A surprising New York Times report reveals that Steve Jobs “was still standing on a stage in San Francisco, presenting Apple’s new iPad, when the phones started ringing. Senior managers from Amazon.com were calling newspaper, magazine and book publishers trying to glean any information possible about the deals Apple was offering them to supply content for its new reading device.” As the Times‘ Nick Bilton puts it, Amazon “is determined not to be out-priced by Apple or any other rival.”

For months, reports Bilton,

Amazon has been pushing publishers to sign a new round of legal agreements that would guarantee that the Kindle price for their content is always the same or lower than the price on other electronic reading devices, such as the iPad or the Sony Reader. The clause, a variation of a legal concept known as “most favored nation,” would guarantee that Amazon’s customers would always get the best price for electronic versions of magazines, newspapers and books.

In response, most of the Big Six publishers — unhappy with the drastic discounts demanded by Amazon, and the technical limitations of the Kindle compared to other dvices — are pushing back, and urging Amazon to “adopt Apple’s model, which gives them less revenue in exchange for more control over retail pricing.” Some publishers are maintaining only month-to-month contracts with Amazon, waiting to see what develops. And some, “to avoid losing their current subscribers on the Kindle … are considering signing the new Amazon contract now and offering a free, limited application for their content on the iPad. At a later date, when an Amazon product can display richer types of media, publishers could release a paid product that looks and works the same across multiple devices.”

In short, it is, says one of the story’s anonymous sources, “the beginning of a multi-year war over pricing and product features.”