Stephen Colbert To Amazon's Jeff Bezos: This Means War

Stephen Colbert skewered Amazon on his talk show because of the company's ongoing pricing battle with "Big Five" book publisher Hachette.

Colbert has a personal stake in the disagreement, because Hachette is his publisher and his books are among those that have been subjected to Amazon's shipping delays, algorithm tweaks, and pre-order button removal.

"Watch out Bezos, because this means war," he said on his show.

Colbert said he is not just mad - he's "Mad Prime" - and delivered Amazon a package that "ships immediately":

After comparing CEO Jeff Bezos to "Harry Potter" villain Lord Voldemort (J.K. Rowling is another Hachette author), Colbert invited his fellow Amazon "victim" Sherman Alexie, author of "The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven," onto the stage.

Alexie said that by removing pre-order buttons for upcoming books, Amazon is killing their chances before they're even released.

One book Amazon has removed the pre-order buttons for is Edan Lepucki's "California," and Colbert has asked viewers to boycott the e-commerce site and make their pre-orders on his own website.

"We're going to prove that I can sell more books than Amazon," Colbert said. He also encourages people to download and print a sheet of stickers that say "I didn't buy it on Amazon."

Check out the two hilarious clips below:

Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.