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.

Longtime New York Observer editor-in-chief Peter Kaplan's 15-year tenure ended yesterday; last night, Jesse Oxfeld compiled a great, 2,000 word piece of quotes and anecdotes on Kaplan, which Daily Intel ran. It is, as one commenter noted, perfect. My three favorite quotes, after the jump:

It's as impossible to imagine the New York Observer without Peter Kaplan as it is to imagine him without a paper to edit. As he told Gawker, "I love my paper and my staff desperately."