Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1055663Oh, sure; the novels' day is long past, a pattern that extends beyond D&D to other franchises.

Print book sales continue to increase; https://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bookselling/article/75760-print-sales-up-again-in-2017.html A few types of books have dropped, but not by much.

The crazy thing is, if you look at the top selling "Science fiction and Fantasy" books on Amazon, the top of the list is dominated by 5e D&D hardcovers.

Quote from: happyhermit;1055670The crazy thing is, if you look at the top selling "Science fiction and Fantasy" books on Amazon, the top of the list is dominated by 5e D&D hardcovers.

Funny, they don't show up in the UK top 100 (& #99 is a reverse harem romance) https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Best-Sellers-Books-Science-Fiction-Fantasy/zgbs/books/4034595031/ref=zg_bs_pg_1?_encoding=UTF8&pg=1 - I'm guessing they're not in the category at all. The D&D PHB is #233 in All Books and #1 in Hobbies & Games - https://smile.amazon.co.uk/gp/bestsellers/books/270508/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_books_1_4_last - #96 is the 4e DMG2!

Quote from: S'mon;1055675Funny, they don't show up in the UK top 100 (& #99 is a reverse harem romance) https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Best-Sellers-Books-Science-Fiction-Fantasy/zgbs/books/4034595031/ref=zg_bs_pg_1?_encoding=UTF8&pg=1 - I'm guessing they're not in the category at all. The D&D PHB is #233 in All Books and #1 in Hobbies & Games - https://smile.amazon.co.uk/gp/bestsellers/books/270508/ref=pd_zg_hrsr_books_1_4_last - #96 is the 4e DMG2!

Yeah, it can vary by country, I don't know all that much about the UK book market but there could be many reasons. In Canada, D&D books are almost always ranked higher than in the US. Ie; right now PHB among all books in the UK= #234, US= #45, CA= #8!  

Honestly though, if the PHB had only averaged in the mid 200's in the US for several years that would have been a success for a D&D edition IMO, 4e did not do so well and 99% of books don't. Instead it's averaged in the top 50 (and averaged in the top10 books in Canada which is interesting to me but not overly consequential to D&D)

Quote from: Apparition;1055661The video games.  Neverwinter, mainly.  From what I understand, that game makes bank from its selling crates on PC, XBox One, and PlayStation 4.

That's great, for Perfect World, who is publishing and running the game. Although, according to this Forbes article, they are pulling in a net income of $176 million dollars. That's for all their games.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1055663Oh, sure; the novels' day is long past, a pattern that extends beyond D&D to other franchises.

Although it seems that Warhammer novels take up an impressive amount of shelf space in my local Barnes & Noble.

Anyway, didn't TSR somehow manage to lose money on the novels even when they sold well? I seem to recall reading that somewhere.

Quote from: Dimitrios;1055720Although it seems that Warhammer novels take up an impressive amount of shelf space in my local Barnes & Noble.

Anyway, didn't TSR somehow manage to lose money on the novels even when they sold well? I seem to recall reading that somewhere.

  I was thinking Star Trek and Star Wars, both of which have cut down substantially on the novels since the heyday of the 90s/early 00s. Still present, mind, just not as many. All things change ...

  They got hit hard by overextending on the hardcovers (from one in a year, to two, to about half a dozen), but they weren't losing money per copy, as some think happened on the higher-produced supplements.

It's a sad fact that the primary market for those books (D&D, Star Wars, etc) were young men, and readership in that demographic is falling off a cliff. Blame videogames. Or the fact YA and teen novels are aimed overwhelming at girls. But reading fiction is rapidly becoming a gendered activity.

Quote from: Dimitrios;1055720Anyway, didn't TSR somehow manage to lose money on the novels even when they sold well? I seem to recall reading that somewhere.

Yes and no. What was happening to TSR was something that had been going on for a long time. Retailers "returning" the book for a refund.

What they really did was return the COVER and then sold the coverless book. This was happening to comics to for quite a while. Since at least the 70s.

