The problem is KDP is the 500 pound Gorilla for self pub, and traditional publishers only publish a vanishingly small proportion of works. If you want to make a

The problem is KDP is the 500 pound Gorilla for self pub, and traditional publishers only publish a vanishingly small proportion of works. If you want to make a career out of it, sure try trad first. You're almost certainly not going to make it. If it's a hobby, or you don't get through the needle at a trad publisher, you leave the majority of income on the table if you get locked out of KDP unless you're in a niche and already have direct access to a large portion of your readers. E.g. if you're writing tech books about an OSS project you're at the core of, you can probably do fine without KDP. If you write fiction, being without KDP will make things 10x as difficult. This does not mean I disagree with you. In principle you're right. Just pointing out that in the general case KDP is such a big factor for writers that for most it will habe a lot of weight. There's a reason they get away with KDP Select (exclusivity for Amazon) to include you in Kindle Unlimited, for example: It takes very little KU income to outweigh all other e-book sales channels for a lot of self published authors. I've just removed my two novels from it, not because I think I'll earn more that way, because I don't, but because I agree it's worth diversifying - in my case more because I've decided I earn little enough from it that I can afford to make it more about principle and maybe contributing in some tiny way to reducing Amazons dominance.