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One item in defense of the publishers/authors concerning Amazon's annoying policies: They will lower their price to match any competitor automatically (with a min of about $1). This can catch the owner of the book in a trap. Let's say you sell on Kobo, and sell about 1% of your books there, and also on Amazon, where you get about 80% of your sales (realistic numbers). If Kobo decides to get a wild idea and slash your price, Amazon will match with no input from you. Since the price of the book cost them nothing up front, they think dropping the price costs them nothing. But it does cost you, and quite a bit, as the rights holder. If they were a traditional seller and had paid $4 to buy and store your paper copy, they would never slash the price way down. But with ebooks, they have no limits, no price threshold. They can happily dump your book and it's out of your control.
-BVL
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