John Grisham is now available on the Kindle!

The long national nightmare is over. The most significant case of “windowing” yet in the Kindle Store is over. After 27 months and 25 days, bestselling novelist John Grisham has set his books free in the Kindle Store.

Not at $14.99, or $12.99, or even in most cases $9.99. As you’ll see if you click here to see Grisham’s brand new Kindle Store page, most are priced at $5.99 to $7.99, which by my lights is right where they should be.

Any guess as to how many Grishams will be in the Kindle Store’s top 50 by the end of the day? I’ll guess that it will be at least a half dozen.

More than any other bestselling author, Grisham disappointed hundreds of thousands of Kindle owners over the past couple of years by holding out. It was a principled stand, based on the author’s love for the bookstores and booksellers that he visited with cases of copies of his originally self-published A Time to Kill in the trunk of his car before The Firm became a blockbuster word-of-mouth bestseller.

But today, he’s all in for Kindle readers, and the significance and timing for Amazon and the Kindle is brilliant.

It’s no accident that Grisham’s various publishing imprints are all Random House subsidiaries, and that Random House is the key holdout from the so-called agency model among the Big Six publishers. Random House management has already shown an interest in paying attention to Amazon’s expertise on ebook pricing issues rather than trying to impose a collusive price-fixing scheme down retailers’ throats.

As the Apple 5 publishers try to dress up their sow’s ears as silk purses to sell their so-called “hardcover ebooks” at $12.99, $14.99, and $15.99, how will authors like David Baldacci like looking at the Kindle bestseller list and having their new releases trail Grisham backlist titles?

And, speaking of Apple, the fact that you can download Grisham books today on a Kindle, Kindle for PC, Kindle for BlackBerry, Kindle for iPhone, and Kindle for iPod Touch is bound to have an effect on
the apparently lackluster flow of pre-orders for the iPad, at least among those who are contemplating it as an ereading device.

Does the fun ever end?

TITLE    PRICE    SALES RANK AS OF 6 am 3.16.10
A Time to Kill    7.99    N.A.
The Chamber    7.99    N.A.
The Firm    7.99    N.A.
The Testament    7.99    N.A.
The Runaway Jury    7.99    N.A.
The Client     7.99    10855
Skipping Christmas    6.99    N.A.
The Associate    9.99    19606
Ford County    9.99    5474
The Partner    5.99    18301
The Summons    7.99    N.A.
The Brethren    7.99    N.A.
The King of Torts    7.99    N.A.
The Appeal     7.99    18441
A Painted House    7.99    N.A.
The Last Juror    7.99    N.A.
Playing for Pizza    7.99    N.A.
The Pelican Brief    7.99    19071
The Rainmaker    7.99    N.A.
Bleachers    7.99    N.A.
The Broker    7.99    18696
The Innocent Man    7.99    N.A.
The Street Lawyer    7.99    18735