So, I though Amazon mostly got to where they are by exploiting the poorly-designed concept of sales tax by selling things across state lines, knowing full well that no one cruelly pays "use tax", and so was able to sell things much cheaper than brick and mortar stores; and then when people tried to "fix" sales tax (still a broken concept) by charging Amazon in as many situations as they could, Amazon pushed back hard until they could see the two major brick and mortar book companies failing, and then said they would comply but only if they could have one more tax free year. Like, I certainly remember people I knew even say out loud they were buying books on Amazon due to the lack of sales tax, but it could be that they just didn't know that there was some other thing about "democratizing writing" that was causing their experience to be cheaper somehow.