As we enter the new year, I’ve got some updates on what’s going on with So You Want To Be a Game Master.
To quickly bring everyone bring everyone up to speed:
- The book arrived at the publisher’s warehouse in mid-October and was immediately shipped out.
- The street date was November 21st, but stores stocked them in mid-November as they arrived.
- For many overseas countries, the books were still in shipment on the North America release date: Either in container ships, hung up in customs, or processing through local distributors.
- The book almost immediately began selling out. Domestically, this meant rapid fluctuations in estimated delivery dates until, shortly before or just after Christmas, most online retailers reported the book to be completely out of stock.
- Overseas, the pattern was more complicated: Initial release date was usually conservatively listed as January (since they didn’t want to over-promise on the vagaries of international shipping), but in many cases the books arrived in December. But they would then almost immediately sell out — so people would see delivery estimates go from January (cautious promise), to December (it’s here!), and then to June (we’ve waiting on international shipping again!).
Obviously, everybody involved — me, Page Street, Macmillan, the bookstores — want to be able to sell you the book. So what’s happening?
First, some people have told me that the publisher “obviously” shorted the initial print run. This is not the case. The initial print order was quite large for a first time book, and reflected both their confidence in the book and the amazing success the book had in preorders.
(Tangentially: Thank you to everyone who preordered the book. It has an exponential effect on a book’s success in the modern book market, and it’s also the reason we have an audio book!)
The book was just INSANELY successful. Literally no one expected it to become a USA Today Bestseller, but it did!
This is what followed, and where we are now:
- Within three days of the book’s release, a second printing had been ordered.
- This second printing was then MORE THAN DOUBLED in size.
- It was not enough, and a THIRD PRINTING of the same (more than doubled) size has been ordered.
The second printing has come off the presses and is now in the bindery. Within days, these new copies will be shipped to the publisher’s warehouse. From there they’ll be shipped into distribution.
The third printing is slightly behind the second printing, but should arrive in the publisher’s warehouse by the end of January.
In North America, this makes it likely (but not certain!) that new copies will start reaching readers by the beginning of February. I am sorry to say, however, that international retailers are going to face the same wait with international shipping that they did with the first printing. (We are very hopeful, however, that the new supply should be sufficient that the book will not immediately vanish from shelves again.)
BUT I WANT THE BOOK!
Of course you do!
If I was forced to pick one problem for the book to have, “unexpected runaway bestseller” would certainly be the one I would pick. But it still sucks, and I feel awful that so many people haven’t been able to get the books they ordered.
So here’s the deal:
- Barnes & Noble currently has 700 copies. We don’t know how many copies are in their distribution center for online sales vs. how many are on shelves in B&N stores, but if you’re looking for a copy of the book RIGHT NOW, check your local B&N and/or their website.
- Call around to other local stores, including game stores. There could very easily be a copy sitting on a store shelf near you.
- If you have a preorder with a retailer you trust to honor the preorder, keep that preorder (at least until you have another copy of the book in hand). It should give you priority when the second printing resupplies the distribution channels, and will likely be the quickest way for you to get a physical copy in many cases.
- Otherwise, place a preorder ASAP. Again, this will give you priority in getting a copy ASAP when the second printing arrives.
- There is both an e-book and, in North America, an audio book edition, available from all the places you’d expect to find e-books and audio books available for sale. If you just can’t wait (and I don’t blame you!), there’s no faster way to get it.
I know this is immensely frustrating, but I’d like to thank all of you once again for your support. And I hope you all find the book worth the wait!
Congrats Jason!
Congrats on a runaway success!
I don’t suppose there’s any hope it’ll be available as a plain PDF at some point? It’d be nice to have in the same universally portable form as the rest of my game library.
Congratulations! So glad I preordered three copies – going to give a couple away to students at the school D&D club, so it will be a big bonus to say, “This book is so popular it sold out already!”
Game on!
Well done! I spotted one at a B&N in Pembroke Pines Florida last week, but I got the audio version and have been listening to it in the car. Dunno when I’ll get to use the information in it but it’s absorbing and inspiring nonetheless.
Oh my goodness, I’m very happy for you. Gotta admit, I had been thinking about buying it, and then pulled the trigger when Professor DM did a video on it. I’m probably 3/4 done and it is off course wonderful. You have a wonderful style of talking to the reader. Anyway, congrats!!
Delighted for you, congratulations on the incredible sales! (I can live with being one of the internationals experiencing the magically shuffling delivery dates on my preorder, I’d like to read it but it’s not like it’ll go out of date :D)
Hoping more overseas copies come in soon someone tried to get one for me for christmas but it’s been stuck in limbo, I’m fine to wait these things happen, I just do hope it arrives sooner than later.
I’m in the UK and my (preordered) copy arrived just after Christmas, so was like an extra present. It looks great.
