They force books in the 3-10 price bracket to artificially keep the eBooks cheap. Authors in the KDP program will lose money if they charge between ~10 and ~20. It doesn't matter if as an author you have a book that should be priced above 10, you're pushed into charging a lower amount.

This ends up benefiting low-effort books because the ROI on them ends up higher than more complex projects that would require charging more per unit.

Selling books is a tricky business and Amazon is helping itself more than it is helping the ecosystem. If you can choose, go to a different vendor for books, preferably buy direct from the authors.

My own personal choice is first attempting to buy direct and my second option is Kobo which has a better royalty breakdown and is curated by real humans, as in as an author you can reach real people to talk at Kobo and help you out.

I'll be honest, kindle + 1-click is just too handy to me. I like my kindle, I've seen some other readers and they don't seem to match it. The differences seem subtle, I don't know where the magic sauce is.

I try to make up for it with occasional donations which also seem like a nice feedback loop. It's astounding how well researched and packed with information some books are compared to others which I would also rate as good books.

IIRC the royalty rates for books under $2.99 are also severely reduced. It seems like a pretty clear tactic to try to keep ebook prices in the $3-10 range.

Not sure why you don’t think that makes sense? If they’ve done the research and figured out that’s how they sell the most books, it makes sense to push prices into that range

> Only thing that comes to mind is wanting to keep all ebook prices below $10, but that doesn't make much sense.

For me (perhaps because I grew up with physical books) the perceived value of an e-book is much lower. The same way I would buy a daily newspaper on the way to work, but have never paid for a newspaper website. Or that I would routinely pay for a vinyl record album but have never paid for online music.

Something about the nature of electronic media reduces its perceived value compared to physical. Physical media I can hold. I can feel its weight. It is something real. There is a sense that I "own" it and that it cannot be taken away arbitrarily, or suddenly become unusable due to a technical fault or technological obsolesence.

I have an e-book reader but haven't bought any e-books over about $5.00. For anything asking $10 or more I still prefer physical copies.