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Amazon and Smashwords have reached a tentative agreement to allow Smashwords in as a publisher; so far, none of the Smashwords books are actually in the Kindle store (no doubt due to their massive free pricing and the poor quality of the mobi conversions from DOC), but that is just speculation on my part).
However, the authors on DTP all have contracts with Amazon (B&N does the same, so this isn't a huge issue) that they can't list the books at lower prices in other stores; if they do, Amazon can discount to the lowest price found (and not pay the author/publisher, since it was the author/publisher who listed it at the lower price in violation of the contract). Speculation is that this is somewhat in play here; or, it could be that Amazon picked random books to drop to zero pricing (since, they didn't pick every book listed as free elsewhere). Some people (really!) only buy their books via Amazon, so this lets them take advantage of the free prices. The authors benefit by the huge boost in sales (one guy is asking $9.99 for his book, the max to get the 70% royalties and I suspect had practically no sales until this started; then his book took off like a shot at Amazon and people were tracking it down at Smashwords and elsewhere to get it free after the first promotional period, solely, I suspect due to the perception of saving $10).
In any case, just 'cause "Amazon has tons of books" doesn't mean they can't use a ton more. Especially if Smashwords fixes their conversion issues and becomes a means for midlist authors to promote their backlist. Sadly, it'll mean wading thru the genre lists will be even more tedious (although at least if Smashwords gets listed as publisher, we'll be able to search or exclude them in searches, unlike the DTP authors).
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