[corona]

In passing, I'll say that as a former recording engineer any mention of the fact that vinyl has crawled out of its much-deserved crypt sends me reaching for the smelling salts. I'll admit, the cover art rocks and a well-made vinyl record sounds great the first 20 or so times you play it -- assuming you are extremely careful about your turntable and cartridge -- but generally OMG. The problem is that people tend to compare vinyl to the atrocious, compressed-beyond-all-hope digital downloads they get from cyberspace.

Anyway, my question, one that I'm really obsessed with at the moment. Why can't you buy physical manifestations of e-books, as in an e-book on a cheap-as-dirt memory card and packaged in some appealing way? I'm sure the technical issue of preventing re-use, re-sale, etc. etc. -- all the terrible deviant things people are doing to destroy -- utterly destroy! -- the ability of anyone creative to make any money at all -- these issues could surely be dealt with. But you could go into a bookstore, have a look at some real books and a bunch of other stuff you don't need, and then buy an e-book or three right there.

And I say this in response to the "anything that brings traffic into the store" line of inquiry.