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Originally Posted by anamardoll
I don't have a dog in this fight, but can anyone actually confirm if this is still true? When B&N launched, they didn't have Amazon's catalog, of course, but I think a lot of that has changed.
I personally have never wanted a book that was only available at Amazon, and I've never seen an exclusive-to-Amazon result on, say, Inkmesh. But I could be looking for the 'wrong' books.
Certainly I would very much doubt that B&N + Kobo + Sony does not equal the bulk (say, 90%?) of Amazon's stock.
Of course, there might be small indie authors that have only bothered to publish a Kindle version, but other than that, I think the major publishers are dealing with all of the "Big Four", no?
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IMO they're all about equal. There's probably a slight edge to Amazon when you add in Kindle Singles and the Amazon exclusive authors, and subtract free public domain books from all stores.
However, unless you're consistently looking for short but longer than short story length works AND have a very eclectic backlist taste it's unlikely either of those would seriously impact or harm someone who shops mainly at B&N or another Amazon competitor.
The biggest thing is inertia, plus the ability to share with a spouse. That's what generally ties me into Amazon, since I started on a Kindle 1 and now own a K3...when my non-ebook reading spouse wants to read something from my library it's easy to just send the book to the K1 and let her use that. Familiarity with the store and devices is also why I bought my dad a K3 for his birthday, since I could help troubleshoot more easily.
It's really that sort of inertia/attachment to an ecosystem that each company wants to cultivate, and that's the bigger issue than whether Amazon has 1,000,0001 and B&N only has 1,000,000 or some other such silly numbers game.