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Nook Failure, Lack of Foot Traffic Could Spell Doom For Barnes & Noble
tripleevenfall sends in a story at Yahoo Finance forecasting the end of Barnes & Noble. Quoting:
"The last nationwide book retailer may be writing its final chapter. Barnes & Noble's latest quarterly results show a 7.4% drop in revenues and a $122 million loss for the fourth-quarter of its fiscal year. B&N's disastrous focus on making Nook e-Readers is weighing heavily on the chain's operations. A 17% drop in Nook revenues and stunning $475 million loss for the device division in 2013 are hobbling the company's ability to keep its stores afloat. B&N appears to be cannibalizing itself with branded tablets and cross-platform e-reader applications, which render the stores increasingly irrelevant."
On my way to the Starbucks in the back
I just got done with a garage sale and almost none of my (cheaply priced!) books sold, lots fewer than when I had a garage sale about five years ago.
I'd suppose more people who actually read are transitioning to e-readers. This might also account in general for why there are fewer visitors to B&N stores.
Hail Eris, full of mischief...
E pluribus sanguinem
Microsoft just invested $1 billion into B&N.
How much longer are the shareholders going to let monkey boy run things? A lot longer I hope ;)
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
'Amazon' and 'antitrust'.
Give it time. They're so overwhelmingly dominant in online retail, that people will be calling them the Standard Oil of the 21st century, if they aren't already.
This is my favorite retail store. I own nook devices, I buy paperbacks and magazines in stores, my children beg me to take them to the bookstore (meaning Barnes and Noble, there are really no others nearby), and I'm even planning to release a novel through their nook publishing division.
All the recent stories of them going under make me very very sad.
The summary seems to attack B&N for trying to adapt to changing times rather than sticking their head in the sand. Even if it was ultimately futile, I don't think it was boneheaded.
It's a very simple, small device that does one job and does it well. I'm surprised to hear that their hardware division is struggling, although in fairness I had to buy mine from ebay since they didn't sell them outside the US. I must buy another to use for spare parts. I've actually started to get rid of all my books at this point.
Remember when the folks at B&N were hailed as visionary geniuses compared to the doofuses at Borders because B&N had an eReader?
I figured B&N for the least evil and bought lots of books over the past years after my nook, and nook color. For the decade or so prior to that I had purchased 0 dead tree books because I was tired of packing my books when moving. I am sad that they seem to be losing the war. At least I can convert all my epubs to DRM free epubs. Thank god for that.
Even on Slashdot, not enough people seem to be concerned about Amazon getting a monopoly on e-books.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
turn it into a pr0n focused device and rebrand it as "the nookie"
how many pairs of boxer shorts should you own?
The last time I walked into one of their stores it seemed more like a toy store. Most of it was toys, puzzles, and games. It wasn't what I was expecting at all.
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...from every mom and pop bookshop (well, at least the ones still in business).
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
(Reston VA), In part due to contract dispute with the mall owner. But they could have moved into a nice Borders store location about 5 miles away in Sterling VA. Instead, they pointed me to their store in Tyson's Corner, which costs me $5 in tolls and puts me in the middle of a traffic mess. I felt sorry for the Reston store employees and the managers who did a good job with our local store, handing one my B&N Readers Card. I said, "Send this to Corporate. Tell them to look up how much I've spent -in this store- over the last 15 years. Tell them that 95% of that business is going to Amazon, because I will not drive to Tysons and B&N offers me no alternative."
I really miss browsing in a paper bookstore, Amazon does not offer the same experience (their suggestions aren't as useful for me as they think they are...) The loss of B&N will be significant for consumers, I think. But I'm mostly through the 5 stages of mourning for them.
OTOH, because music is DRM free, I can buy it from anyone and play it anywhere, and back it up nicely. So I buy music. Movies are still heavily DRMed like books, and can't just be played, so I tend to buy few of those. DVDs with regions and such killed the movie, really.
The point being that publishers gave the industry away to Amazon who uses books the way a supermarket uses milk. To drive traffic, not to make a profit. So books are becoming less valuable and, because of DRM, someone like B&N who has an interest in keeping books valuable has no leverage to do so. Yes, lack of DRM would have meant lower sales, but at least there would have still been an industry.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
B&N has been somewhat schizophrenic about eBooks from the beginning, trying desperately to keep up with Amazon on one hand and yet not cannibalize their precious treeware stores. As a result, they've managed to fail at both goals.
