.

 

[Mistwell]

Core book down to #4,511 in Books.

 

[Mistwell]

I'm going to reprint what Erik Mona wrote when on Aug 16 the core rulebook was at 11 on Amazon's Best Fantasy Gaming list and the Bestiary was at 23 (see post #106 in this thread for the full text).

"The recent dip may not look great, but I think PF2e is still stabilizing after the initial boom caused by the release and finding its place in the top 100. My guess is it’ll secure a spot somewhere in the top 15 (or maybe even the top 10 or top 5?) and stay there for a few years, if everything goes well. To be honest, the Bestiary is doing a bit worse than I thought it would. Not sure why that is."

I had not seen this before. Great, something we can point to definitively as their expectations.

So he expected the core book to be top 5-15 on that list once it stabilized, and to stay there for years. It's now down to #42. So that looks pretty damning.

EDIT - Wait, is that post from Erik Mona? It looks like it's not.

 

[dave2008]

I'm going to reprint what Erik Mona wrote when on Aug 16 the core rulebook was at 11 on Amazon's Best Fantasy Gaming list and the Bestiary was at 23 (see post #106 in this thread for the full text).

Look at post #106 again. The bit you quoted was not from Eric Mona.

 

[dave2008]

EDIT - Wait, is that post from Erik Mona? It looks like it's not.

I think you are correct, that was not Eric Mona who said that.

 

[gss000]

I think you are correct, that was not Eric Mona who said that.

You are right, and I was wrong on who wrote the quote. I've added an edit to my post. My fault for any confusion.

 

[gss000]

My guess is that the Bestiary is the DM book, so it is probably going to consistently sell at 20-25% of the Core.

From my experience, you're right that fewer people will buy a DM book, but not that much. The DMG and monster manual don't have that big of a drop compared to the PBH in the Amazon list either. Are D&D player buying behavior that much different than Pathfinder? I don't think the comparable books are that much different to each other in terms of content to warrant vastly different habits. Happy to be wrong here.

 

[Parmandur]

From my experience, you're right that fewer people will buy a DM book, but not that much. The DMG and monster manual don't have that big of a drop compared to the PBH in the Amazon list either. Are D&D player buying behavior that much different than Pathfinder? I don't think the comparable books are that much different to each other in terms of content to warrant vastly different habits. Happy to be wrong here.

Well, 5E has a publishing strategy of natural language rulebooks with lots of fluff oriented towards reading. PF2, less so. I would think PF2 strict players would be significantly less likely to buy a straight DM book that is straight business. Alternatively, if the Bestiary isn't being bought for entertainment, a lot of PF2 DMs might just stick to the SRD for monsters.

Just a hypothesis, the relative cratering of the Bestiary to the core books does remain surprising.

 

[Nebulous]

The Essentials Kit is GREAT stuff. You can create your own characters, it goes up to level 6 (in the box, you don't have to download something extra) and you have five classes to choose from with several archetypes each.

It SHOULD be doing awesome (or I would hope).

Essentials is great to blend with Phandelver. It adds a huge amount of variety and side quests.

 

[Schmoe]

Completely anecdotal, but...

I just bought the core rulebook and the bestiary from my FLGS, and I asked the owner how it was selling. He said it was moving great, much better than he thought it ever would. He said it was slow at first, but then in one weekend he sold half of his entire stock, and it's been doing great since then.