Quote:
Originally Posted by Kali Yuga
I may be wrong, but I believe Amazon has a two-tiered structure. The Digital Text Platform (DTP) is for small and self-publishers. Larger publishers are on a different system altogether, where they set the wholesale prices. E.g. I don't think Amazon can arbitrarily decide to discount DTP texts and just eat the cost differential, which they do routinely with certain bestsellers.
I expect it has more to do with using the carrot rather than the stick to make $9.99 the ceiling for ebook pricing, as well as just getting more people and small publishers to use DTP.
I also doubt Amazon has all that much to fear from Apple, since they can likely knock out a "Kindle for iSlate" or whatever it is (if it actually exists) with full Whispernet integration fairly quickly.
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I think you are right about different tiered systems. It is my understanding as well that Amazon has different arrangements between smaller publishers that publish through DTP and major publishers such as Random House.
However, the major publishers get an even better deal than the small publishers. So if the existing system, based on 35% of List Price is better for smaller publishers then you can be assurred that it is even better for the bigger publishers. As far as I can tell, the only people Amazon is offering a carrot is the authors that dump their publishers (at least in regards to ebooks).