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As regards Amazon "taking over"...
I think if Agency pricing falls (which I hope it will), the thing that changes is just that Apple will be forced to compete, for the first time ever in any field: they have dominated music, because they made online buying convenient, they are ok with their film business because they have simply based it upon the dominance of their music business (i.e. They make enough because they have such a large user base). In apps, they have an exclusive system, noc competition there, naturally.
With ebooks however, it's different. They are heavily reliant on moile devices, but: Amazon has established a mobile system that is well-suited to the task and convenient before Apple has arrived there (no second iPod), anyone remember Jobs saying that people are ading less and less anyway so it's no big deal...
Turns out, Amazon is moving enormous sums of money with their business so Apple has to join the game. And because they didn't want to compete (because you simply cannot convince people that a song, a film or, well, a book, is inherently better simply because it's from Apple), they tried their second major strategy (increasingly so in the past number of years): control.
And if they cannot innovate (on a big scale, they could start Mirasol etc but that does not give them any huge avantage now that they have started making people believe that LCDs are just fine, or better, which they are occasionally) or control anymore, they have two options left: drop out of the game (which would just be ridiculous given how they are currently promoting iBooks, as savior of learning) or, finally, compete on the price.
(granted, they could start throwing out apps at random again (control), but that has never led anywhere before, most people will not use iBooks exclusively, esp. not, when it's more expensive, among other factors such as a bigger Amazon tablet and all the other , so Kindle and Nook are going to stay on iOS)
(btw, written on an iPad 3 ;-))
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