WotC WotC can, and probably should support multiple editions of D&D.

[Parmandur]

I don't understand why you wouldn't include Dragon magazine

The magazine material was more like DMsGuild fan releases, not TSR designer work.

 

[mamba]

Novels. At one point, Dragonlance novels did save TSR. So of course TSR went all-in on novels, not all of which were even as good as Dragonlance. However, the book trade paid in advance for the books, which was good. What was less good was that they had the right to "return" unsold copies (where "return" really means destroy) for refunds – initially taking credit toward the next release, but eventually wanting actual money back.

that was not limited to the novels, the same was true for their TTRPG products

What made TSR non-viable is mismanagement, they had no idea what their customers wanted, they had no idea how much it costs to manufacture a product (resulting in them selling some boxed sets under manufacturing cost...). What allowed them to keep going a few years longer than they otherwise would have was their deal with Random House

 

[mamba]

Not in print they haven't. 1E&BEMCI sold more of every single common book except the PHB (more Basic, more DMG, more MM).

yes, even in print, The 5e PHB alone might have sold as many copies in print as all of 1e or 2e (not both)... you are either vastly overestimating the old sales or vastly underestimating the 5e ones

AD&D 1E and BEMCI had over 70 different adventures they published in print, compared to I think 20 from 5E.

so? 70 * 20k < 20 * 100k

I am confident 1E and BEMCI sold more in print than 5E

confidence is irrelevant, show me your math

 

[mamba]

You have no evidence at all to support this. The numbers about print sales show the opposite and they don't even include the 1E adventures.

I assume I have the same evidence you do, i.e. Ben Riggs' numbers for BECMI, 1e and 2e, and the Bookscan numbers for 5e (and the fact that they are about a quarter of actual sales....). As I said, show me your math and we can discuss it, I am pretty sure these sources support my conclusion

The 1E DMG outsold the 5E DMG

not by a long shot...

The numbers for 1E AD&D+BEMCI are over 10M

so about as much as 5e PHB and DMG together...

 

[Zardnaar]

I am using the numbers provided. They show 10M 1E and BEMCI sales for the books they show while not even including most of the 1E publications.

The bookscan data shows far less than that on what is a more comprehensive list of 5E products printed



Dragon magazine was printed and mailed to subscribers and at over 1M copies per year during the heyday that dwarfs anything that WOTC printed for 5E (perhaps more than everything WOTC printed for 5E combined).

70 cheap 20 page modules means they can sell for far less per copy and sell far more product total. That is the point! If I sell 5 comic books and you sell one copy of War and Peace, I sold more books than you did.

I don't have data to compare DM's Guild and DNDB electronic sales, but no one else does either. I will point out though that DMs guild is still selling 1E material today.

As far as DNDB goes we know there are supposedly 10M users. How much the average user purchases is the real question here. I would guess the majority of users purchases no books at all. The majority of people I know with a DNDBeyond account have not purchased any books. I am currently playing with 22 people with an account on DNDB in the 4 online or partially online campaigns I am active in. Of those 22; three of the people (2 DMs and one player) have an e-copy of every single WOTC book on DNDB. I have three WOTC e-books. The rest I don't think have any e-books (and I know for a fact some of them don't have any).

Bookscan isn't all the numbers. It's big box only. Excludes Amazon, flgs and international sales.

Apparently it's around 25-30% of sales total in the USA.

So we are looking at a 3 or 4 multiplier roughly. I don't think international sakes will be huge eg probably lower than bookscan numbers.

 

[Zardnaar]

I assume I have the same evidence you do, i.e. Ben Riggs' numbers for BECMI, 1e and 2e, and the Bookscan numbers for 5e (and the fact that they are about a quarter of actual sales....). As I said, show me your math and we can discuss it, I am pretty sure these sources support my conclusion

Ben Riggs numbers more or less match up with known numbers for golden age big sellers which were 1E phb and red box.

Print Run

 

[mamba]

The bookscan data shows far less than that on what is a more comprehensive list of 5E products printed

but it is a lot less comprehensive in its coverage of actual sales...

 

[Zardnaar]

but it is a lot less comprehensive in its coverage of actual sales...

There's also this.

Print Run

Print runs for a few products.
. Bookscan is incomplete but. Apparently 25-30% of US market.

For a range 20% to 50% this would really give you plausible maximum and minimum 5E sales figure for the USA.

At a minimum 5E phb has sold 1E and red box added togather.

Average tsr module sold sweet FA comparatively. They had a few big sellers though as exceptions. Less than the big 5E non phb sellers.

 

[Staffan]

that was not limited to the novels, the same was true for their TTRPG products

Perhaps for those products sold through book stores, but my understanding was that that channel was primarily for fiction. The actual games were sold more through hobby stores, which do not have the ability to return/destroy product for refunds.

 

[Parmandur]

Perhaps for those products sold through book stores, but my understanding was that that channel was primarily for fiction. The actual games were sold more through hobby stores, which do not have the ability to return/destroy product for refunds.

Based on what Riggs wrote, the game products were part of the same cycle of debt, hence why TSR pushed so much product.