Earlier this week , author Douglas Preston—from his quaint-but-internet-connected summer shack on the coast of Maine—posted a letter imploring his readers to write Amazon's chief executive Jeff Bezos and demand that he stop taking books as hostages in its on-going negotiations with Hachette Book Group. Some 900 other authors, including the likes of Stephen King and Donna Tartt, have joined him in his call to action. Together they call themselves Authors United, and they've taken out a full-page ad in Sunday's New York Times to get their message out.

Retail monster Amazon announced a quarterly loss yesterday, sending the stock down and causing widespread grumbling about maniacal CEO Jeff Bezos' corporate spending habits. This seems like an opportune time to hear from some Amazon employees.

We have brought you quite a few firsthand accounts of the misery of working for Amazon at all levels, from the corporate offices to the warehouses. Today, we bring you tales of woe from the people who answer Amazon's customer service calls.

Amazon, known 'round these parts as the "Cthulhu of retail," saw its bad PR stretch got worse last night when Stephen Colbert took up the sword. Colbert's books are published by Grand Central, an imprint of Hachette Book Group. Hachette is the company currently struggling with Amazon over pricing. In a negotiating tactic straight out of a Coen brothers movie about rotund 1930s industrialists, Amazon is artificially delaying the shipment of Hachette books while driving a hard line.

Amazon has gone too far. Now. Now that it is apparently trying to extort ebook concessions from Hachette by delaying delivery and blocking preorders of regular Hachette books—this is it.

Amazon, the Cthulhu of retail, finds itself embroiled in a spat with a major book publisher. It's gotten nasty. And, remarkably, Amazon is losing the PR battle. Why? Perhaps because Amazon—where workers are "ground into a tired heap"—deserves to have a bad reputation.

At Amazon, the office workers tell us they feel trapped, and the warehouse workers tell us they feel exploited. Let's cover the rest of the bases, shall we? Today, a contract worker and an intern describe their own unpleasant Amazon experiences.

In the past week, we've heard from a parade of Amazon insiders—both warehouse workers and white collar employees—speaking about the serious flaws in the company's intense, sometimes inhuman work environment. Today: two more employees speak about high turnover, panic attacks, and the Amazon's military lifestyle.

In the past week, we've heard from several insiders at Amazon describing the company's bizarre and sometimes exploitative workplace culture. Today, a current and a former Amazon employee expound—in detail—on how "Amazon is an amazing company. As long as you don't work here."

It is Amazon week here on Gawker.com. In the past two days, we've brought you stories from workers at Amazon's warehouses and corporate offices. Today, we bring you the stories of three different insiders: positive, negative, and nasty.

Yesterday, we brought you one Amazon warehouse worker's account of what it's like working for the blue collar side of the operation. Today, we bring you an account of what it's like working on the corporate side. (Hint: "weird.")

Amazon is the future of retail, so it's always useful to hear from real live Amazon warehouse workers about what their jobs are really like. Today: one worker details just how much Amazon values its own time over that of its employees.

Huffpo reporter Dave Jamieson wondered why so many of his Amazon Prime packages were being delivered not by UPS or Fedex, but by "independent" courier drivers. The answer says a lot about the dark side of our delivery-dependent future.

Typical big corporations: You just want to buy a precision scale to measure ingredients for your own blend of nutrient-rich food substitute, and they think you're some kind of drug-dealing weirdo.

Amazon gained a patent on Saturday for what the company calls "anticipatory shipping," which will let them ship items to customers before they've even technically purchased them. Basically, Amazon can read your mind.

The first ever union vote at an Amazon facility in America is in: workers in Delaware voted 21 to 6 against joining a machinist's union. For unions, these types of votes are often hard to win. Amazon remains union free, for now.

If you've never read Howard Zinn's delightful and fast-paced A People's History of the United States, now is a good time to start. Amazon's got the e-book priced at $2.49 today, so do some e-commerce in the service of the coming socialist revolution!

Being insanely rich: it really must be nice. Today, various reports stated that Amazon founder and Washington Post purchaser Jeff Bezos was shepherded between islands in the Galapagos by the Ecuardorian navy so he could receive treatment for a kidney stone on New Year's Day.

Sure, you could talk up their soft, aerodynamic design. Or their strength in the face of even the most violent of sneezes. But we all know what those white Kleenex-brand facial tissues are really being used for.

Amazon is the future of retail in America. Like its biggest competitors, it is not unionized. But that could change soon.