Quote from: Omega;1055762Yes and no. What was happening to TSR was something that had been going on for a long time. Retailers "returning" the book for a refund.

What they really did was return the COVER and then sold the coverless book. This was happening to comics to for quite a while. Since at least the 70s.

I'd heard a lot about that, but as an active genre fiction reader in the US during the 80s and 90s I saw very, very few "stripped" books for sale or in peoples' collections. Do we have a quantitative measure? A few minutes of googling didn't turn up any data.

Quote from: Naburimannu;1055809I'd heard a lot about that, but as an active genre fiction reader in the US during the 80s and 90s I saw very, very few "stripped" books for sale or in peoples' collections. Do we have a quantitative measure? A few minutes of googling didn't turn up any data.

Yeah, I'm skeptical too. I used to work in a used book store, and we never sold coverless books. Pretty sure it's illegal.

Quote from: Haffrung;1055832Yeah, I'm skeptical too. I used to work in a used book store, and we never sold coverless books. Pretty sure it's illegal.

It is illegal, and stupid since many people used to buy books for the cover art.

Ive never seen any numbers but I have seen it in action. But at the time did not know the reason for it. Used to be in drug stores youd see these packs of comics for sale cheap. and theyd all be missing the covers except maybe one. If that. And I used to see coverless books fairly often. TSR staff mentioned the return problem which was the first I'd heard of it.

Seems stupid to me. But obviously someone thought it was a profitable scam to run.

Seems like it died out by the 90s. Least I stopped seeing any after that. Who knows. It was apparently a big enough problem they started putting alerts in books not to buy if it was missing the cover.

Quote from: happyhermit;1055113A cool thing though (IMO) is that at least in North America in the last couple years "D&D" and "DnD" have become more searched for terms than "Rpg".

https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=D%26D,dungeons%20and%20dragons,dnd,rpg

Because of hashtags, #DnD has become shorthand for "RPGs in general", though it's true that most of that is talking about D&D, since D&D is by far the most played RPG.

Not sure if I'm in the right thread here, and my apologies to you all if I'm not, BUT I've rediscovered my love for RPGs (I started playing in the late 70s/ early 80s) but have also discovered Neverwinter MMORPG through my PlayStation 4 console. I enjoy playing both BUT they are vastly different.

The MMO is simply one's character bashing monsters and acquiring things and increasing one's level, not solving puzzles or properly exploring regions, it's a rather limited game which (have you noticed the increasing number pumpkins in the Protector's Enclave?), like Skyrim et al, one can tire of quite easily. The MMO is a place for Hasbro to generate revenue from the players. Sadly...


The RPG on the other hand considerably grabs my attention - the social interaction with other humans, the unpredictable nature of PCs and how a game can truly create an interesting fun story etc etc. Anyway just my pennies worth to this thread.

Quote from: Omega;1055762Yes and no. What was happening to TSR was something that had been going on for a long time. Retailers "returning" the book for a refund.

What they really did was return the COVER and then sold the coverless book. This was happening to comics to for quite a while. Since at least the 70s.

To be fair though TSR was sending too much stock to retailers as well and then asking them to foot the bill. If Retailer XYZ was owed 10000$they sent the retailer 10000$ worth of book product.  The book publisher/retailer does not get paid and can only get the lost money back by selling the product. Which was a win-win for TSR. With them not paying the retailer what was owned. Having worked in a actual bookstore retailers cannot sell a book without a cover it is illegal. It's not to say it never happened in the industry yet a established publishing company like Random House if they were caught would face a hefty fine. It's why many paperback books have a "if you bought this book without a cover then it is  stolen property and neither the publisher nor the author has received payment for the stripped book" style message. Sure the less than honest flgs owner may sell a stripped book. Or it gets taken out of their garbage. If anyone made it worse for themselves it was TSR. I would be pissed if I owned a publishing company and TSR instead of paying me kept sending me more books instead. By sending back stripped covers they cannot send those same books back again and avoid paying what they owe. With TSR too many were sent back at one time and it hurt them financially.