The iPad's impending arrival has created a commercial intrigue. A group of big publishers, including Macmillan and HarperCollins, have been using Apple's interest in e-books to persuade Amazon to renegotiate its pricing model.
    Like many other parts of the media industry, publishing is being radically reshaped by the growth of the Internet. Online retailers are already among the biggest distributors of books. Now e-books threaten to undermine sales of the old-fashioned kind. Mobclix, an advertising outfit, reckons the number of programs, or apps, for books on Apple's iPhone recently surpassed that for games, previously the largest category. In response, publishers are trying to shore up their conventional business while preparing for a future in which e-books will represent a much bigger chunk of sales.
    For some time they have operated a "wholesale" pricing model with Amazon under which the online retailer pays publishers for books and then decides what it charges the public for them. This has enabled it to set the price of many new e-book titles and bestsellers at $ 9.99, which is often less than it has paid for them. Amazon has kept prices low in order to boost demand for its Kindle, which dominates the e-reader market but faces stiff competition from Sony and others.
    Publishers fret that this has conditioned consumers to expect lower prices for all kinds of books. And they worry that the downward spiral will further erode their already thin margins—some have had to close imprints and lay off staff in recent years—as well as bring further dismay to struggling bricks-and-mortar booksellers.
    As a result, publishers have turned to Apple to help them twist Amazon's arm. Keen to line up lots of titles for new iPad owners, the company has agreed to an "agency model" under which publishers get to set the price at which their e-books are sold, with Apple taking 30% of the revenue generated. Faced with these deals, Amazon has reportedly agreed similar terms with several big publishers. As a result, the price of some popular e-books is expected to rise to $12.99 or $14.99.
    Once Apple and Amazon have taken their cut, publishers are likely to make less money on e-books under this new arrangement than under the wholesale one—a price they seem willing to pay in order to limit Amazon's influence and bolster print sales. Yet there are good reasons to doubt whether this and other strategies, such as delaying the release of electronic versions of new books for several months after the print launch, will halt the creeping commoditization of books.
    The publishing firms that survive what promises to be a wrenching transition will be those whose bosses and employees can learn quickly to think like multimedia impresarios rather than purveyors of perfect prose. Not all of them will be able to turn that particular page successfully.  In face of the increasing sales of e-books, publishers ______.