As noted by an observant member in a KindleBoards.com post, it appears that Harper/Collins is no longer using the dreaded ‘agency model’ for selling books through Amazon. In case that means nothing to you, five of the “big 6″ publishers had adopted this model whereby Amazon was purely a distribution agent of their e-books, and as such Amazon had no discretion as to what price could be charged. You can tell when this is the case when the details about a Kindle book on the Amazon site include text to the effect that “this price is set by the publisher.” Poking around Amazon.com now, it seems that verbiage is no longer there for Harper/Collins titles, and I see books where the sale price is less than the list price, implying Amazon now has the freedom to decide how much they want to make (or even lose) on each title.

Presumably this is all largely a result of the collusion talks/settlement/judgment/whatever that the US DoJ had with Apple and those 5 publishers; and ideally in the long run it will mean lower prices in general for us readers.