In a direct blow to Amazon, Wal-Mart has announced that it will stop carrying all models of the Kindle e-book reader. Significantly, the chains (Wal-Mart and Sam's Club) are still going to carry iPads and Nooks, making clear that this is not a move about e-book readers so much as it is a move against Amazon and the inroads Amazon is making against retail marketers everywhere. To be honest, I wouldn't be surprised if they also dropped Nook though its impact on their bottom line is minuscule when compared to Amazon's.

Back in May I noted that Target was going to drop Kindles from its retail shelves; I'm just surprised that it took Wal-Mart this long to follow suit. It's pretty clear that any retailer that maintains a physical store presence is going to be forced to take some kind of stand with respect to Amazon. And I expect that the majority are going to line up against them. Amazon hasn't done anything to win friends in the retail space and has cut into pretty much every brick-and-mortar retailer's turf in some way or another.

E-books are particularly tricky here in that they're always going to be bought on-line; you just won't go to a store in order to buy an e-book in today's environment. (*) However, Amazon presents e-books as part of its buying ecosystem and many aspects of that system compete directly with Wal-Mart's merchandise lines. Thus e-books are a competitive hook that retailers need to be careful about.

(*) As a brief aside, if I was running a retail book business I would be trying to get people into my stores to buy e-books. Set up an author talk, get people to bring their readers, and get a code for a discounted e-book. Arrange with the publishers to get a few points back on any sale where someone enters one of the codes. Heck, I'd even sell them readers at the event, with a free card to my store's book-purchasing club/loyalty program. But I digress.