Some clarifications, I guess? I don't think Amazon is loss-leading the ebook market to secure a monopoly; you do that in an already established market. Instead,

Some clarifications, I guess? I don't think Amazon is loss-leading the ebook market to secure a monopoly; you do that in an already established market. Instead, what I think they are doing is trying to bootstrap the ebook market. And successfully, at growth rates far exceeding 100% every quarter. Also, Amazon is not replacing warehouses with on-demand just yet. They are rapidly expanding with many new warehouses opened every year. What they are doing is much more ingenious: they setup marketplace to allow other companies to sell products lacking in Amazons portfolio through their website. Then they offer the vendors to do shipping and storage through Amazon warehouses. Then they ultimately add products generating lots of revenue (and profit) to their own portfolio, cutting out the vendor completely. As with "amazon basic" products, sometimes their scheme extends as far as to completely replace the producer.