Worse yet, they managed to buy, and then ignore, everything Fictionwise could have taught them about marketing eBooks and doing it right. I was a loyal (and VERY happy) Fictionwise customer for a decade. FW did three things that were absolutely priceless in marketing eBooks to me.
1. FW let you request email notifications when a new book by a particular author you were interested in was available. Naturally, as soon as I got such a notification...
B&N is still doing the old "These are the books WE want to sell you." routine with "push" emails and "new now" notices for books I couldn't care less about.
2. FW (and Books on Board) had a shopping cart for eBooks. Fictionwise had both "buy all of these at once" and "download them all in a ZIP file." My record buy was something like 25 books in one day when one of my favorite authors had all of his stuff released (finally) to eBook format. Fewer obstacles to purchase == more purchases. You'd think an experienced retailer would figure that out.
B&N: "Click once for each book" crud that both Amazon and B&N impose on readers. The day Paulo Coelho's books were put on sale at $1/each, I had to click "buy" and "confirm" eleven times, and when it came time to balance my credit card account... (cue loud curses)
3. If you went to an author's page at FW (e.g. Poul Anderson), you got a "show me only books by this author I don't own" and "buy everything that's showing" buttons. See my note about "fewer obstacles" above.
B&N: MISSING IN ACTION
4. FW frequently offered the ability to buy eBooks at listed price and get an equal amount in store credit. Result: I frequently took advantage of the offer, got best-sellers at full list, and then used the credits to buy more eBooks. From my standpoint, I got the best-sellers for free, and then used the credits to "buy out" other authors I wanted everything they did.
B&N: MISSING IN ACTION
It is a shame that B&N bought the major ebook retailer who knew how to do it right and then ignored everything they had done in order to cripple their eBook store as a doomed effort to force people to walk into their bricks-and-mortar.
Think of it as evolution in action.
Bookstores are dead, and I include in that Amazon's book business. I used to shop regularly at Walden's, B. Dalton's, and all them, pop in once every 2 or 3 weeks. Now I hardly ever visit. These days, I'd rather participate in a discussion such as these on Slashdot, than passively read a book.
When I do want to read a book, I much prefer to get it through a public library, rather than participate any further in this overly commercialized private bookstore and publishing business. Our public libraries should go digital, and I see the private bookstore as one of the obstacles to that. The digital public library would save us a great deal of money and give us far, far more access to published works than we now enjoy, but these scumbags in the private book sales industry have done all they could to delay and derail it. That being the case, the death of the private bookstore is reason to celebrate.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
It's not so much that reading habits are shifting from paper to digital as it is the limited tablet computer market. Apple iPad has a strong foothold in the tablet market. Few people want another tablet to carry around not to mention one that is focused on eReading and not much else.
Eternity: will that be smoking, or non-smoking? I Corinthians 6:9-10
There seems to be a preoccupation in the article description with the idea of having a national bookseller. I'm not sure we actually need one. Personally, I get pretty much all my books either online or from local used bookstores. Even online, I lean towards the used market unless the new copies are (after shipping on the used, since new is usually free shipping) about the same price or less.
There's a kind of irony to the fact that the book superstores are all losing the fight while the local used shops are pretty much always hubs of activity at the times I visit them. Have publishers retail-priced themselves out of the brick and mortar world, creating a culture where the new-book-buyers go online where volume makes discounting possible, and the used buyers comfortably go either way? It certainly seems that way.
Nook or no Nook, Barnes & Noble would have been fools to ignore the eBook concept. However, I think they may be making a mistake to pursue the devices any further. It's time to go the razor route. Give the handles away, make your money on the blades. The great thing is, once you've created the "handle", the cost of delivering it to tablets, phones, and computers you didn't have to market or sell is negligible.
In SOVIET RUSSIA... erm...NSA AMERICA, the Internet logs onto YOU!
let it be yourself. -- Steve Jobs.
