Quote:
Originally Posted by pwalker8
That's pretty much how Walmart does things, they like to push as much of the expense and work onto their "partners" as possible. It's how they minimize cost. Of course, Walmart's new push to have a legit online presence is a whole different mindset. You have to spend money to build it out first. It's not just about having the best price with minimal functionality. It will be interesting to see if they can pull it off.
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I'd say the answer there (at least with ebooks) is clearly now, they cannot.
An Amazon-like store with brick and mortar locations seems like such an obvious strength. Yet two giants (B&N and Walmart) have floundered. Probably because running brick and mortar is a different mindset than running a virtual store.
On the upside, even if Kobo didn't get the partner they were hoping for, the Walmart partnership isn't likely to have caused any harm. Their presence in the US was 0. Anything is better than that.