To buy or not to buy: "boycott anything over $9.99" in kindle e-book store

On amazon kindle forum, a thread titled “boycott anything over $9.99” has gained a lot of popularity in recent times. As of today the number of posts on the issue is about 2000, the second largest thread on the forum. The kindlers have even started tagging e-books those are over $9.99. In other words, they are giving signals to amazon that they will buy the books if the prices go down to $9.99, otherwise not.

The popularity and momentun in such discussion and boycott gained a lot of attention when buyers have figured out osbcure pricing pattern set by amazon. The prices of a lot of books are close to their paperback editions. Sometimes the prices of some books have gone up from their initial $9.99 prices. This kind of trend is quite unusual in the book market.

Knipfty who regularly contributes in ‘boycott forum’ is trying to find amazon role and practice in pricing by counting total number of books available on kindle and the percentage of books that are over $9.99 almost daily basis. The following graph is based on his estimates and shows the percentage of e-books with price over $9.99.

The percentage pricing over $9.99 has jumped by almost 5% around the middle of February from its January 2oth level, and remained so for around one month. Why such a jump? That’s not possible to answer if it’s not answered by amazon. Why it’s going down now? Does it have anything to do with the boycott movement?