Amazon is putting the squeeze on publishers like Hachette Publishing, who won’t bend to their will, and customers are caught in the middle. If you want to buy books by Nichola Sparks, Malcolm Gladwell, James Patterson, J.K. Rowling, and any other author published by Hachette’s various labels, including Little, Brown and Company, Hyperion, and Grand Central Publishing, you may want to consider going to your neighborhood bookstore, and not Amazon.

This weekend Amazon sent an alert to all of their Kindle customers, informing them of a recent antitrust lawsuit settlement over ebook pricing (some people are calling this a ‘class action’ lawsuit, but it was actually an antitrust suit filed by the government). The settlement is expected to be approved sometime in February 2013, at which time those who have purchased Kindle books can expect to see an estimated credit of $0.30 to $1.32 per each eligible Kindle book that they purchased.