Amazon has had to face the music with the competition coming from Apple’s iPad. The Wallstreet Journal reports that Amazon has given in to the pressure from some book publishers to price their books outside of the $9.99 price point that Amazon has been fighting for. Now, Simon & Schuster, HarperCollins, and Macmillan will have more control over the pricing of their ebooks through the Kindle store.

Thanks to an “agency pricing model”, most new best sellers will be going for $12.99 and $14.99. There will still be some books available for $9.99 (and maybe even lower); but as we all know, the books we want to read will all be the pricier ones.

It seems to me that competition should be lowering prices, not raising them. One of the big benefits of forking out the cash for a Kindle was that you’d have access to cheaper reading material than buying a physical copy. I have made some impulse purchases on the Kindle just because I knew the cost was $10 or less. I’ve purchased books from new authors and new genres just because I considered it a bargain price. Sure, it’s only an extra 3 to 5 bucks, but now I will be more likely to double- or triple- think the purchase.

I’m sure this is a decision that Amazon has been strong-armed into by the greedy book-publishing powers that be; having Kindle ebooks priced lower than the competition would definitely be their preference, but by refusing to align with the agency pricing model they would be missing a lot of content that is available on the Nook, iPad, etc.