Thanks for the update. I cancelled an amazon delivery and re-ordered through blackwell’s for the UK instead which looks to actually be setting off now. Looking forward to it!
Congratulations on the huge success! I ended up buying my husband an audiobook copy for Christmas on a last-minute whim. He much prefers to listen to books rather than read them. Love that there is an audiobook version, makes it way more accessible!
Congratulations, Mr Best-Selling-Author
Ordered mine from Australia through Amazon USA pre-order and it arrived 2 weeks before Christmas. However, once I held it in my hand, I decided, with a small wrench, to give it to my son for said Christmas. He has hardly put it down since. But he also hasn’t finished it, so I haven’t had a chance to steal it back yet – I’m stick reading a biography of Lawrence of Arabia. It does make me want to run a desert campaign but, without your book, I don’t know how 🙂
Thanks, everyone!
@Dale: If your son hasn’t given the book back by the time you finish that Lawrence of Arabia biography, check out Treason in the Blood by Anthony Cave Brown, the biography of H. St. John Philby and Kim Philby.
The H. St. John Philby stuff, in particular, has a lot of interesting overlap with Lawrence.
Hi Justin.
Just finished reading the book. All the content is amazing. Happy to see it delivering the success it deserves!
Is there a way to get a pdf version with the same layout as the printed one? I read mine on the Kindle.
Where can I get an EPUB that I could put on my Kobo? I’ve searched where the book came out and didn’t find any store.
@Dale and @Justin: If you like the Lawrence and Philby stuff and want to work in a something adjacent to the Cthulhu mythos with your WWII/Cold War espionage then you should follow-up with _Declare_ by Tim Powers! (hopefully you get access to Justin’s book before you get that far, but then go back to it when you’re building your desert campaign)
A well deserved “Congratulations!” to you for the bestselling book, Justin! It may please you to know that I purchased all 3 versions (physical, Kindle, and audiobook), and am glad that I did as it gives me near-constant access to access to the valuable insights and instruction within. I am currently using it in both of my D&D campaigns:
1. The players in my long running campaign have bitten on an opportunity to raid an enemy army camp to try and knock off the commanding hobgoblin warlord. They’ve reconnoitered the camp and made a plan, and I can’t wait to see how it goes.
2. In my other group, where we run shorter adventures with rotating DMs, I’m running a multi-nodal mystery in an urban setting, and the players are enjoying the change from the typical linear adventure paths and dungeons (and even linear dungeons).
To my own surprise, I’m also in discussions with the local library staff about starting up an open D&D/RPG table. See what you’ve done! Nevertheless, I anxiously await your next book – you still have enough great tips & insights on this website to make a fantastic sequel or supplement.
I don’t really care for audiobooks, but I’m also not great a focusing on textbooks and I do have a lot of time during the day when I could listen to an audiobook. I’d did manage to get a copy of the physical book, but for this I think I’m going to break down and get an audio copy too. I doubt my retention will be as high, but I can listen to it multiple times.
We’ll see how it works out!
@Szymon: It’s available in the Kobo store.
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/so-you-want-to-be-a-game-master
@Another David DM: That. Is. Awesome. Good gaming!
I am lucky that my copy arrived December 28 in Germany. I preordered with Amazon.de 😁
Hi Justin,
Good work and Congratulations! I also have the ebook in kindle version and the contents are amazingly good. I understand the need of Sambarilov to get a PDF version.
The issue with the kindle version is that it has many page references , like in 5+5 dungeon desing, Step 5: Mapping and Keying, referencincing the Tips and tricks in page 100. The problem is that in the kindle book the pages are not in sync with the physical book. For example, my page 100 is RUNNING TRAPS. So we get lost trying to find the reference page.
One solution would be to convert all those page references to links in the kindle document.
Pre-ordered it a while ago and luckily got it just before the new year in Finland. It’s awesome and was worth the wait.
Howdy! As far as I can tell, I bought the last copy in Ohio from Barnes & Noble yesterday. It took speaking with 3 different workers until the last one knew where it was in backstock (one of the other people thought he hid it on purpose).
If you come out with a hardbound version at some point, I will probably purchase that as well!
Congratulations! I’ve been reading your blog for nearly 15 years – I picked up a copy at B&N just before New Year’s and I’m loving revisiting old advice and seeing some new advice as well!
Is there any plan for a hard-back release? With a tome this size, it would be great to have the more robust cover (plus it would look great on my shelf!). I’d be more than happy to purchase a second copy to have a “working” copy that I can annotate and a “show” copy for the bookshelf that I can read without my notes getting in the way.
Congrats Justin! You deserve it!
ah, no wonder my wife couldn’t get it for me for Christmas. pity
So happy the book was such a huge success! It’s well deserved after the decades of good work you’ve offered to the hobby, even if it means my order keeps getting delayed. Hoping it comes soon as I’m just starting to prep a potential future campaign and having easy access to your advice will be very useful.