I'm sceptical. What does Amazon know about publishing?<p>With the Kindle, they were already skilled at retailing and designing user interfaces.<p>With their cloud services, they were selling a service they had to provide for themselves anyway.<p>Why would an author sign to Amazon instead of an established publisher? What could Amazon do better than them?
They do publish, or rather let you self publish through them.
<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/seller-account/mm-summary-page.html?ie=UTF8&ld=AZFooterSelfPublish&topic=200260520" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.com/gp/seller-account/mm-summary-page.html...</a>
It's a long term strategy, and very much dependent on kindle market share.<p>It's not a move that will help the kindle in the near/mid-term future. And that's where they're focusing now.<p>But in the long term if the kindle becomes popular , it might be a good move.