Kindle moving in right direction?

Just ran across this press release about a new Kindle policy coming soon. It would seem that Amazon is also thinking that Apple will release a tablet competing with the Kindle soon.

I wasn't sure what to make of it until I got down to

# 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.

Particularly of interest to me in that is the second one. Electronic copies with a marginal cost of six cents should not cost the same amount as physical copies with a marginal cost measured in dollars. Frankly, that should be more like 40%, but at least it's a step in the right direction.

Now if they just ditch the DRM, I'll definitely be going for a Kindle. Well, unless the Apple tablet is better (which it probably is :).

Query for the publishers out there: Why isn't this a no-brainer to do with for out-of-print books? Costs are minimal (and, hell, could probably be reduced to virtually zero by working with the Google book-scanning project), and it would serve as market research. That is, if a soft copy sells more than a certain number of copies, use it as a guide to bring the book back into print.