B&N apparently assumed that Profit! would automatically appear. Jobs didn't.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
More than 2/3rds of Americans are obese. Only in compact urban settings do people actually walk (e.g. San Francisco, New York.) Americans also use to read, but no longer. Hell, in the U.S. it is possible to attain a literary-based PhD without having fucking read literature.
Consider all these factors, books won't make money. I went to the NYPL, one of the greatest books among their library had only been checked out twice in two years.
No reads anymore. /. is no different. /. loves to revere minor writers like Rand, Orwell, whatever. It says a lot...
Ditto. I find it particularly galling that Manassas still has a B&N but that the Reston area, with higher incomes & education, has none.
"Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past." -- George Orwell
My last book i bought came from a charity shop as nobody sold it in my region in europe not even the independent book shops. The amazon version on e-reader would have cost me $100 dollars with device, it was cheaper to import the book from a foriegn location. Also as i like to use my lending library that all those elected people love closing down and so i am not buying into e-books. I do have some pdfs with my name and address in as well compliments of the publisher and are horrid to navigate.
I read a lot. On buying a ereader i am not buying a ereader thing that only works in one shop. As i use linux daily another issue is that drm or reading clients [adobe] are missing but not a problem in apple and windows land.
An e-reader sounds a great idea until i start shooting holes into the arguments. When i can load books via linux into an ereader, use my library with it and purchase books with it then consider me a customer.
I won't shop in a Barnes & Noble or a Booksamillion anymore because of the constant upselling at the register. If I say no thanks, and I'm not interested even ONCE, I don't need to hear the 60 second speech they have memorized.
I had a sucky sig.
completely disabled, like an iPad. I almost returned it when I figured that out, but a crippled device for $150 is easier to swallow than a crippled device for $500 (it is possible to use the Android dev kit to install anything on it, but other market app won't be able to install anything). Plus, it is dead simple to replace the B&N mod of Android it runs with Cyanogenmod; it can (apparently) even boot off a microSD card without even a slight risk of bricking the device.
Isn't that what all the MBA's are trying to achieve these days?
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
I went into the B&N here a few months back. Walked right back to where the computer section has been for years only to find it gone. I looked all over and ended up having to ask some employee. Once found, they didn't even have any HTML5 programming books. The whole computer section was 1/3 the size it use to be. I left thinking, "This place sucks now."
From my personal account, they don't carry literature. Very few classics do they actually carry. I am talking about simply finding Henry Miller's "Black Spring" or Sherwood Anderson's "Winesburg, Ohio." Most ain't got 'em.
The best book store I found was in Portland. It was run by an elderly couple below their home. They had hardback covers, decades old, from authors you would only dream to find. They had copies not even the New York Public Library obtains. I found first editions of Hudson's "Green Mansions", John Cowper Powys's "Autobiography", and several other small finds.
Compare that to an Anderson book in San Francisco; they wanted $2000 for it.
Yeah, closing the Reston store--for a goddamn Container Store, who asked for the Container Store?!?--was dumb.
I read the internet for the articles.
Just a matter of time before brick and mortar stores get recycled into anti-skid brick sidewalks in upscale malls.
The main reason I quit shopping at B&N? Because their in-store stock SUCKS. The whole reason I shop at B&N is because *I want it now*. In many instances I've even been willing to pay a slightly higher store price for that. Almost without fail, even popular books and DVDs/Blu-Rays are not in stock in any store in the Indianapolis area. Its just as bad at the Bloomington store, which you think would be a bit better stocked because its a college town. And considering that the closest B&N to me is about 50 miles one way, I don't go there just to browse.
I prefer to support brick-and-mortar stores when I can. But I can't do that if they don't have a decent amount of stock.
And for something that can be blamed on the Nook, have you ever noticed that their online coupons and such do not apply to Nook Books?
I just bought two Nook HD+ devices during their blowout sale. And the first thing I will do to both of them is turn them in to unadulterated Android tablets.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
The Denver compputer book store SoftPro ended its storefront this year. The Stanford University bookstore dropped nearly all its wonderful technical books (e.g. Dover series) and just kept textbooks and popular reading books. The old space is filled with souveniers and brand clothing. That parallels what most other universities have down. I miss browsing through the print version of books.
