> And why pay a referral fee if people already want to ignore other options and go to Amazon to buy after finding on Goodreads? Because if Amazon stopped payin

> And why pay a referral fee if people already want to ignore other options and go to Amazon to buy after finding on Goodreads? Because if Amazon stopped paying those referral fees, then the website can stop posting links to Amazon, and instead post links solely to Amazon's competitors. Yes, people are hooked on Amazon and so even in the absence of a direct link they might browse over to Amazon and search for the product there, but that introduces a lot of friction and so Amazon would lose some business.