ProfCrash: I agree about the delay. It was silly.
As for the separate account, it will be very annoying if you've to do that for every author you want to buy, however, that's the advantage retailers have, a one stop shop. If they offered watermarking as an alternative form of DRM, perhaps HP would have been available via those stores too? Maybe in time we'll have the option to buy direct from some authors or from a one stop shop and still get exactly the same rights over the book.
The other issue though is perhaps retail stores take away too much control from the author? Do they get access to customer lists? Options to sign customers up to news letters if they want? and do they take too much of a % of the book price?
Authors should have their own direct sales method in place, then consider one-stop stores only when they can get terms they're happy with, which will be where the % they lose is worth it for the additional customers and/or exposure they're going to get.
One thing that bugs me price wise though, is since they're selling direct and not losing out x% to a store, they could have listed the books for less imo. But we can argue about pricing all day long and never get everyone to agree
