Makes sense. I've been looking into this as a self-published author, and your numbers definitely work out, or should even be maybe more extreme. Selling an ebook through Amazon for $5 gives a 70% royalty, or $3.50. Print versions through CreateSpace are going to vary depending on production values, but may end up being around $5 for the cost of creation, and then Amazon will cite a minimum price (I was seeing around $10 or $12, again depending on the number of pages), though that doesn't give the author the same royalty. I think I had to pick $12.50 (shorter book) and $14 (longer book) to hit the same $3.50 royalty. So at least from the perspective of a self-published author, the ebook can be less than half.

Now that's for print on demand. A traditional publisher run definitely costs less per physical book, so the ratio of electronic to print price ought to be smaller. A 30% discount on electronic may be reasonable.

That model actually makes a lot of sense to me. Pay more if you're impatient and want to see it new, pay less when it's older. You see that kind of system regularly with DVDs, where a new release may be $20, but it'll be $15 or $10 after a year, and in the $5 bin a few years later. Computer games, too, except that you're starting at $60 and going down in several steps to $20 and then maybe $10 or $5. What's really amazing is that books are so insensitive to this trend.

But it *is* 70% to Amazon for books between $0.99 and $2.98. Maybe that's justified by the fixed costs Amazon faces, which are a greater percent of a smaller price, but it still seems absurd to me. Of course my response is just to not price ebooks under $2.99, and then I can avoid it.

When you have "extremely powerful primitives" the only thing you can do is drop.

Just say you tried to start your own business, and now you're returning to the corporate world. Nobody's going to care.

In terms of getting rid of the cold itself, sure. But some remedies treat the symptoms, and in that at least some relief can be provided.

This has nothing to do with purchases, and is for the lending libraries only. It's primarily a maneuver to limit some kinds of fraud and scams, or publishing techniques that game the system. Amazon makes no more money by applying this change.

This is completely inaccurate. See all the other notes that this is for the lending libraries only. Amazon pays out the same total regardless, but they're redistributing royalties in a way designed to better reflect reader enjoyment. This change doesn't result in Amazon keeping any more money than previously.

Currently you can perpetrate the exact same fraud with botnets downloading the book and never opening it or turning pages. This only makes it harder than it presently is.

I don't think the examples you cite will significantly affect the program. For instance, stalling on a page while you sleep doesn't do anything. Turning to a page today that you don't actually read until tomorrow doesn't do anything. Turning one more page, waiting until tomorrow, and then deciding the book is junk that you're not going to finish, gives the author credit for exactly one additional page read, which is a minimal difference in royalties.

The AC is basically quoting directly from Amazon's email describing the change, so it's accurate. See all the other posts about this only being for the pool of money Amazon uses to pay for books borrowed through Kindle Unlimited or the Kindle Lending Library.

Thus, it must be a letter! Except in hexadecimal notation letters are numbers, so 1/0 is a color?

Well, in the real world you also can't give two apples to half a person, so this whole analogy is pretty off.

Just throw an absolute value operator around it, and you're set.