Winner in the Amazon War

A few weeks ago, the late-night television host Stephen Colbert began attacking Amazon for discouraging customers from buying titles from his publisher, Hachette Book Group. But Colbert picked another Hachette author -- a startled Edan Lepucki -- as the focal point of his campaign against Amazon. “We will not lick their monopoly boot,” he said of Amazon on “The Colbert Report” before exhorting viewers to preorder Lepucki’s post-apocalyptic “California” from independent bookstores.

The Amazon-Hachette brawl, Colbert explained, “is toughest on young authors who are being published for the first time.” Lepucki, watching TV at home in suburban San Francisco, watched Colbert hold up “California” with a mixture of elation and nausea. And then he did it again a few nights later, this time challenging viewers to buy enough copies to get the novel on the New York Times best-seller list. He also recommended “California” to his 6.6 million Twitter followers. “I felt kind of icky to be benefiting from this fight,” Lepucki said. “At the same time, the opportunity to reach readers is a fantasy.”