There are plenty of free publications on Kindle, so it has to be possible.
Amazon also offers CreateSpace, which lets you do electronic (I believe) and on-demand digital printing, where you can set the prices to anything you want (as long as you at least cover costs on print items).
Including 500 to 1000 word articles. I would like to write about 2 per week available to the public for FREE. Then later in the year, publish a book for which there would be a charge. Also can the charge for books be as low as $4.99? Five bucks seems to be what a lot of folks will pay without thinking too much about it. $9.99 might be too high.