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Walmart will also sell digital book cards in stores, enabling more than 4,000 stores to carry a broader selection of books for customers.
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This part seems interesting. If I understand correctly, Walmart will feature small book cards in stores so that people can purchase digital codes to redeem, but because the book cards are small, Walmart will be able to stock a wider variety than they would otherwise with physical books.
The fact that a co-branded app will be available on iOS means that they are will to pay the Apple tax like Amazon already does with everything but books. This is a big announcement. There are no stores that I am aware of that sell books on iOS devices because of that %30 cut. I wonder if they've worked something out with Apple. Walmart is big enough to do it.
GameStop often generates special download codes for customers when they run out of the limited edition Pokémon cards that Nintendo offers from time to time. The actual cards have a rub-off spot to reveal a code to download the critter into the game, but the cashiers can run off as many codes as you'd like when no cards are available during the promo period. I wonder if Walmart will do the same. There's no reason to have individual book cards for each sale. Otherwise, you could run out of them, losing digital sales!