

If you want to buy Hilary Mantel's popular, prizewinning "Wolf Hall" from Amazon.com today, you'll be getting it from some third-party vendor. Same for Orson Scott Card's "Hidden Empire" and the Hungry Girl cookbooks. In the place where the Amazon price should be, you'll find only a double dash.

That's because those books are all published by Macmillan, and Amazon has pulled all Macmillan books from its cybershelves. Macmillan, one of the big six publishers, includes publishing houses Henry Holt & Co., science fiction-focused Tor/Forge and the Tiffany of fiction, Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

Apparently the dispute arose from tensions over e-book prices. Amazon likes $9.99 for e-books, but publishers do not. The New York Times reports:

A person in the industry with knowledge of the dispute, which has been brewing for a year, said Amazon was expressing its strong disagreement by temporarily removing Macmillan books. The person did not want to be quoted by name because of the sensitivity of the matter. Macmillan, like other publishers, has asked Amazon to raise the price of e-books to around $15 from $9.99.

The $9.99 price is a loss leader for Amazon, which has used it to help gain e-book market share for its reader, the Kindle. Publishers are concerned about the downward pressure on prices.

Up until Tuesday, a publisher like Macmillan had no real alternative if it was unhappy with Amazon's e-book prices. But when Apple announced its iPad and an upcoming iBook Store on Wednesday, the e-book landscape changed. Five publishers were announced to be working with Apple; Macmillan is one of them.

The dispute between Amazon and Macmillan has bled beyond e-books, however. All formats of Macmillan books are now unavailable for purchase from Amazon. And that may be tough on the publisher.

Who loses? Will people seeking Macmillan hardcovers and paperbacks on Amazon buy from the secondary retailers? Will rival online retailers Barnes & Noble and the independent Powell's see a sudden bonanza? Will people leave their screens and walk into their local bookstores to get "Wolf Hall"? Or will they simply get "The Help" instead?

After the jump: on e-book pricing