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Bob,
Excellent points about friction in the e-book process. I personally will admit that the issue of multiple e-book formats is one of the things that causes me friction in the e-book process... oh, this book is only available in LRF, but I don't have a Sony Reader... or oh, this book is only available for eReader, but I hate their DRM and don't want to be bothered...
On the other hand, there's friction, and there's friction. If Hyatt's biggest beef is that he had to wait in line for more than 2 minutes... he doesn't know what friction is! If he wants to take the trouble to go to 2 bookstores, find his books, walk away from both of them, buy through Amazon (paying higher shipping costs), and wait 2 days for the books... and he thinks it worked out better that way... then he's been living too long in the "Fast Food Nation," and he needs to get over his own impatience and chill in a line for a minute or five.
However, I will point out that there is friction in the traditional process besides standing in line. I frequently hear about a book, only to go looking for it, and find it already gone from the shelves. (Heck, he walked into the stores, and practically tripped over the books he wanted! No friction there!) This sometimes happens after my poring through high and low shelves, with my head painfully tilted 90 degrees to read the spines, then trying to use the store's clumsy computers to search a title (it amazes me every time I search for a title that I know exists, and a bookstore's computer cannot even identify it, much less find a copy).
Then, if I find a book, I get sticker-shock from being asked to pay $9 for a paperback. For me, there's serious friction there.
Because of this, I buy fewer printed books, and go to the bookstore less and less... traditional store friction keeps me from even walking in. This is essentially why websites like Amazon are doing so well: They get past most of that traditional store friction. (Word to Hyatt: Stay home next time.)
We've discussed e-book format standardization before, and I think that would go furthest to reducing e-book friction. Consistent and reasonable pricing are also big friction-cutters. However, there's no greater friction, or resistance, than from a wall directly blocking you... and the public's lack of knowledge about the existence of e-books represents the wall that needs to be broken down.
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