Just as it looked like Amazon was about to achieve an iTunes-style lock on the e-book marketplace, the impending arrival of Apple's iPad seems to have emboldened book publishers. After a pricing dispute caused all Macmillan titles to disappear off Amazon's virtual shelves, other publishers joined the pricing revolt, demanding greater flexibility in setting prices on their wares. According to the Wall Street Journal, Amazon has apparently settled the first of these disputes by capitulating.

According to the Journal's report, Amazon will give up on its $9.99 pricing target for e-books, and allow Macmillan greater flexibility to set the rates for its content. The new prices may be as much as $5.00 higher. Although Amazon had announced that it had no choice but to concede given what it termed Macmillan's "monopoly" over its content, the publisher's books were slow to reappear in the retailer's site. That apparently changed over the weekend following a full settlement of the dispute on Friday.

Unfortunately for Amazon, it appears that Macmillan will be the first of many publishers that seek to renegotiate terms, as at least two others (Harper Collins and Hachette) have voiced their intention of doing so. The trigger for the sudden uprising, according to nearly every report on the  matter, is the impending arrival of Apple's iPad, as Apple has negotiated deals that allow publishers to retain significant control over e-book prices. As we noted in our earlier coverage, this is a complete role reversal compared to the dispute over downloadable music pricing.

For Amazon, it all has to be a major disappointment. After remaining relatively circumspect about Kindle sales, the company allowed itself a bit of back-patting after both hardware and e-book sales boomed over the holidays. Its primary competitor, Sony, appeared to be struggling in comparison, and newcomers to the e-book reader market appeared to have a bad case of first-generation hardware blues, something that Amazon had already put in its past. But the mere threat of Apple releasing a competing product seems to have encouraged Amazon's key suppliers (the publishers) to think different.