I think the publishers strong-armed Amazon on this one. For a long time Hatchette would not allow Amazon to list its books unless they supported a price floor,

I think the publishers strong-armed Amazon on this one. For a long time Hatchette would not allow Amazon to list its books unless they supported a price floor, and Amazon refused to comply. Eventually [1], Amazon crumbled, and now the prices are mandated across the board. Your assessment (protecting non-Amazon booksellers, or Walmartization of the book market) is generous, and probably correct. My less generous assessment is that the publishers would prefer to completely kill off ebooks, lest authors notice that by employing a skilled editor they can just sell their books directly to customers for a fraction of what a book publisher charges, if they can live without the marketing spend and the addictive pull of advances on sales revenues. [1] https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/13/amazon-hachette-end-dispute-ebooks https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/nov/13/amazon-hachett...