Bezos decided that the digital versions of the most popular books and new releases would have a flat price of $9.99. There was no research behind that number—it was Bezos’s gut call, fashioned after Apple’s successful ninety-nine-cent price tag for a digital single in iTunes and based on the assumption that consumers would expect to pay less for an e-book than they did for a traditional book, as an e-book had none of the costs associated with printing and storage.
