Amazon created a group of readers called Readers United in an effort to counteract the authors amassing against it.

The e-commerce giant created Readers United in response to Hachette's Authors United, a group founded by writer Douglas Preston to urge Amazon to stop preventing book sales.

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On Friday, Amazon released a letter calling out their customers to create Readers United and urge Hachette CEO Michael Pitsch to stop overpricing its e-books.

The Amazon announcement stated that e-books are the future, and had George Orwell been alive, he would have wanted e-books to be sold at an affordable price.

"The famous author George Orwell came out publicly and said about the new paperback format, if 'publishers had any sense, they would combine against them and suppress them.' Yes, George Orwell was suggesting collusion," Amazon wrote in the letter.

However, the statement drew critics who said that Amazon gravely misinterpreted Orwell.

Orwell wrote the line, but according to the New York Times, the novelist did so as praise for the Penguin paperback books.

In March 1936, Orwell wrote that Penguin books are worth more than what it costs. He said the books were so "splendid" that other publishers would have to band together to surpass it.

Orwell further stated that the cheaper the books are, the less money is spent on books and this, he said, is bad for the book business.

Amazon's counterattack against Hachette backfired because of the real context in which Orwell was describing cheap paperback books.

 Orwell was, in fact, against cheap books, according to the New York Times.

Hachette and Amazon's dispute is far from over as both parties are still coming up with ways to pressure the other into submitting to its demands, according to Gawker.

TagsAmazon, george orwell, Hachette