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Frankly, when people say, "Why don't publishers just open an ebook store to compete with Amazon, " they betray a kind of naivete about business.
First of all, division of labor. The skills it takes to be a major publishng house are mostly different from being a major retailer. Secondly, to compete with Amazon, you have to do what Amazon does: and that ain't easy and that ain't cheap .Among other things it involves mucho infastructure: servers, engineers, bandwidth, software, and techncal know how-some of which, like 1-click buying, is patented.
IOW, opening a website somewhere on the Internet ain't competing with Amazon, by a long shot. You notice that Apple, with every advantage in the world, is having a tough time making iinroads agaionst Amazon. What makes you think publishers can do any better?
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