Stephen Colbert took aim at Amazon on his TV show as the company is in a contract dispute with Hachette Book Group and has been delaying shipments of its books. Source: AP
ON ONE side of a major publishing feud is Amazon, the industry's biggest book seller.
On the other side is a leading New York publisher few readers have heard of, Hachette Book Group, and some Hachette authors virtually all readers have heard of: JK Rowling, James Patterson, Malcolm Gladwell and, most recently, comedian Stephen Colbert. Colbert assailed the online retailer on his Comedy Central program on Wednesday night.
Amazon is in a contract dispute with Hachette Book Group and has been delaying shipments for some Hachette books, including for Colbert's America Again, and removing the pre-order option for Rowling's The Silkworm (written under her pen name Robert Galbraith) and other upcoming works.
Colbert twice flipped his middle finger at Amazon during the show and brought on Sherman Alexie, a Hachette author who recommended a debut novel that Amazon currently will not sell: Edan Lepucki's California.
Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos pictured with a Kindle. The company is in a dispute with Hachette Book Group. Source: AP
Colbert, anxious to prove that he could "sell more books than Amazon", urged viewers to buy California from Powell's Books in Portland, Oregon, one of the country's leading independent booksellers.
He also unveiled a sticker, "I didn't buy it from Amazon," that could be downloaded from his website. As of Thursday afternoon, California was No. 1 on Powell's Books.
The book will be published in July.
"I feel extremely grateful to Sherman Alexie for going to bat for me and for so many other authors," Lepucki said on Thursday, adding that she believed Colbert had broadened the discussion beyond the publishing industry.
"I had friends who emailed me and said, 'Hey, I wanted to get your book on Amazon and it was unavailable.'
J.K. Rowling is also on the Hachette roster of authors. Source: News Limited
"They had no idea about the dispute, so it's great that it's opened up to people who didn't know otherwise." Amazon and Hachette are reportedly negotiating terms for e-book sales, which publishers say comprise around 30 per cent of the overall market.
Patterson has warned that Amazon wants a "monopoly" of the book business, while John Green, published by Penguin Random House, said earlier this week that he worried Amazon "would bully publishers into eventual non existence".
The negotiations follow a 2012 government lawsuit against Hachette and four other publishers, alleging they conspired with Apple to fix e-book prices.
The publishers all settled out of court and a federal judge ruled against Apple last year.
Before the lawsuit, Hachette and others had sold e-books on Amazon and other retailers through an "agency" system that allowed publishers to set the price.
Amazon has generally declined to respond beyond a statement on its website saying that a resolution was unlikely to happen soon and recommending that customers look elsewhere for affected books.
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