Book signing with ebooks?

On an online writer's group, an author described her experience of joining several authors for a book signing at B&N, but they were given no books to sign. If customers passed by carrying their Nooks, they could download the books right there for a discount. The authors signed postcards and books marks and such, but no books.

I don't own a Nook, but it seems strange to me that people would carry one while browsing in a bookstore, or is it just my antiquated thinking? Is this the future, signings with no books to sign? Am I the only one who thinks this is kind of screwy?

I posted this quesiton to a group of writers and this is what I found:

1) A lot of people use a Nook in the store, because B&N has a cool process that once you are on their wifi in the store you have access to special coupons, chapters from books, etc.. It's a pretty interactive experience once you're in the store.

2) Many authors have had some good success from creating postcards and such with their cover art for signings.

3) Add to that things like Kindlegraph where people can request autographed copies of their Kindle titles, and you'll see it's a whole new wave of promotional possibilities.

4) With PDF ebooks, it's possible to put a signature onto it these days.

5) There's also the new program that just came out for the iPad. Authors can actually do signatures INTO an ebook exactly like you would sign a print book, the only difference is that you're doing it on a iPad.

This topic is making me feel more of a fossil than usual. Kind of depressing, yet also exciting that the book industry is changing so rapidly. I would like to thank all the authors and publishers who responded to my questions with such great information.

alan