You all know there's a used bookstore in your town. Go give them some business.
I grew up in Omaha. Downtown there was a used bookstore with more character than was probably healthy. It had more books then it knew what to to do with, a healthy set of extraneous stairs, an honor system for coffee, and a set of couches in front with a constant crowd. I think the regulars manned the register when the workers were busy.
But it didn't make too much money and they couldn't make rent. They tried selling records in the basement and some sort of art gallary on the upper levels, but that didn't pan out. So it closed up. And Omaha lost something important that day.
Now, apparently, a small town about 20 minutes gained something eventually, because the owner bought a building, moved his books there, and is still doing business. I'll have to find out if it has the same magic.
But anyway, just a reminder to support your local church of the literate.
its just a pity that B&N only have about 0.0001% of the available books (i,e. of those that have been electronically published in any format) available through their store, and what they do have are vastly overpriced. I'd still rather own a paper copy of a book and pop it on my bookshelves, but at the same time I would love to be able to start reading an e-version immediately hence my last book purchase went through amazon and the errmmm less than kosher e-version onto my nook while the physical ones arrived.
I wouldn't have minded paying a (small) premium for that, even though I think it should be done by default. I wouldn't have minded buying the e-version if the price reflected the significant savings of not having the expenses of physically distributing the books to retailers, the retailers mark up, the printing costs, the warehousing costs etc. etc.....but in the end, the paper copy was cheaper than the e-version!
It's sad really...all the out of print books that exist, all the various opportunities to innovate and instead we see companies driving themselves to the wall from greed.
Can't you just pick up the stroller and carry it up a few stairs?
Two words: Stroller collapse.
General Relativity: Space-time tells matter where to go; Matter tells space-time what shape to be.
There's one in fairfax, near fair oaks mall. I miss Borders, though.
I bought a Kobo last weekend. I mostly use Mac OS and Windows. Kobo doesn't have a version of Kobo Desktop for Linux but a quick Google search suggest that the Kobo can be used with Linux. Now I have a project for this weekend ....
I start with my local independent bookstore. Then I try my local independent used bookstore. If I can't find what I want at either store then I will order books from Alibris. I tend to use Alibris when I want to buy a book that hasn't been released in the US. This is why I can read Iain Banks and Jo Nesbo before the US release date.
I first got the nook Glow over Kindle because I wanted to be able to root it and run the other android e-reader ware.
What I found was a clunky POS;
The dictionary sucked. B&N forgot that readers like dictionaries, and would like to get to them whenever. Through nook you had to go through the rigamarole of highlighting a word in a work just to get there.
With the capability to add a MicroSD card (what I also liked), you'd think they'd have an audio jack for audio books. Nope. Load your own screen savers? Nope.
My experience is the Nook was as anti-reader as they come. I was really shocked. The board at B&N likely looked to glom onto the "next big thing" instead of figuring out what it was that readers would want from an e-reader. As cheap as these things are, here's a clue: TO BE ABLE TO READ IN THE TUB!
Seriously—if they had it made it more durable and more comfortable to take to the beach, they would have had something. Instead, they focused on being an also-ran.
all i get is an eagle shredding a book with a vulgar phrase. and the reason now one buys books is why should we pay 20 to thirty bucks for a physical copy when they charge way less than that for digital or for the same physical copy on amazon. my problem with barnes and nobel is if i have to buy a book for 45 from barnes and nobel and 27 on amazon since i already have to pay taxes on amazon purchases why not buy from amazon. you want people to buy your books instore? then price match amazon.
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TFA says "Management is clearly focused on salvaging Nook operations rather than trying to make a go of it with the stores" and "B&N's disastrous focus on making Nook e-Readers is weighing heavily on the chain's operations."
Did they not get the memo today that B&N is discontinuing its whole color tablet line and that future color devices will only be sold as co-branded products manufactured by other companies? You read that right, B&N is no longer going to manufacture any tablets. It's going to continue to produce e-ink devices, but that's it. That whole "cannibalizing itself with branded tablets" angle they're whinging about is a dead end, as of today.
Second, how is the fact that the Nook apps are cross-platform making B&N's stores irrelevant? If the Nook apps didn't exist, wouldn't it just be the Kindle apps that are making B&N stores irrelevant, and B&N would have no slice of the ebook pie whatsoever?
