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<blockquote data-quote="humble minion" data-source="post: 8143146" data-attributes="member: 5948">I’m not so sure.The novel line was a huge double-edged sword for TSR. On one hand, the wild popularity of some of their novel lines - Drizzt, certain of the Dragonlance books, some others here and there (I believe the elminster books and the Elaine Cunningham realms books did very well, and Erebus Cale) - literally kept the lights on at TSR for quite a while when they were producing far too much gaming material at far too low profit margins and selling far too little of it. If anyone’s glad that TSR survived long enough for WotC to buy it out, then perhaps a quiet ‘thank you’ to RA Salvatore is in order.But the novels also precipitated TSRs downfall. The company was so reliant on the fiction line that they were churning titles out at a ridiculous rate, and quality inevitably suffered and the market got saturated. Which was a real problem as the publishing deal they had meant that TSR copped the bill for any novels that were printed but which never sold. Drizzt always did fine, sure, but the 20 other novels being released every year were a millstone around the company’s neck. Which strongly suggests that 25 years later, there’s maybe not much money-making potential in the rights to those books, to be honest. If you haven’t already, check out the thread where [USER=16069]@Goonalan[/USER] reads every FR novel, I suggest you do. It’s good perspective.Im sure there a bit of money to be made in making the old d&amp;d novels available again - probably in Ebook format where the printing overheads aren’t a thing (are wotc already doing this? I have no idea), but it’s not remotely enough to be a significant commercial consideration when compared to the value of the rest of d&amp;d or wotc itself.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="humble minion, post: 8143146, member: 5948"] I’m not so sure. The novel line was a huge double-edged sword for TSR. On one hand, the wild popularity of some of their novel lines - Drizzt, certain of the Dragonlance books, some others here and there (I believe the elminster books and the Elaine Cunningham realms books did very well, and Erebus Cale) - literally kept the lights on at TSR for quite a while when they were producing far too much gaming material at far too low profit margins and selling far too little of it. If anyone’s glad that TSR survived long enough for WotC to buy it out, then perhaps a quiet ‘thank you’ to RA Salvatore is in order. But the novels also precipitated TSRs downfall. The company was so reliant on the fiction line that they were churning titles out at a ridiculous rate, and quality inevitably suffered and the market got saturated. Which was a real problem as the publishing deal they had meant that TSR copped the bill for any novels that were printed but which never sold. Drizzt always did fine, sure, but the 20 other novels being released every year were a millstone around the company’s neck. Which strongly suggests that 25 years later, there’s maybe not much money-making potential in the rights to those books, to be honest. If you haven’t already, check out the thread where [USER=16069]@Goonalan[/USER] reads every FR novel, I suggest you do. It’s good perspective. Im sure there a bit of money to be made in making the old d&d novels available again - probably in Ebook format where the printing overheads aren’t a thing (are wotc already doing this? I have no idea), but it’s not remotely enough to be a significant commercial consideration when compared to the value of the rest of d&d or wotc itself. [/QUOTE]

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