Ask HN: Should or shouldn’t Amazon.com create a publishing company?
In light of recent events, I can’t see why they don’t begin publishing. Would this make sense for Amazon? If not, what issues make it a bad move?
With the Kindle, they were already skilled at retailing and designing user interfaces.
With their cloud services, they were selling a service they had to provide for themselves anyway.
Why would an author sign to Amazon instead of an established publisher? What could Amazon do better than them?
It's not a move that will help the kindle in the near/mid-term future. And that's where they're focusing now.
But in the long term if the kindle becomes popular , it might be a good move.