Ever since the launch of the most noticeable e-book readers, Amazon Kindle, the company has been trying its very best to ensure the success and survival of the device in an ever increasingly competitive market, where newer and better version of e-reader has become an almost daily occurrence. Continuing its expansion and retention plans, Amazon has announced a change in its strategy, where the company has now decided to increase the royalty fee of the publishers of the e-books to 70%. But then again, as no good happens with its own cost, so is in the case of this latest move adopted by Amazon.

The catch behind the increased royalty fee is that the publishers who wish to sell their digitized books would now be required to maintain the price structure of the books between $2.99 and $9.99 as against the previous privilege, where the publishers were free to quote any price they seemed ideal for their books. Furthermore, the pricing of the e-book needs to be competitive in comparison to its hard back version, meaning that the costs of the e-book would now be required to be 20% below than that of the actual versions and the digitized version also need to have text to speech capabilities as well as support for Kindle store.

With the expected introduction to the Apple Tablet PC this month, many believe that the Tablet could very well have been designed to give Kindle a run for its money and on the other front, the Nook e-reader from Barnes & Noble is also gathering a vast consumer following, which might threaten the reign of Amazon Kindle. These factors, could very well have been one of the deciding factors for the new payment structure for the publishers by Amazon.

Via Ars Technica