Like I said, I am not inclined to going to dig up links on information you've missed but which has already been discussed here plenty as it happened. The fact you mentioned "non-fiction" as opposed to "all books" alone tells me you are lacking in even basic awareness of how sales have ranked in this past year. You also keep mentioning Mearls and I don't know why. I suggest if you want to know more you get a camelcamelcamel account and look at the long term tracking, and then look at INDEPENDENT sources outside Mearls and Crawford (in addition to what they've said). But bottom line, I think you're behind in your data. If you want to go look information up, I encourage you do to so. But, I am not going to do your homework for you on this one...I just don't have the time, and I suspect anything I gave you would result in additional requests for even more data until you got to the point where you were asking for in-house trade secret numbers on exact quantity of sales for each book and each dollar gained for each sale and silliness on that level.
But for others reading what you're writing - I encourage you to research this yourself and I think you will find I am correct. This past year was literally the best year for D&D sales (overall) in the past 20 years. It well exceeded the launch year for the edition, which is unprecedented except for 1e AD&D.
I have stock reports and what you are saying is absolutely NOT in them, so where are you getting this stuff from? Obviously NOT from the official Hasbro sources from what I can tell, or at least your interpretation is different then what the reports seem to tell me.
I have seen MULTIPLE double ended statements put out that have been interpreted FAR beyond what they stated by many (including statements by Mearls about the core books). I haven't seen anything to indicate that it's doing better than it did in 2000 or 2001 from those stock reports, nor have I seen it excel 2008 (and specifically 2008, not the years after that), all of which ALSO had mentions (and more particularly in pre-2003 years) pertaining to D&D in some instances to a bigger and more in depth degree.
The bigger concerns this year stemming from the reports and outside sources actually had to do with Toys R' US and other items rather than having any major interests in D&D. There is more about Magic than D&D...and if anything I'd say Hasbro sees D&D as a BRAND investment...but the books are merely a blot. Magic as a seller is the bigger interest rather than the D&D sales. It more about the Brand of D&D than the books at this point in regards to what might make money.
This is why...if you have those reports from the past 9 months...please highlight these things or at least point them out so I can find them in the reports I have...because I'm not seeing them. I HIGHLY doubt Mearls said something that countered what is shown in the reports...but if he did...once again...please show me those statements. It could be interesting to see if they were indeed taken out of context (meaning he technically told the truth, but have been misinterpreted to say what you think they say insteasd) or he actually directly stated that the gross profits were the greatest ever.
Put it this way...a 30 man WotC sells a typical 30 million dollars. At 100K for each person (salary, paperwork, etc), plus another 3 million in overhead and another 4 in other expenses...plus the normal 10 million in production costs gives you 10 million profit. A 8 man WotC team that sells 15 million which has 120K for each person (salary, paperwork, insurance..etc), but only a 1 million overhead, and another 1 million in other expenses gives you a profit of 12 million. Not hard to have a better profit margin in that arena...or even better net profit.
I don't think this is what happened, but I will admit that is a possibility. I think when referring to a better profit overall, it is referring to the profit margins, which, with a small department like D&D has, comparatively to the larger departments of the past and the money they are making or should be aiming for (10-15 million) should be a no brainer in having a greater profit percentagewise to cost than it has EVER done previously. That's a different statement than saying the monetary profits (net or gross) are greater than all other editions, or even 3e or 4e. Once again, this boils down to the wording. I could be referring to the percentage profits (which should be a no brainer that a department that is smaller than 1/3 of WotC D&D previously making at least half the gross would be making the highest percentage wise profits ever) or monetary profits (less likely), but without the moniker to state which...you won't know. It's a double speak.
Still, I might be able to buy the net profits even, but not the gross. I'm interested in your sources...
Where did you GET this information that you stated?
5e has made more gross than 3e/3.5e. Not core books (that was a much earlier response from Mearls), just total gross (the more recent data). That's not a lie, it's true. We have a lot of evidence to support that contention, including a lot of independent evidence which is not from Mike Mearls or Jeremy Crawford. In support of your contention that it's false is...your speculation.
It does NOT seem to correlate with ANYTHING I've heard or seen in the stock reports or anything else for that matter. This is why I am asking. I do NOT see this in the numbers. If you have this information, PLEASE POST IT. Obviously, I might have a different tune on the matter. I haven't seen the evidence that you state there is a LOT of to even start to think this. However, I am interested in SEEING this information that you refer to.
