I strongly suspect Amazon is offering well-known, "must have" authors a much better deal -- possibly even losing money on sales of some of their books -- and making it up by giving a raw deal to less-well-known, independents like Andrew Hyde, the author of this blog post.
The well known must have authors don't self-publish directly on amazon, they have publishers who handle all that sort of negotiation for them. And part of that negotiation surely includes talking amazon down on the delivery fees.
However, authors who publish heir work through a publisher also don't make 55% royalty, so the author of this blog post is still better off than he would have been.
notatoad: I didn't write or even imply that well-known authors self-publish.
FWIW, I have heard from a second-hand source that one well-known author is receiving net royalties from Kindle sales that are greater than the Kindle price of his books. I don't know if this is really true, but it rings true; hence my question to the HN community.
you said that amazon is offering deals to authors. my point is that amazon doesn't interact with well-known authors, they interact with those author's publishers. if any author receives better royalties than the kindle price of their books, it may be because their publisher is receiving even more money from amazon, or it may be the publisher that is taking the loss.
Does anyone here know if this is indeed the case?