I did see something about Amazon and Google squaring up to compete, and AWS is promisingly profitable, but it’s just hit 10% of their business if that is what you are talking about.
Amazon would be an extremely profitable company today but it is putting most of its revenues into expansion.
The company’s primary assets are its technology platform (and related intellectual property ownership) and its distribution system.
The financial numbers being reported do not accurately reflect what’s going on with the company.
Many businesses are paying Amazon to license its software, to use its ecommerce platform, and for Amazon to handle fulfillment. Books are just a small piece of the puzzle these days except in public perception of the company based on its origins.
Books (including eBooks) are about as relevant to Amazon’s long term plans as the telegraph currently is for AT&T. Books are merely an instrument to get people shopping at Amazon for much more expensive items.
Note that Amazon’s tech is also licensed on the back-end for major ecommerce sites. If Internet sales taxes are required to be collected and remitted to state and local governments, Amazon has already put into a place a system for website owners (for a fee of course) to use Amazon to handle that.