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Amazon issued a statement late Tuesday defending its right to discourage customers from buying books from Hachette, one of the country’s biggest publishers.

The online retailer, perhaps unnerved by the way it is being denounced all over the Internet, said the dispute was blown out of proportion, misunderstood and likely to last quite a while.

“We are not optimistic that this will be resolved soon,” the statement said.

If people really want a new book by James Patterson or another Hachette author, Amazon suggested going to “one of our competitors:” Barnes & Noble, presumably, or an independent store.

A Hachette spokeswoman had no immediate comment.

Amazon has been telling customers it will take as long as a month to ship books published by Hachette. The retailer is trying to influence the publisher to give it better terms on e-books.

The statement is remarkable in several ways. Amazon almost always declines to explain itself, and this defense, published in one of its forums, goes on at length.

Also extraordinary is the way Amazon, which has built its reputation on getting a huge variety of material to customers extremely quickly, made a point of saying it was making an exception in Hachette’s case.

“If you do need one of the affected titles quickly, we regret the inconvenience,” the statement said.

Amazon said the dispute was all about the customers.

“When we negotiate with suppliers, we are doing so on behalf of customers,” it said. “Negotiating for acceptable terms is an essential business practice that is critical to keeping service and value high for customers in the medium and long term.”