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Originally Posted by binaryhermit
EDIT: I also suspect that the move to agency allowed Amazon to profit on ebooks, which let them sell kindles near cost whereas they used to almost have to have the kindles subsidize the books they often sold at a loss?
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I think cheap Kindles came before Apple's collusion. I think it was driven by competition with Barnes & Noble, who had lowered the price on their Nooks.
https://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/t.../29kindle.html
I think it was about a year after this announcement that the sub-$100 Kindle 4 (no touch) came out (with ads). Still before the Apple mess.
https://ebookfriendly.com/timeline-kindle-history/
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September 28, 2011
Kindle 4 is launched
Amazon’s newest 4th-generation Kindle e-reader is the first one without the full-size keyboard. It sports five buttons and a cursor pad instead. The device is 30% lighter and 18% smaller than Kindle 3.
The silver-gray e-reader is considerably cheaper than its predecessor. The version with special offers costs only $79.
Reduction in size and price was achieved at the cost of the internal memory. The new device offers 2 GB compared to 4 GB of Kindle Keyboard. The device doesn’t support audiobooks and doesn’t have a headphone jack or built-in speakers.
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Before that time (according to Amazon) eBooks were outselling all print books (hardbacks and paperbacks) combined.
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October 25, 2010
Amazon reveals that in the past 30 days the customers purchased more Kindle books than print books (hardcover and paperback combined) for the top 10, 25, 100, and 1,000 bestselling books.
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