3 of the things most people miss is

A) The intersection between people who love books and love technology is rather small

B) There is no 'monetization ramp up' when producing products for books and publishing

Monetization if you are a startup in books and publishing is via either

Amazon Associate - However, Amazon will kick you out if they want to enter the same business

Example: https://the-digital-reader.com/2016/06/15/amazon-brings-the-...

Selling Ads to Authors & Publishers - However Amazon will manipulate results

Example: https://the-digital-reader.com/2017/11/22/amazon-now-punishi...

so there is no easy path

Contrast that with something like Apps or Shopping where you can use affiliate networks and monetize right from the start. And a competitor like Google doesn't have control over the Affiliate networks (which in books, Amazon has)

C) Most authors are not tech savvy and keep doing crazy things like giving exclusivity to one store and create monopolies. They then get screwed by these monopolies

Why would you step into a market where

A) The competitors are monopolists who have no compulsion against doing illegal things

B) The participants (authors and Publishers) are in the 1950s technology wise

C) The participants (authors and publishers) keep doing strange stuff like give one ebook store exclusivity

CONTRAST what happened with Apps versus what happened with Books

Apps

Amazon wanted pricing control of apps and exclusivity. Developers gave them the middle finger

Amazon tried unlimited apps (including unlimited IAP purchases if you are on subscription) and developers didn't play along. They had to close down the service

Books

There were FIVE major stores - Kindle, Sony, Apple, B&N, Kobo

Amazon offered exclusivity to authors in return for (the comically bad incentive) - allowed to make book free for 5 days every 90 days, allowed to discount book as a special Kindle Countdown Deal for 7 days every 90 days

Authors gave Amazon exclusivity. Helped it get from 30-40% market share to 60-70% market share

Now completely dependent on Amazon

Kindle Unlimited - Amazon won't give authors and publishers data on how many people borrow, etc. Only 'total number of pages read'

Authors play along and now many are completely dependent on income from this 'subscription service' where they don't even know how many readers downloaded their book, how many read X% etc. Just one vague metric of 'total pages read by all readers'

So, to do well in this market you are suited for it IF

A) Your default is to take advantage of authors and publishers

OR

treat them like naive sheep who don't understand the basics of business

B) You are willing to go up against a large monopoly that will also do illegal things without remorse

Amazon just hired Keith Alexander - head of NSA during warrantless surveillance

Do you really want to compete against that?

C) somehow bridge the gap between books and publishing and technology

while keeping in mind that most of the top quality supply is controlled by 5 large companies (the Big 5 very big publishers)

You would be hard pressed to find ANY business to go into that is worse

The saying - An intelligent enemy is better than a stupid friend

This is an ecosystem where - your friends are naive (in effect, clueless), and your enemies are stupid (doing all sorts of illegal things because they are a monopoly and know the US does @#$$-all to monopoly power abusing companies