It was only a week ago that Larry Kirshbaum’s coming departure from Amazon Publishing was widely misreported as a “scaling back” of the company’s sprawling publishing initiatives. Now, capping off a week of announcement, Amazon is inviting Prime members to buy one of their own books (from Amazon Publishing) “in advance of the official release date” for just $1.99. It’s all artifice, since Amazon is setting that official release date as the publisher, and setting all the prices and discounts (the inaugural titles have listed pre-order prices of $4.99), but it’s another way of pulling some levers on their own […]