Also, let's maintain a little perspective here. B&N's total revenue from the Nook division in fiscal 2013 was $776 million. Its revenue from its retail division was $4.6 billion. Are we really expected to believe that B&N execs are actually ignoring the retail business in favor of Nook? That just sounds like some absurd, "activist investor" fantasy.
B&N is struggling, sure. But it faces fairly serious market challenges. It had no chance at competing with Amazon in the ebook market without making a serious investment in both hardware and software. Has it made some missteps? It seems so, but to say they'll be impossible to retreat from seems a little premature.
Breakfast served all day!
I looked forward to the HD and HD+ for months, 'cause my Color was exactly what I wanted in a "that-generation" tablet, including a standard USB charging and data port. The browser works pretty well and I can access a webmail account through https; it shows my pictures, and, when I tried it, plays music and videos. If the new devices also had standard connectors (preferably USB3, as well). I'd have at least three.
Instead, I'll scrounge used, running Colors, since there's not a single device I can find that has the features I want (standard connector for using it as a USB device, raised bezel to protect the screen, later version of Android, standard removable card for storage, no camera needed, HDMI out a don't-care).
Okay, let's see...
Borders lost the "chicken bluff game" and folded "early".
But this site is semi specialized in Int. Prop. issues, yet you know what? Now it seems *both* big chains had all the cash in the world, but couldn't get Print On Demand to work?! That would completely eat Amazon's lunch!
The stuff on the shelves would just be the starter samplers, to get you quick access to the classics in each section. But then make say 70% (non-oversized etc) of the inventory Print On Demand. I'd wait up to an hour - that's easy to burn browing, or dinner, or whatever. With a little work you can get it down to 15 minutes.
But no. If you think IP rights for music is bad, the media houses have successfully blocked POD from happening for reasons known only to them.
The tech is there - *three years ago* I got some sample POD books in Harvard Square bookstore. Yes they didn't have the cover art rights. But the paperbacks were as solid as any tome printed the old way.
So now I'm just grumpy because we're getting tangled into the e-reader device mess that seems to be becoming strip-mined real fast.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Anyone care to speculate on what happens to all the e-books that B&N has sold if/when they go under? I know I don't "own" the books, rather I purchased some sort of licensing agreement which lets me view the books until ... when?
This is a huge and not often discussed down-side to e-books. Our first nook died a few weeks ago, I'll probably avoid purchasing another one for just this reason.
First B&N and Borders gobbled up the bookstore market. Then B&N and Google killed off Borders. Now B&N may be going down, leaving Google with a near monopoly in the book market and no local stores I can browse. Fuckety fuck fuck fuck.
How big is the variance in profitability by store? That is to say, how much ground could B&N recover by simply closing all its unprofitable (or marginally profitable) locations? It would lose some economy of scale, but how much? Also curious to what extent Wal-Mart (and to a lesser extent Costco and Sam's) are to blame for B&N's troubles and not of Amazon. For instance, how has Wal-Mart's revenue (from books) changed over this same period?
You realise that Amazon owns Createspace, which is one of the largest PoD suppliers in the world right now?
My wife and I like getting some coffee while we thumb through books and figure out which ones we want to buy on our nooks. Borders was a blow, to loose B&N too would shut down our abilities to do that.
Select from tblFriends where interesting >= 4;
B&N bought Fictionwise - a great E-Book web store that sold DRM-free electronic subscriptions. I subscribed to Asimovs Sci-Fi magazine for >10 years there, reading it in Palm (originally), EPUB and PDF formats. I bought hundreds of books as well. A year after buying it, B&N closed it down, and said I had to transfer to their DRM'd formats.
Now I don't buy anything from them. Idiots.
- Paul
If you want to browse a physical book store then you have to be willing to pay a premium. 45 vs 27 (USD?) is extreme but physical stores will never be as cheap as online warehouses.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
I love my Nook.
No hour on a horse is ever wasted. Winston Churchill
So now I'm just grumpy because we're getting tangled into the e-reader device mess that seems to be becoming strip-mined real fast.
