Special orders are time-consuming to fulfill and more costly for retailers to handle.
Sometimes they are a loss leader. By plugging in these terminals to its remote data center, the company allows customers to inquire about a book's availability and order as if they were visiting the Web site, complete with free shipping. It's been a rocket ship to the moon in terms of people being very satisfied. The kiosks are NCD ThinStar terminals that host an in-house Web app that runs over a Windows CE thin client. If the title exists in-store, customers will be directed to the shelves.