Stephen Colbert Lambastes Amazon Over Blocking, Delaying Hachette books

Writers are losing patience as retail giant, publishing giant duke it out.

Popular authors have begun taking sides in the roiling Amazon-Hachette contract dispute, including the likes of Malcolm Gladwell and, most recently, Stephen Colbert. Wednesday night, Colbert expressed hostility on his show, The Colbert Report, over authors becoming collateral damage in Amazon and Hachette's fight over contract terms.

Amazon and Hachette's spat over e-book contract terms has been playing out in public for weeks, reportedly driven by Amazon's quest for higher profit margins. Amazon publicly addressed the dispute last week, saying it expected the fight to drag on and that Hachette books constitute only 1.1 percent of the site's total sales. Customers who are looking for Hachette books should go elsewhere, the Amazon Books Team said.

Author Sherman Alexie joined Colbert on the show to discuss the fight. Alexie said Amazon is pushing its terms because it "[wants] a monopoly," but he acknowledged that Hachette is also a large corporation. "It's two giants fighting each other," Alexie said. He attacked in particular Amazon's downplaying of Hachette titles on the site and the fact that Amazon is blocking some pre-sales. "Pre-publicity and pre-sales determine the success of a book," Alexie said...