I also can't help but thinking that this is not a friendly warning to others, but simply one more attempt to finally get something out of B&N by causing a public fuss.
Call me Mr. Cynical.
That said, most likely this particular post is a genuine complaint plus an opportunistic idea.
If it weren't someone that we all know, then that might be an issue. But Jesse has been around the hacker and entrepreneurial community for a long time, and has a reputation to uphold. If you've been to OSCON, YAPC, etc. you've probably seen him speak and possibly met him. He's not some random dude trying to cash in on this new-fangled Internet thing.
[edit] I mean human-generated writing, of course. . .
Who cares?? It's clearly marked, nothing deceptive about it at all. Complaining about affiliate links is becoming a cliché, like complaining about dupes.
So, that's my blog post. The "Buy a Kindle!" links were very much a last-minute addition. My thought process was really more one of "It'd be nice to steer more cash away from this vendor who pissed me off." The "Oh. There is delicious irony in getting the $100 I was 'owed' by referring people away from B&N" thought came embarrassingly late.
My intent in ranting about B&N's poor customer service was to shame them into fixing it or losing customers.
By a strict interpretation of your words, yes, I totally realized that my blog post might get attention and decided to capitalize on it. I don't expect a whole lot, though. The number of Kindles people bought via links from my blog post puts the hourly rate for the time I spent on Savory and the other opensourcy Kindle hacking I did last year at about....what I'd earn working the drive-through line at Wendy's.
You can clearly see the "tag=fsck-20", which means an affiliate link, just by hovering over the link.