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Back to the synergy discussion, the brick and mortar bookstore model is shelves of books for customer (who love books) to browse. Get them into the store and they will most often buy something before they leave.

The challenge eBooks presents to the old model (obviously) is that it is no longer required of customers to come into a bookstore to buy books. That's the conundrum they all face--how do you get people to come into a bookstore?

It seems to me that B&N's size may be limiting their ability to innovate into local markets.

By contrast, Amazon is good at discovering ways to get people to browse their store. Their free shipping for purchases over $25, their Amazon Prime offer on thousands of goods, their enormous stock of paper books that includes out of print used books, and yes, their willingness to discount some ebooks to draw people to their store--to browse, of course. The model still works.

The synergy is that if they do not carry eBooks in some manner, they lock their customers out of the store, but selling eBooks alone is not enough, there has to be a compelling reason for people to come in. Independent bookstores seem better able to do those extra things to keep their traditional customers coming back.