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Message: <blockquote data-quote="JLowder" data-source="post: 7808820" data-attributes="member: 28003">Yes, that's my understanding of the situation. The fiction continued to make money for Wizards, especially the Salvatore Drizzt books, right up until the fiction line stopped. In fact, Wizards still makes money off all the TSR/WotC fiction they keep in print. A couple times a year I receive royalties for ebook and audiobook sales of the novels and stories I wrote in the early 1990s. The payments are not huge after so many years, but still not zero.Wizards also makes money off the books other houses publish under license, like the new Drizzt novels or the Matt Forbeck pick-a-path books. They get a licensing fee for those. And, they do not have to keep a fiction department or other fiction specialists around to edit, distribute, and advertize them, only someone or a small team to approve the licensed content.The full reason Wizards shuttered the fiction line is complicated. The line generated profit, but that it was not enough profit to counterbalance cost or match the money Hasbro/WotC would make by investing company resources elsewhere is a big part of it. There was a clash at WotC about the role and status of fiction within the brands, too, one that mirrored debates that happened at TSR. Which team gets to set the direction for the Realms, for example--fiction or the RPGs? Overall, Hasbro was never fully on board being a fiction publisher, as that requires staff and expertise they normally would not have. They're used to licensing that kind of stuff, as they are doing now.--Jim Lowder</blockquote>

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