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Most gaming stores that I have encountered (and all of the ones in my current city) do nothing to prepetuate the hobby. They are exclusive clubs that cater to their regulars and are either indifferent or outright hostile to newcomers or even casual visitors. Also, since they are generally running close to broke, they are generally in out-of-the-way places with little or no foot traffic, so cold walk-ins are pretty much nil. What brings new people into the hobby are individual gamers and their groups. If Wizards wants the industry to grow beyond word-of-mouth, they are free to do some advertising in mainstream media to increase awareness, but restricting sales to gaming stores isn't the answer. All it does is alienate people in rural areas, abroad, and in cities without a gaming store. Worse, it may prevent them from buying the book at all, which hurts the industry as well as gamers.

Sep 22, 2011 -- 12:02PM, pruano wrote:

Why is that?

Doess Amazon organizes encounters, provides space for groups to play, display banners on their homepage?

Because they have vastly larger exposure than any FLGS.  I know people who are not the kind of people to go into gaming/hobby/comic stores who play D&D precisely because they saw it on Amazon and thought it sounded cool.  If you want the hobby to be dominated and exclusive only to people who frequent the brick and mortar stores of this type then D&D will forever be religated to a subset of a fringe hobby (a large subset of that fringe to be sure).  Amazon has done more to bring D&D into the mainstream than anything TSR, WotC or Hasbro has done to date including in store organized play.
 

Sep 22, 2011 -- 11:46AM, FeltCyclist wrote:

Read my post, i wrote PARTNERS, not clients; as in members of the distribution chain.

Word-of-mouth, while indeed quite effective, is, for the most part, too slow; while the Internet has helped it (and social networks gave it a big boost), it also brought to the front a thousand other interests, each one bombarding us constantly.

Which is why publicity, which is done both by the publisher and the other members of the distribution chain, is still as valid today as it was before.

And as pointed out, those specialized venues can give much more airtime (to use an arcaic term, perhaps eyeballs is a better term) than a generic mega-online store like Amazon, which specializes in other approaches.

But only to people who are already disposed to visit those types of establishments.  Amazon does far more than that by showing the product to people who aren't already gamers, hobbyists or comic book enthusiasts.  I worked in a FLGS for years in High School and College.  There was not a broad cross section of the general population coming into the store.  I saw the same faces week after week with very little variation.  Your premise is just plain wrong.

Sep 22, 2011 -- 12:25PM, Jharii wrote:

All it does is alienate people in rural  areas, abroad, and in cities without a gaming store.

This has already been proven to be completely inaccurate in this  thread.  MME is most certainly available on the internet and can  be shipped right to your door.

It most certainly has not been proven.  You totally have discounted as irrelevant the inconvenience it still poses to people who now must go elsewhere (even elsewhere online) to get the book.  If WotC decided they wouldn't allow your FLGS to carry a certain book, you would be up in arms, even if there was another store a short distance away where you could get the book (just without your DM discount).  Amazon.com is my FLGS and it is alienating, and infuriating that I cannot give my favorite gaming store my business for this book.