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Stephen Colbert flipped off Amazon on his show last night in a segment skewering the retail giant for its ongoing battle with book publisher Hachette, which just happens to publish titles by Colbert himself. Amazon has effectively begun discouraging its customers from purchasing Hachette books — removing the option to preorder upcoming titles and in many cases pushing existing titles shipping times back by weeks — in an effort to gain leverage over the publisher while striking a new deal on ebook pricing. Colbert clearly has a stake in the fight, and his self-absorbed Colbert Report character is happy to admit that and to use it as a way to turn his viewers against Amazon and its CEO, Jeff Bezos. Amazons huge presence as a bookseller means its actions can cause considerable trouble for Hachette, or really any other publisher that it picks a fight with. The Atlantic reports that Amazon may control around 50 percent of all book sales, physical and electronic combined, giving it a large allowance to push publishers around to its demands.