Amazon is once again banning books from major publishers – including numerous bestsellers such as those of Stephanie Meyer — in apparent retaliation against publishers for adopting pricing models it finds disagreeable. Yesterday, some new ebooks from Penguin were nowhere to be found on the site, and all ebooks from Hachette Book Group publishers (such as Little Brown) were disappeared.

As Michael Cader reports in a Publishers Marketplace story (subscription only), Amazon posted a notice saying “Hachette has disallowed the sale of ebooks except on agency terms effective as of 12:01 am this morning. We came to terms late last night but we cannot be operationally ready to sell their ebooks on agency terms until two days from now — April 3 — when we will also cut over for the other publishers that are switching to agency. If we can get a two day extension from Hachette to continue selling their ebooks under the prior terms, we can have the Hachette ebooks promptly back for sale today. If not, then they will be back on April 3.”

Of course, Hachette had a different way of seeing it. As a Wall Street Journal report by Jeffrey A Tracthenberg notes, Maja Thomas, senior vice president of Hachette Digital, responded that “It’s not about retaliation, it’s about logistics.”

As for Penguin, Cader reports that meanwhile,

Penguin told agents that only their new ebooks–presumably just-released titles as of April 1–would be unavailable at Amazon until new terms are resolved with the etailer. Penguin USA ceo David Shanks wrote: “In recent weeks we have been in discussion with our retail partners who sell eBooks, including Amazon, to discuss our new terms of sale for eBooks in the U.S.  At the moment, we have reached an agreement with many of them, but unfortunately not Amazon – of course, we hope to in the future.” As a result, “your newly released eBook is currently not available on Amazon, but all of your eBooks released prior to April 1 are still for sale on their site.” He adds: “Our conversations with Amazon are ongoing and we do hope to continue our long-time relationship with them.“