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The "agency" part is that the bookseller is not a retailer but rather an "agent" for the publisher. This is a transparent end run around price-fixing regulations.
There are likely to be unintended consequences of this approach. The most significant one so far, in the US, is that everyone has to pay sales tax on Agency ebooks because it is the publisher making the sale and they almost all have a "presence" in all states. Another that is likely to happen eventually is a class action lawsuit if an "agent" closes down. The publisher is on the hook for those "lost" ebooks, and are simply not setup to handle this is any customer friendly way.
Note that most ebook store's terms of service have not been changed to allow for Agency sales (e.g. Amazon). It isn't clear to me that the current versions even apply to Agency sales. I get a receipt from Amazon for Agency Kindle sales and they look like standard Kindle sales, but they are publisher sales. For example, if Amazon's contract was canceled by an Agency publisher they would have to stop downloads of already sold ebooks (if a non-Agency contract is canceled it does not necessarily effect existing sales).
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