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A few points.
Slush pile just refers to a mass of manuscripts that haven't been filtered for quality. I use it from the stand point of someone going through the pile and coming up with a list of ebooks they think is worth taking a look at, rather than a traditional publishing venture. Kind of like some of the software bundles that come out every so often. For $20 you get the 20 best romance (or SF, or Mystery, or whatever genre) sort of thing.
Race for the bottom, refers to competitors dropping prices trying to be the cheapest. It basically refers to commodity pricing. Amazon actually has gone in the direction several times with ebooks, but nothing ever came of it. Some because the publishers stood their ground on agency pricing, but mostly because Amazon's competition basically dried up. When you are the only man standing, there is no race. If Amazon gets serious competition, then I suspect we will see more of the discount pricing again.
Last, with more and more people using tablets and phones to read on rather than Kindles, I think that if you provide good discover-ability and a reading app that works on both IOS and Android platforms, then people will just click on the buy link, rather than find the ebook they want, and go over to Amazon to buy it. People go with what is easiest.
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