[dhbailey]

Yesterday I walked into Border's and was struck with a terrific idea (well, I think it's terrific, others may easily point out that I should be locked up in a padded cell, but that's beside the point).

We need to have publishers know there's a large marketplace out here, correct? We need/want to have easy access to all their titles, old and new correct?
We currently can only buy such ebooks for our readers from Sony's Connect store through our own computers, or by having our registered reader connected to someone else's computer, correct?

My idea is that there would be a kiosk in all these bookstores (takes up very little costly floor space) which would have USB connectors so any portable reading device owners would bring their connector with a USB plug on the end to plug in and which we could plug our reader into and turn it on and it would perform some sort of handshake (just like it does now with Sony Connect) so that only registered devices would be allowed to buy the books, and we could download them right there, and also access them from our home computers once purchased.

So the bookstore would earn a percentage of each sale, making it economically worthwhile for them to promote it, potentially earning more for that square footage in a day than if it had been a bookshelf, the publishers wouldn't have to each maintain a web-site for sales, or relegate such sales to the horrible Sony Connect store, so the responsibility would be removed from their shoulders and they'd only have to sign the contracts to allow the issue of their books in e-book formats and would only have to cash the checks.

And we could have instant access to the same books that we might have bought paper copies of in the same bookstore, rather than having to write down the name of the book and then wait hoping against hope that it might someday show up at Sony Connect.

I am very hopeful about this potential especially with the new Adobe Digital Editions, where there would only have to be one single format of e-book for all devices which are enabled with Adobe Digital Editions software. And I remain hopeful that it will be incorporated into a forthcoming update patch for our readers so that the current jungle will become much simplified and such a kiosk system could be setup and become available in airports, shopping malls, bookstores, electronics stores (buy your reader and immediately buy some books for it!).