[fjtorres]

Maybe the problem is the whole "overcome Amazon" mentality.

Nobody needs to overcome any specific competitor to make money at a given business as long as they have a realistic business plan and execute. You don't have to dominate your market to be successful in your business.

There are literally thousands of pbook stores that have managed to survive and outlast the mall chainstore era and the warehouse bookstore era, and seem to be weathering the ebook era okay, so far. Conversely, lots of business fall by the wayside trying to be the IBM or Microsoft of Apple or whatever the leader of their segment may be.

The specialty ereader vendors seem to be doing okay following a regional rather than a global strategy and it may be that they would rather focus their resources on trying to grow with the market in those regions rather than spread themselves thin trying to be everywhere at once. If you only have the capacity to manufacture and sell, say 250k, widgets every year, and you can sell that capacity in or near your home market there really is no sense in pursuing sales elsewhere.

As inspector Harry Callahan would say "a company needs to know its limitations".