Essentially, yeah: The short version is that the largest publishers have decided on a floor on prices, and they’re making it stick. I see Ace’s point about how this just ends up hurting the publishers themselves – but one nice thing about Kindles is that a lot of the books that I buy and plan to buy generally are going to be: much older titles, which they’re moving for one or two bucks anyway; directly published, which will typically be two-buck specials; and/or something from Baen Books, which will cheerfully sell me five dollar e-books, written by authors that I actually want to read. Which is to say, areas where the big publishers have little or no control over the price.
And that’s why Amazon.com