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Consumers will have to wait till spring to get their hands on an Apple iPad, but Macmillan CEO John Sargent put the new gadget to good use the moment it was unveiled by AppleAAPL-Q CEO Steve Jobs last week in San Francisco. Within a day, the New York publisher was in Seattle dictating wide-ranging price hikes on all the titles it retails through Amazon's popular Kindle e-book reader, now that a rival reader had appeared on the scene.

The result was the so-called Weekend War, with other New York publishers and literary agents hailing Mr. Sargent as the avenging angel who finally cut the bully of Seattle down to size - and in the process established new business terms that, they hope, will make electronic publishing profitable for all participants.

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'It seems to be saying: "You're screwed if you buy books anywhere other than iTunes, pal."'

"The facedown lasted from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon, but when it was over the landscape of the book business was permanently altered," influential agent Richard Curtis blogged yesterday, hailing an apparent settlement that "restores control of book pricing - on both e-books and print - to the publishers."

"I think it is wonderful that a publisher has stood up to Amazon and won," Toronto agent Denise Bukowksi said. "It's time for publishers to take back control of pricing if authors are to continue to write and publishers are to continue to publish."

But others aren't sure the struggle is over. "I think the war we saw this weekend will just be the beginning of a lot of change in the way e-books are sold," said Michael Serbinis, president of Canadian-based e-retailer Kobo, a partnership between Toronto's Indigo Books and Music and Michigan-based Borders Group.

The war has created "a mess for customers," he added, none of whom are calling out for the higher prices the publishers would like to charge.

Macmillan's Mr. Sargent outlined the plan to hike most e-book prices to $14.99 (U.S.) - up from the Kindle-standard $9.99 - in the same open letter that reported Amazon's aggressive reaction to it. "By the time I arrived back in New York late [Friday] afternoon they informed me that they were taking all our books off the Kindle site, and off Amazon," Mr. Sargent wrote.

The showdown didn't last long. On Sunday evening, Amazon issued a statement agreeing to "capitulate and accept Macmillan's terms because Macmillan has a monopoly over their own books." The result, according to observers, is that Amazon lost the near-monopoly it briefly enjoyed in the e-book trade - and used forcefully to impose low prices.

“ The facedown lasted from Friday evening to Sunday afternoon, but when it was over the landscape of the book business was permanently altered ”— Agent Richard Curtis on his blog

Or so it would seem. "The quote unquote capitulation didn't really happen," Mr. Serbinis said yesterday, noting that many Macmillan titles remain unavailable to Kindle users and negotiations between the two parties are continuing. In the meantime, Kobo has posted a top-10 list of popular titles under the heading, "Can't Get These on Kindle."

Among the Macmillan titles still missing from the Kindle store are New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman's Hot, Flat and Crowded, and novelist Janet Evanovich's best-selling Plum Spooky. "I think for the first time Kindle customers have discovered the downfalls of being locked into a closed platform," Mr. Serbinis said.

Most observers credit the coming iPad for inspiring Amazon's apparent reversal. During the gadget's launch last week, Apple announced that it had signed up five of the "Big Six" New York publishing houses to provide content, simultaneously announcing the creation of an iBook store to handle sales.

Publishing industry sources say the key to the change was Apple's decision to let publishers set retail prices themselves. Another factor is Google Editions, another upcoming e-book store that has agreed to the publishers' favoured distribution model.

But the end result of the struggle is far from clear. While unveiling the iPad last week, Mr. Jobs also promised that the iBook store will charge the same prices as Amazon's Kindle store.

"We believe there needs to be a sustainable business model for all of us to survive," Kobo's Mr. Serbinis said. But that doesn't mean surrendering all power over pricing to a handful of big publishers. "Sustainable can't mean high prices that consumers don't want to pay," he said.