Under the agency model, a publisher sells directly to the consumer (you) and enlists the aid of an agent (Lyon Books) to handle the sale. The publisher sets the consumer price, and the agents (retailers) are contractually bound to honor that price.

There are currently seven agency e-book publishers:  Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin, Random House, Simon & Schuster, and Wiley. The catalogs from these publishers encompass tens of thousands of titles available from Lyon Books at the exact same price as Amazon, Google, Barnes & Noble, Apple, or any other retailer.

Sound too good to be true? See for yourself!

Here are the individual eBook download pages for Stieg Larsson's The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest on lyonbooks.com, amazon.com, and barnesandnoble.com. They're all priced $12.99. None of us can under-cut the others' pricing for any eBook from those seven publishers:

http://lyonbooks.com/google-ebooks/girl-who-kicked-hornets-nest

http://www.amazon.com/Girl-Kicked-Hornets-Nest-ebook...

http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-girl-who-kicked-the-hornets-nest-stieg-larsson...

There are tens of thousands of these e-book titles all identically priced for all retailers who sell them, and the list is growing every day. The concept of agency pricing is a monumental development in e-commerce, and one which will hopefully impact other areas of consumer capitalism.