My best-selling Amazon author friend (who you probably never heard of) will want to know this. He’ll probably want to send back the $16,000 check he got two months ago, or the $12,000 check he got last month.
The ‘mistreated’ authors you refer to were with Hachette. Hachette was in a dispute with Amazon because Hachette want to be allowed to charge more for their books.
Not to pay the author more, just to charge you the customer more. During this, Amazon even offered to pay the Hachette authors directly to offset any losses. Hachette refused.
Amazon was not the bad guy in this, believe me.
There are also problems with the compensation of a lot of the small press / self published authors, and their exclusivity requirements. Especially for e-books.
I'm glad that it is working for your friend.