Amazon is known for books. Even before the Kindle, the site was a favorite of book buyers. The company is now a major player in the eBook scene with their own major publishing imprint. Published books on their imprint were previously only available through Amazon, but those books will now start to appear elsewhere.

Paid Content reports that Amazon has inked a deal with Ingram that will see books published through Amazon NY available through Barnes & Noble, Apple and Kobo. Book lovers, regardless of eReader, will now be able to read the content available from Amazon.

As always, there is a catch. The deal doesn’t guarantee that Amazon’s books will appear on other devices. It’s unlikely that Apple will stock Amazon-published books. The Cupertino-based company has outright rejected an eBook in the past for linking to Amazon. I just don’t see the two putting aside their rivalry for a little mutual benefit.

As for Barnes & Noble and Kobo, you can probably expect eBooks to start popping up on their respective services soon. Barnes & Noble is probably going to be the most aggressive with this new deal as their Nook eReader is quite popular. The promise of more content, even if it is from Amazon, may entice people to go with the Nook over the Kindle.

That being said, the Kindle is still amazingly popular among readers. Just yesterday, Amazon let it be known that Kindle owners had downloaded or borrowed the 180,000 Kindle-exclusive books over 100 million times. Unfortunately, today’s deal won’t see those exclusive titles appearing anywhere else. Even with their publishing imprint going to other carriers, people might still flock to Kindle for their exclusive books.

Regardless of what eReader the consumer buys, this is a win for Amazon. They are already a fairly large publisher, but this could push them to even greater heights. They will grow even larger in the unlikely event that Amazon eBooks show up on the iPad.