@Mel Hopkins you decoded my text correctly ๐ (I can't help but think of Cynique when my typos are exposed she was a stickler on that).
Your comment on free is actually really important -- nothing is "free." Indeed we provide so much value to social media, Amazon, and Google they should really pay us for using their platforms -- I'm completely serious. Amazon was still paying me to send readers to their site. I just did not think it was enough, so I stopped.
All the "free" services Amazon provides can become fee based or removed at anytime. Which is what they tend to do once they have as they
Again, easily creating a eBook that you can only sell on a single vendor's platform is only considered a benefit if that platform holds a monopoly position. Easily creating an ebook for a platform noone uses is no benefit.
So I'm afraid giving authors an easy way to create ebook that can't be sold on Amazon is not an alternative....