[bowlofpetunias]

Maybe Amazon cares so much for the same reason Apple/Jobs cared about the pricing of music: too high a price point encourages piracy.

Once piracy becomes an easily accessible and socially acceptable mainstream habit, it's going to be very hard to claw back market share.

Right now, ebook piracy is by far not as easy and convenient as video or music. That could change as long as ebooks remain overpriced compared to physical books, and DRM impaired to boot. (Sooner or latter the general public is going to find out the hard way how much DRM devalues their "property".)

I dunno about the US, where Amazon is king, but in most countries ebook adaption is stagnating and price is quoted as the #1 reason.