True, but without Amazon we likely would not have any eReaders with much support. Any of the large publishers could have stepped up early on and became the dominant e-reading platform. Instead they have fought e-reading every step of the way. The publishers hate e-reading. IMHO, the complicated rules around DRM and ebooks is proof that publishers want to make it so complicated to read an ebook that people simply give up.
Well we had a bookshop (Barnes & Noble), a tech company (Sony, who did not have any book content), and some pther booksellers, all of whom probably would have shipped without Amazon. But no publishers.
Excluding Oreilly and other guys like the Pragmatic books, the only thing the publishers try is litigation. Moreover Hachette cares much less about customers than Amazon does.
What I want, and what I bet a lot of people want, is an ereader for all publishers.
The only difference between an ereader and a tablet today is the display and weight. IIRC it's still some form of Android below. Why can't an ereader have different apps for different storefronts? An Amazon app for their books, a Kobo app, maybe even a Hachette app if we wanted. Though it's not perfect, the idea of reading all books from all publishers, fully legally (no need to strip DRM) on a SINGLE device would be awesome.
Sure, there's no DRM available this way (not that the Kindle DRM is very strong anyway), and there'a tiny bit of setup required. There's a danish e-book-shop (riidr.com - Amazon doesn't carry Danish e-books) that uses this mechanism to deliver books to customers, so I should think it works.
