How Amazon is killing brick and mortar retail

We were sitting in easy chairs at Barnes & Noble on Friday afternoon.

I was fiddling with my iPhone and Maria was looking at quilt books. She found one she wanted. It was priced at $24.95.

She wondered if we could get it cheaper on Amazon.com, so I fired up the Amazon iPhone app. I was preparing to type in the title when I noticed the app includes a bar code scanner, so I scanned the bar code on the book and discovered I could get it from Amazon for $16.47. Free shipping and no Arkansas sales tax.

Guess which deal I chose.