Somebody smarter (or more patient about wading through data) than I am could probably figure out how far along this bifurcation is already, but Amazon is doing its very best to build a body of content that is desirable and available from nobody else but them.
This is something you can do when you’re in the neighborhood of 70 percent of ebook sales and already more than half the total sales for many works of fiction, which is where the self-publishing world is strongest. It is not an opportunity that is really available to any other retailer. Apple has given it a try for more complex ebooks for which they provide ebook-building tools and, presumably, offer the most productive distribution environment for complex content. But they’re playing on much less fertile ground and they don’t have anything like the audience share necessary to drive this strategy very far.
It is hard, if not impossible, to imagine that any other ebook ecosystem could offer benefits that would make it worth skipping Amazon.
don’t know about exclusive, but it’s easy
publishing on Kindle Direct or with Createspace is very easy. and free. and visible. so Amazon has an advantage there.
not sure if I could have published One Million Bananas at a smaller site because I would feel guilty wasting their server space with a book that is simply the word banana repeated 1,000,000 times.
or would I waste my time publishing Pride and Presidents which is just word-for-word Pride and Prejudice but with the names of U.S. Presidents substituted for male characters?
Amazon is easy, free, and doesn’t seem to care what I publish. so that.