Yeah I agree. Exposure though is the issue, you'd presumably have to do a lot of self promotion otherwise. Or maybe posting to HN and reddit is enough. Not sure.
Did Amazon really give you that much exposure? I haven't sold on there, but my friends who have drove the entire audience. They didn't get a lot of sales from Amazon directly.
I think it has yeah. I haven't driven any traffic there, nor have I promoted the book much at all and it moved up the charts to where it's generally in the top 5 books in it's category, sometimes higher.
Over time it seems to be selling more and more. The first month was pretty slow in sales though.