When book publishers don't play nice with Borders or Barnes & Noble, the bookstores have a special ritual for their titles: Hide them. And that's if they're feeling generous: If you catch B&N chief Steve Riggio on a bad day, perhaps he just won't stock your works.

It's no secret publishers pay big bucks to have their high-profile titles get the best positioning at the major book retailers, with prominent placement up front and entire displays devoted to them. That, and the negotiations between publishers and booksellers, about who gets how much of a cut of book's sale, are what really determines what books might make it on to a best-seller list.

Then came the Internet, which was supposed to make everything more democratic, from political fundraising to selecting which movies to pirate. Amazon.com was a new business model, free from industry rules, and hopeful to get as many books in customers' hands as possible.

Or at least that was the thinking. Now, it's clear the Internet's (the world's?) largest book clearinghouse has the same standard operating procedure with publishers as the good 'ole boys. And while Borders can give a new book crappy placement in the back shelves if its publisher won't pony up a few more percentage points on the sale, Amazon has what some might argue to be an even more powerful tool: the Buy Now button. And the ability to turn it off.

In the latest in a series of disputes over the division of revenue from online sales, Amazon has disabled the “buy now with 1 click” icon on its British Web site for hundreds of books published by the British unit of Hachette Livre, from back-list Stephen King novels to, naturally, “The Hachette Guide to French Wine.”

The button allows registered users to purchase titles instantly, with free shipping. Customers can still buy the affected books, but they have to navigate to an open marketplace that links them to third-party sellers of new or used books. And they have to pay for shipping.

The struggle comes at a time that Amazon’s power as a bookseller is increasing, with sales growing online in an otherwise tepid global book market. Some publishers fear that with the introduction of Amazon’s Kindle electronic reader, the company will rise into a position to be able to demand more concessions.

“The buy button is their weapon of choice and that’s how they impose market discipline,” said Paul Aiken, executive director of the Authors Guild, an American trade group that also briefly lost the buy icon, for titles sold from BackinPrint.com, a print-on-demand service for infrequently purchased works. “This is such a clear indication that once they have the clout they are willing to use it to the full extent that they can. It’s ugly with Amazon and will probably get uglier.” [NYT]