Usualy wholesale price was %40 off retail. Amazon demanded 55% at the time or they wouldn't sell the books. I can imagine some publishers would raise their prices accordingly so that they would still reach the minimum wholesale price they wanted/needed.
Again, "so that the price will then appear closer to what you need it to be?"" -- he's saying he cares what the retail price shown to customers is. That because Amazon is going to sell at less than his marked retail price, he's going to raise the marked retail price, to raise the price that appears to customers.
There might be a reason that matters to his business, but it's definitely not obvious, I wish he'd tell us what it was. He just doesn't want his product to look like it's a cheap bargain product?