High pre-publication discounts like this are considered desirable by publishers and authors. Stores use these high pre-pun discounts to entice higher demand on a book that is already assumed to be a bestseller.
Pre-pub discounts are not to be confused with "remainder sales"--the tables of books that are unsold after months and months. On those remainder sales, publishers are cutting their losses and authors receive basically nothing.
But on a pre-pub discount like this, Patti receives the same royalty no matter how much the store discounts the book, and her publisher gets the same amount from a store that sells the book at list prices as it does from a store that sells it a 45% discount.