B&N allowed Amazon to win. I've been an ebook purchaser since the early 2000's on both eReader and Fictionwise. Eventually Fictionwise purchased eReader, but the merged store continued to be a good place to get ebooks into multiple formats, until B&N purchased Fictionwise, let it languish for years, then finally gave the fingers to international customers like myself by not allowing us to transfer our accounts to the B&N website when they decided to close Fictionwise. I lost my account and my redownload rights to everything I purchased there, having to rely on local and cloud backups now.
Amazon, on the other hand, while still having geographically restricted titles what pisses me to no end, has however from the beginning been consistently internationally-friendly when it comes to ebooks. Not so much on other media, truth be told, but I don't care much about that. They did what old-Fictionwise and/or B&N-owned-Fictionwise could have done but didn't. And now, while Amazon grows, including internationally (e-Ink Kindles are now being officially sold here in Brazil), B&N shrinks.
It could have been different, but B&N was too dumb to think straight. And as a former international customer of theirs, all I can say is good riddance. To hell with them.
Conservatism: (n.) love of the existing evils. Liberalism: (n.) desire to substitute new evils for the existing ones.
costs me $5 in tolls
Or you could drive down Rt 7.
Best Slashdot Co
The Nook Tablet was the last Nook I purchased. I owned the first generation and a Simple Touch. However, I vowed not to buy another Nook again. Their walled garden approach and quick support cycle (expect updates for roughly 6 months and then your device is EOL) were ridiculous. Their layout and hardware specs were fantastic. The SD card slot was fantastic...and hard to find on lower end Android tablets. However, they shot themselves in the foot by preventing sideloading and refusing to use Google Play. The B&N forums are full of threads of people complaining and refusing to buy another Nook. That was a poor decision. I see the current fire sale of Nooks, and while tempting (because they allow Google Play), I don't think I can buy another Nook in good conscience.
Around here, we don't have any B&N stores, so the main competitors were Chapters (Kobo + physical store/books) and Amazon (Kindle, or internet-order).
Frankly, I'm fairly disgusted with the price of books in Canada. The mark-up over U.S. prices is usually at least 20%, often higher, even when the Canadian dollar was higher.
Amazon - on the other hand - allows me to shop both the U.S. and Canadian store, meaning I could get U.S. prices and just pay the conversion/exchange rate. While many e-book prices still suck compared to their physical counterparts, you'll still find some things with crazy prices in physical medium compared to eBook (for example Joe Abercrombie's "First Law" trilogy. $15 for the dead-tree version at local bookstores, or $22 for all three on Kindle.
On the Nook store you won't see ANY of that series, Chapters is either $38 or $25 (I can't tell which because they seem to have the same damn thing twice,
In general, Amazon tends to work well in terms of convenience, price, and selection compared to the competitors.
a) I'm not getting an "e-reader" until I have *TOTAL* control - NO ONE ELSE gets to download, or DELETE, what I have *bought* (NOT licensed, not rented).
b) Foot traffic. The problem is that B&N *really* isn't paying attention to their core business... selling books and mags. A few years ago, right outside Chicago, I went into the one nearest me.
a) they hadn't changed the "newest" mystery books in months.
b) they hadn't changed the "newest" science fiction books in months.
c) it was October, and they didn't even list the Hugo winner in their system.
d) the one and only copy of Model Railroader they had was supposed to have been taken off the stand 10 days before.
Those are far enough a spread of different areas to say that they just didn't care. I've run into similar things here in the DC 'burbs. Borders, before they went under, the "newest" section was *always* updated every month, and *always* had the current issues of magazines. This is not how you run a business... unless you care to run it into the ground.
*That's* why they don't have enough foot traffic.
mark
Go to a bookstore. Browse to your heart's content. No one worries that you're secretly making copies while you browse. You can read any page you like. You're not limited to reading the first eight pages, which contain only front matter. Pick the books you'd like to read. Take them to the cashier. Tell them you'd like toe ebook version and hand over your ebook reader and some cash. They plug it in, and Lo, the book appears on your machine.
Why doesn't anyone think of doing it this way? I'd even pay a premium for the service of being able to browse freely while choosing what I want to buy.
Kindle fan here. Still makes me sad that another book company might go the way of Borders.