[SensualPoet]

There's generally a reason threads flame up and that's because one or two posters insist on using polarizing, taunting language and then take perfectly rational replies as personal attacks. Meanwhile, the rest of us can enjoy the genuine debate that still manages to be engaged in and smile from the sidelines at the antics of the few.

To ePub or not? Is that Amazon's key question?

Amazon makes choices to sell this product or that; so do Kobo, Sony, B&N and others. No one sells every possible good imaginable ... not even Amazon, although they sell more items than possibly any other vendor on earth. A vendor like BooksOnBoard could sell more titles, more formats if they chose to seek out and sign the deals with more suppliers. It would cost capital but they could do it if their owners/shareholders felt it in their interest.

It is not in Amazon's best interest to sell ePub because it messes up the customer purchase flow and after sales support. By selling ONE format, everything is seamless for those customers who choose to do business with them and use the Kindle platform on a Kindle and other devices. At some point, Amazon might add ePub as a supported format but continue to decline to add Adobe DRM. But they'd still only need to actually sell Kindle format ebooks.

Amazon, no doubt, has had lengthy conversations with Overdrive, the premium ebook supplier to libraries, and the two companies have not been able to come to an acceptable set of terms in order to do business. I suspect Amazon would, in fact, love to be in the library space since it would erase a core differentiator between it and Kobo and other DRM ePub e-readers. I am reasonably certain that more than one executive under Jeff Bezos is charged with "fixing" that problem in 2011.

Amazon, btw, would make money selling to Overdrive, not to libraries. I'd expect most libraries do not buy books from Amazon but buy direct from publishers or middle-men jobbers -- so it's not a market Amazon is missing out on. Ultimately, Amazon's vested interest is in end-users, not in other book distributors such as libraries.

Finally, to return to the OP: regardless of one's view, Amazon is doing something rather well if, by the end of 2010, with e-readers in something under 15% of households, they are already selling more Kindle e-books than paperbacks.