WotC So, when do the announce the July book? Guesses on what it'll be? 🤔

[Parmandur]

The other levels where included in the free-to-essentials-owners modules on D&D beyond.

I might have known that if I had bothered using the Beyond component.

 

[see]

Well, perusing Amazon, Candlekeep Mysteries are about 400 in all books, so, I'd say, so far anyway, it's selling pretty darn well. Any RPG book that breaks the top 1000 on Amazon is moving a decent amount. Of course, it's still early days. Ask again in three months and that's probably a better sign of how well it's doing.

From another perspective, it made the USA Today Best-Selling Books for one week, at #18.

Comparatively, the 4e PHB 2 had one week on that list at #28, the 4e PHB 3 had one week at #111, the 4e Forgotten Realms Player's Guide had one week at #127, and the 4e DMG had one week at #128.

 

[Hussar]

Well, I'm certainly not going to compare 4e book sales to 5e. I mean, there just isn't really any comparison is there? I mean, the hobby is much, much larger now than it was 10 years ago.

 

[see]

Well, I'm certainly not going to compare 4e book sales to 5e. I mean, there just isn't really any comparison is there? I mean, the hobby is much, much larger now than it was 10 years ago.

Well, okay. If you're not going to compare to older D&D editions, you pretty much can only compare to other 5e books, then, because non-D&D RPGs don't even make the general book bestseller lists. (Pathfinder 2nd edition's core rulebook made 1 week at #141. Running through titles from other ICv2-reported top 5 RPGs from the last five years produces nothing else at all. Starfinder, Vampire, the FFG Star Wars titles, Cyberpunk, Fate, Alien, Genesys, Star Trek Adventures, Shadowrun, Adventures in Middle-Earth, Dragon Age, Call of Cthulhu . . . nada.)

So, against other 5th edition adventures, we have Icewind Dale, 1 week, #24; Baldur's Gate, 1 week, #22; Ghosts of Saltmarsh, 1 week, #14; Dragon Heist, 1 week, #45; Dungeon of the Mad Mage, 1 week, #90; Tomb of Annihilation, 1 week, #115; Tales From the Yawning Portal, 1 week, #73.

That puts Candlekeep Adventures, with one week at #18, as what you'd pretty much expect from the last few years.

 

[Parmandur]

Well, okay. If you're not going to compare to older D&D editions, you pretty much can only compare to other 5e books, then, because non-D&D RPGs don't even make the general book bestseller lists. (Pathfinder 2nd edition's core rulebook made 1 week at #141. Running through titles from other ICv2-reported top 5 RPGs from the last five years produces nothing else at all. Starfinder, Vampire, the FFG Star Wars titles, Cyberpunk, Fate, Alien, Genesys, Star Trek Adventures, Shadowrun, Adventures in Middle-Earth, Dragon Age, Call of Cthulhu . . . nada.)

So, against other 5th edition adventures, we have Icewind Dale, 1 week, #24; Baldur's Gate, 1 week, #22; Ghosts of Saltmarsh, 1 week, #14; Dragon Heist, 1 week, #45; Dungeon of the Mad Mage, 1 week, #90; Tomb of Annihilation, 1 week, #115; Tales From the Yawning Portal, 1 week, #73.

That puts Candlekeep Adventures, with one week at #18, as what you'd pretty much expect from the last few years.

That's pretty impressive actually, that it is second only to Saltmarsh in that metric.

 

[see]

That's pretty impressive actually, that it is second only to Saltmarsh in that metric.

Sure. But remember that the rankings are against the entire rest of the book market the week in question, not against other rank numbers from other years, so the numbers need to be treated as "fuzzy".

The other thing is, of course, that the one-week-that-it-was-150-or-better might be offset by faster dropoffs in units after that week. A book that goes "#24, #151, #151, #151" may well have sold more than a same-weeks book that went "#18, #200, #300, #400".

So the most I'm willing to say is that Candlekeep performed at roughly the expected band for recent D&D 5e adventures, and accordingly at levels that any other RPG brand and any previous edition's non-PHB would consider spectacular levels.

 

[humble minion]

I wonder how significant the impact of kickstarter is on the reliability of Amazon sales rank?

Significant chunks of the TTRPG industry have kickstarter as a core part of their business model - Onyx Path, for instance. Free League is another. These aren't small publishers. WotC is one of the very few exceptions.

I suspect that for a lot of these companies, a high percentage of the sales of any given product are though the initial kickstarter batch, which are of course never going to be reflected in Amazon's numbers.

 

[Parmandur]

I wonder how significant the impact of kickstarter is on the reliability of Amazon sales rank?

Significant chunks of the TTRPG industry have kickstarter as a core part of their business model - Onyx Path, for instance. Free League is another. These aren't small publishers. WotC is one of the very few exceptions.

I suspect that for a lot of these companies, a high percentage of the sales of any given product are though the initial kickstarter batch, which are of course never going to be reflected in Amazon's numbers.

If so, that's still pretty bad.

 

[Hussar]

Let's be honest here. There's WotC and then there's everyone else. At this point in time anyway, anything not WotC is a rounding error. Not that that makes those other companies worse or anything like that. I don't mean it that way. Just that a lot of other companies are still on the old scale of RPG's that we've seen prior to 5e. 5e is in a class all by itself. I mean, we talk about million dollar kickstarters, which are fantastic. But, again, in comparison, it looks like pretty much every 5e book is in that league or even higher.

It's such a shock to see just how big D&D has gotten in the past five or six years. The fact that the core 3 are still in the low hundreds on Amazon is just amazing. Stunning really.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

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