Quote:
Originally Posted by tompe
And what about the $2 dollar the author loose when you break the rules?
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I'm reasonably sure that Amazon $2 surcharge does
not go to the author. Self-published authors certainly used to be very surprised about that addition - they had no idea; they were not the people adding it and they were not the people that surcharge reached.
I think the most common theory (as Amazon has never, to my knowledge, explained the actual reasons for it) is, or at least used to be, that the surcharge is added to Kindle books bought in the, um, non-essential markets in order to subsidise the "free" worldwide 3G that Amazon offers for book downloads.
If this is true, then if you want to make any argument here at all, argue that Amazon is losing money on all those evil people who skip the surcharge - but even that only applies, even vaguely, if those people in those countries use the "free" Kindle 3G to download their purchases. Lots of us don't even own a 3G-capable Kindle and use our own WiFi to download, so that shouldn't incur any extra costs to Amazon.