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Originally Posted by murraypaul
I'm struggling with a good idea of why they would want to sell ebooks instore.
How does it make them money?
They can't charge more for them, as otherwise people would just by them online instead. Any they can't compete on margin with a online-only store.
They have to deal with all the support hassles of getting the books loaded onto people's devices, either by WiFi or USB, complaints if it didn't work, or the formatting was bad, or they didn't like the book, for what? They would just be acting as a very poorly paid storefront for Smashwords and the like.
They couldn't sell any mainstream books, as they have to be sold with the publisher-required DRM, so they are left selling indies. What is the market for that?
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In today's ebook environment there isn't one.
Which is why the ones that used to do it got out.
For it to make sense, you need an interoperable market for readers and ebooks and a way to compete with the walled gardens. (Sales, micropay rebates, bundles, etc)
Both went away.
Today, people's first decision when getting into ebooks is choosing a walled garden. And most choose Kindle (because the books can be read on most anything) instead of Nook (spiraling towards doom?) or Apple (need an iThing) or Kobo ("Who? Oh, the guys at WalMart?").
It doesn't help that the big publishers are intentionally reducing ebook sales, unintentionally making Indie publishers more acceptable and a lot of those choose Kindle exclusivity because there is more money for them in KU rentals than in sales elsewhere. So non-chain stores can't even go Indie-only.
All that might change in the future but it won't be soon.
The fallout of the two hour price war lingers. In many ways B&N did almost as much for Amazon as they did for themselves. B&N's feet are full of bullet holes.