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Originally Posted by shull
HarryT, the '30%' figure that I used was fictional of course to point out an idea.
I still believe you could potentially obtain discounts from publishers.
But of course there is a lot of 'economics' involved which I haven't really thought through yet, you are right.
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The economics issues are *substantial.* The big-name mainstream publishers aren't going to offer stores a discount--they worked hard to prevent Amazon from offering discounts for ebooks.
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My original question popped out, just to see how you and everybody else reading the post, would perceive the idea of a retail ebook shop.
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A lot of us love the idea of a retail ebook store; there aren't any because the only way it's been remotely close to economically viable is to tie it to both a physical bookstore and a pre-existing online presence, like B&N.
A store might be able to sell ereaders and accessories, have a few kiosks for access to different ebook stores, and offer free wifi for those devices that allow that kind of purchase, but it's hard to see how the store would make a profit.
The store would have to offer something substantially better than either
(1) sit at home and browse for ebooks, and
(2) meet friends in a free wifi cafe to chat & browse for ebooks,
in addition to all the hassles of setting up a digital bookstore, deciding how to deal with DRM, sorting out which publishers to carry (self-pub ebooks? Textbooks? Comics?) and so on. And, of course, picking a location that has enough high-tech traffic to support such a store.
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What I am trying to point out with such a shop idea, would be moving away from a conventional 'paper' book store and having the opportunity to browse the shelfs of a book store but only in digital format.
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Ebook browsing sucks. Amazon is best at it, and it's still sharply limited; there is no convenient site for "show me all the mystery books starting with authors beginning with AA..." Many publishers refuse to provide the info that any reader would know on seeing a physical book: how long is it? How many chapters does it have? Are there pictures inside? Can I read it in any setting I like?
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Or even the cheeky question for some people: how would you read half a book for free in a couple of lunch breaks, even finish it, and then not buy it ? 
I've noticed cases like that before...unfortunately - but this is a bit off topic.
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Any reasonably savvy bookstore has no problem allowing students or other financially-strapped people from browsing and reading entire books, as long as they're not damaging the merchandise or getting in the way of other customers. When they've got money for books, they'll spend it at the store that welcomed them. In the meantime, they show the staff which selections are popular, and sometimes help other customers find things.
Not sure how that translates to ebooks, though; publishers don't allow full-length browsing the way physical stores do, and digital browsing ranges from "nuisance" to "too horrifically clunky to bother with" at different stores.
Also: not all ebook readers have wifi. Mine don't, and I'm not looking to replace them with ones that do. I do almost all my reading these days digitally; I can barely tolerate paper anymore--but I'd be shut out of your store, which you seem to have imagined only working for people with tablet readers.