Why are the D&D Player's Handbook Sales So Low?

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Hosted by Stephen Glicker and Mark Seifter, Roll For Combat delivers news and commentary from a business point of view. We host a weekly live show every Wednesday at 3:00 pm EDT and host a wide variety of guests from the gaming industry. We talk about role-playing games, movies, TV, video games, and more.

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#dnd #dungeonsanddragons #wotc #hasbro

[matthewblanchard]

In one of your previous videos you said you had heard Amazon only reports sales once per month, but had not confirmed it. Have you since confirmed that one way or another? If it is once per month - is it a consistent date? What date? Does the current totals listing contain Amazon sales?

[spectrumsucks]

I know I didn’t give them any money 🏴‍☠️

[DanSolo]

When you said how they benefit from reclassifying as a toy, rather than a book, the time they have to give to catalogues to list it, the profit margins of toys vs books, and the fact that toys can't be returned, that suddenly makes a lot of things clearer.

[VictorDiGiovanni]

Print copies basically function as promotional items now.

[neileddy]

None of the FLGS, none of the dndbeyond, none of the digital, etc. are going to show up. When 2014 and even tashas were published, WotC was using penguin and shipping large quantities primarily to target and Walmart and barnes and noble, dndbeyond did not have physical bundles for another few months, then there are a bunch of skus involved in this physical, digital, physical digital bundle, physical 3 book bundle, digital 3 book bundle, alternate phb in all of those combinations, and alternate languages in all of those combinations. For master tier subscribers for dndbeyond, when they released the early phb for pre-orders, there were 5k bug comments from that narrow subset of people, which is more than bookscan is reporting in total sales. I do not know why the everything just got worse crowd can't have an honest conversation and have to put out these videos, other than they generate money, but it is bad ethics about a company you are boycotting having bad ethics.

[_AutoCoder]

BTW using the monster part crafting system from Battlezoo and it's awesome. Added a CR to part value table to make it a little faster for encounters. And weight.. which led to them having to hire carts to haul off dragon parts. Good times ;)

[Frankon]

well Tesla just proved that you dont have to say truth in the press releases. They actually won a case againt them about the readiness of the "self driving" in their reports. The judge said that they could overhype the functionality of the system in the official press releases.

[briansmaller]

Are those digital copies a pdf? If they are tied to DnD Beyond then it is a rental.

[garion]

The data availabale is woefully unhelpful because it excludes too many sources. We all know digital is doing more sales than it used to, especially DndBeyond, and physical is doing less (as a percentage anyway, nominal is anyone's guess, literally only WotC knows the truth and even if they told us no one would trust them).

This sort of headline is pure bait. Not a fan.

[drewenders]

Great video! Stephen, can you pull up the numbers for the PHB 3.0 vs. 3.5 for comparison? I would be curious to see how much of a difference there was back then.

[qkeith]

I bought the bundle package of the PHB, DMG and MM from my hobby shop in Toronto . I was told by one store yesterday that new PHB is selling....this new PHB is being sold at Indigo Book Store in Toronto

[TheNanoNinja]

I've bought a copy of 2024 PHB on DnDBeyond. Haven't read it. I plan to buy a physical copy before the end of the year. I'm not overly interested in running a game yet. I have a community D&D game. I'll change that group to the new rules next year.

[jeramiecooper]

Thanks for the follow up. I was thinking about this over the weekend. Last weekend, my local Target didn't have the book. I'm curious to find out how long it will be for arrival at the big box.

[cybrdroyd]

I got the digital and physical bundle from DnDBeyond

[dlaserus]

I wonder if they count it as two "products" sold when they sell a digital/physical combo.

[Carnagepwnz]

Anyone else know if the 2014 PHB is going out of print. A local Games shop already raised it's cost x2. I snapped up a spare for my table elsewhere and started grabbing some other books I hadn't gotten yet. I have no interest in 2024. My table will stick with 2014 and 3rd party.

[grr-OUCH]

I got the bundle of digital + physical on D&D Beyond last May or June. That is why I was surprised people were saying they only sold 3000-someting copies. I actually thought it was always considered a toy, but that might have to do with my local gaming store in the early 80s being a toy store.

[patkelley]

Every one that wants a copy has one by now. And that's fantastic!

[mikegilkey]

Oh, fastest selling means it only needed to sell 3000 pre order and it sells 3000 copies in the first minute.

[jediprotector]

So, does Baldur's Gate 3 count in this product count?