Royalties, Oh Royalties, Wherefore Art My Royalties?

So here we are. Hachette has a deal. Simon & Schuster has a deal. They have the pricing responsibility they wanted. Amazon has its "specific financial incentives" to compel them to use that power to price lower. Now we'll get to see just how badly publishers want to institute a price-based windowing system for new releases (I'm setting the over/under on new release ebook prices at $16.99. And I'm taking the over.) But what did writers get out of this? I'm glad you (rhetorically) asked, because nobody else seems to be.