As of last week, one St. Paul author’s fortunes are definitely looking up: on the Monday, July 21 episode of Comedy Central’s “Colbert Report,” author-turned-phenom Edan Lepucki plugged Stephan Eirik Clark’s new book, “Sweetness #9”. It’s a nod that’s already given the Twin Cities novelist’s pre-sales a coveted “Colbert bump”.

Have you been following the stand-off between Hachette and Amazon? It’s the latest (but most notorious) of a growing number of such skirmishes in recent years, battles between publishing houses and the online retail giant over e-book pricing, royalties and retail profit shares – and authors are once again caught square in the middle of the fight.

Stephan Eirik Clark. Photo: Stephen Geffre, courtesy of Augsburg College

With the flow of his own Hachette-published titles to customers at risk, comedian Stephen Colbert sure took notice. Hachette’s first-time and midlist authors are even more imperiled by Amazon’s strategic inventory logjams and other delivery-stalling tactics that keep their books from readers. To thumb his nose at Amazon, in early June, Colbert invited another angry Hachette author, Sherman Alexie, on his show to recommend a title by just such an author, someone whose otherwise good book was at risk of being  lost to readers as a result of the corporate impasse. Alexie gave the nod to Edan Lepucki’s quiet, post-apocalyptic cautionary tale, “California.” Colbert directed viewers to Powell’s Books to purchase pre-orders of the title, and the Colbert Nation enthusiastically responded to his call to action, quickly driving her novel up the bestseller lists.

Last week, Colbert invited Lepucki on his show to make a recommendation of her own: she tipped viewers off to another Little, Brown author, Stephan Eirik Clark, whose first novel, “Sweetness #9” is due out in hardcover next month.

“Sweetness #9” (published by Hachette imprint, Little, