[JoeD]

The irony is, agency pricing made my decision to get a kindle simple. I don't need to worry about buying from other stores, they all have the same price and amazon had the device/ecosystem I wanted.

Had other stores been able to provide discounts or other loyalty programs and had the books they sold been DRM free, I may have still bought a kindle but I bet my shopping would have been via a lot more stores than just Amazon and Baen. For those who are not willing to free their books though, once they're in bed with Amazon, I'm not sure they'll be in such a hurry to leave with prices the same everywhere. Even if prices do drop elsewhere, they may still resist buying into another device and not being able to move their Amazon books over.

Amazon may have moved into the monopoly spot unaided, but the publishers are helping to keep them there despite their claims to wanting the opposite.

Edit: I did sign up and buy from the kobo store recently, but that was a non-agency book and they had a discount that was hard to refuse. Had it been an agency book I'd have not bothered signing up.