Amazon Ups Kindle Royalties To 70%, With Catches

Amazon dropped a bomb this morning by announcing details of a new royalty program that will allow authors to earn royalties of 70 percent from each e-book sold.  However, there some are catches, including:

• The author or publisher-supplied list price must be between $2.99 and $9.99

• This list price must be at least 20 percent below the lowest physical list price for the physical book

• The title is made available for sale in all geographies for which the author or publisher has rights

• The title will be included in a broad set of features in the Kindle Store, such as text-to-speech. This list of features will grow over time as Amazon continues to add more functionality to Kindle and the Kindle Store.

• Under this royalty option, books must be offered at or below price parity with competition, including physical book prices. Amazon will provide tools to automate that process, and the 70 percent royalty will be calculated off the sales price.

Seems like Amazon's willing to give you a better deal on your books ONLY if you undercut your physical copies, force more books to enable Kindle's text-to-speech, and agree to $10 or less books.  Does it look like Amazon's getting a bit concerned over Apple's upcoming interest in ebooks?