I only had my books available on Amazon for a very long time. I kept reading (here) that it was stupid to have your books available on Amazon alone.... so when I hired a formatter and her price for formatting books for B&N and Smashwords was a small add-on to the price of formatting for Amazon, I figured I'd give it a shot.

My goal is to have the income from Smashwords pay for the editing and formatting of my book. The income from B&N to pay my taxes. The income from Amazon is profit. So far, so good.

As far as having my books sold in 'private bookstores' -- all other things being equal -- income is income. If I make two cents -- it is two cents I wouldn't have made otherwise and if you add enough pennies together you can pay for a trip to Ireland (been there, done that)