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 Authors United, the loosely knit group of authors who joined forces to formally ask Amazon to end its sales terms dispute with Hachette Books, is preparing to run a full-page ad in Sunday's New York Times. The ad, which includes the signatures of over 900 marquee, midlist and debut authors, requests the e-tailer to, among other things, stop its program of "selective retaliation" against the authors. 
 
 The letter, which was previously announced by Douglas Preston, the bestselling writer (long published by Hachette) who founded the group, is being paid for by a select group of the signers. Among the many signers are John Grisham, Anna Quindlen, George Pelecanos, Stephen King, and Jay McInerney. 
 
 The letter, available in full at authorsunited.net, is the result of what has become a very public showdown, brought to light in May, between a publisher and the most powerful book retailer in the business. While the signers of the letter claim not to be "taking sides" in the issue, they feel that they have "made Amazon many millions of dollars" and want to be treated fairly by their "business partner." 
 
 The full text of the letter, including all the signatures, is included below: 
 
 Authors United 
 
 P.O. Box 4790 
 
 Santa Fe, NM 87502 
 
 For information, email Douglas Preston 
 
 at doug@authorsunited.net 
 
 A Letter to Our Readers: 
 
 Amazon is involved in a commercial dispute with the book publisher Hachette , which owns Little, Brown, Grand Central Publishing, and other familiar imprints. These sorts of disputes happen all the time between companies and they are usually resolved in a corporate back room. 
 
 But in this case, Amazon has done something unusual. It has directly targeted Hachette's authors in an effort to force their publisher to agree to its terms. 
 
 For the past several months, Amazon has been: 
 
 --Boycotting Hachette authors, by refusing to accept pre-orders on Hachette authors' books and eBooks, claiming they are "unavailable." 
 
 -- Refusing to discount the prices of many of Hachette authors' books. 
 
 --Slowing the delivery of thousands of Hachette authors' books to Amazon customers, indicating that delivery will take as long as several weeks on most titles. 
 
 --Suggesting on some Hachette authors' pages that readers might prefer a book from a non-Hachette author instead. 
 
 As writers-most of us not published by Hachette-we feel strongly that no bookseller should block the sale of books or otherwise prevent or discourage customers from ordering or receiving the books they want. It is not right for Amazon to single out a group of authors, who are not involved in the dispute, for selective retaliation. Moreover, by inconveniencing and misleading its own customers with unfair pricing and delayed delivery, Amazon is contradicting its own written promise to be "Earth's most customer-centric company." 
 
 Many of us have supported Amazon since it was a struggling start-up. Our books launched Amazon on the road to selling everything and becoming one of the world's largest corporations. We have made Amazon many millions of dollars and over the years have contributed so much, free of charge, to the company by way of cooperation, joint promotions, reviews and blogs. This is no way to treat a business partner. Nor is it the right way to treat your friends. Without taking sides on the contractual dispute between Hachette and Amazon, we encourage Amazon in the strongest possible terms to stop harming the livelihood of the authors on whom it has built its business. None of us, neither readers nor authors, benefit when books are taken hostage. (We're not alone in our plea: the opinion pages of both the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal, which rarely agree on anything, have roundly condemned Amazon's corporate behavior.) 
 
 We call on Amazon to resolve its dispute with Hachette without further hurting authors and without blocking or otherwise delaying the sale of books to its customers. 
 
 We respectfully ask you, our loyal readers, to email Jeff Bezos, CEO and founder of Amazon, at jeff@amazon.com, and tell him what you think. He says he genuinely welcomes hearing from his customers and claims to read all emails at that account. We hope that, writers and readers together, we will be able to change his mind. 
 
 Sincerely,
– Not much is known about the literary weekend Amazon founder Jeff Bezos hosts in Santa Fe every year, other than that it is lavish and the writers are showered with gifts and even a suitcase in which to carry the gifts home, occasionally on private jets. But the spare-no-expense "Campfire" retreat comes at a price—the silence of the writers who attend. This year may prove different, however, as tensions continue to build between Amazon and the fourth-largest publisher Hachette over e-book pricing and, more essentially, profit margins. "The literary world overflows with tension and invective these days," reports the New York Times, which was able to get several writers to break their silence and open up about the weekend and the larger conflict. "People are choosing sides." This past weekend, which was supposed to be the fifth Campfire event (but which Amazon would not even confirm took place), some writers asked not to be invited back, while others simply weren't invited at all. In Santa Fe, not one local author has been invited this year, and some in the faction are "fuming" at the snub, reports the Santa Fe New Mexican. The event follows six months of thinly veiled vitriol between the bookseller and the book publisher, and more than 900 writers openly criticized Amazon in an ad in the Times in August for essentially "boycotting" Hachette authors, reports Publishers Weekly. (Check out which side Stephen King takes.)