When Steve Jobs was on stage to launch the company’s new mobile device, the iPad, Amazon executives were busy calling publishers to get them to reveal details about their agreement with Apple. All of this was going on during the keynote, reports the NYTimes.

Weeks after the keynote, when the details were made public, Amazon was forced to cut back their prices on digital books and give publishers a higher revenue share (70%) that Apple was offering them. Instead of Amazon trying to leverage its relationship with them, the publishers turned against the largest online retailer and convinced it to renegotiate their agreements.

This is just the beginning of the heated battle between the two companies as they try to dominate the digital content market from the otherwise dying print media industry.