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Message: <blockquote data-quote="wingsandsword" data-source="post: 1824069" data-attributes="member: 14159">Now, does WotC still sell Monster Manuals?  Does Core Book III still sell?  I think it does, despite 90%+ of it's content being in the SRD's, does Not every gamer is online, despite the time we may spend on d20/OGL message boards, looking at new .pdf's and seeing this side of the gaming world, there are plenty of gamers who, while online, don't go to gaming message boards and go download even legal things online (one player in my game had to be introduced to the SRD's by me a few months ago, even though she's played 3e since the beginning, because she just never paid attention to anything besides what WotC put out on the store shelves).  Then there are the gamers who are practically never online at all.  What percent of the market who might consider buying Unearthed Arcana at their FLGS even would even know that a Unearthed Arcana SRD is out there, and what percent of that would take the free SRD instead of buying a book (that's probably cheaper than printing out the book in color, and is easier to reference).  And what percent of those people haven't already bought UA in the 7 or 8 months it's been out.Everything I've heard about the retail end of gaming is that sales of books fall off sharply after their first 90 days or so, and by 6 months its down to a trickle.  So you have the people who are interested in buying the book 6+ months after it came out, who are devoted enough to d20/3e gaming to be online and savvy to the SRD's and d20 message boards, and will download the UA SRD instead of buying a hardcopy.  People who are fans enough to be in the fairly devoted minority who regularly read sites like ENWorld and would even know that a 3rd party OGC document was out, but didn't buy the book they wanted within a half-year of it's release.  That seems like a pretty small sales loss, which the OGC document release increases the loyalty and enjoyment of the fans who already bought the document, keeping them as fans and thus likely to go back for future books and even to 3rd party works based off of the original.I'm not getting into .pdf's or other fringe elements (yes, d20 .pdf suppliments are a fringe element of the gaming market), I'm talking just about Unearthed Arcana here, a WotC hardcover released through mainstream channels into both FLGS and mass-market bookstores.</blockquote>

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