The folks over at Media Bistro have posed a neat theory: Amazon has started selling mass-paperbacks and some trade papers at full price, rather than the usual Amazon discount, to help push people towards their new e-book reader.

It’s a pretty good theory and after some cursory clicks, I can verify that many paperbacks are now at full price. It makes sense from Amazon’s view, kinda…

I mean how do you convince the public to buy a $400 e-reader to load books on at $9.99 a pop, when the same material is available in a pocket-friendly-no-need-to-re-charge $7.99 or cheaper?

It will be interesting to see if this is just a test case and how Amazon tries to position the Kindle among its offerings.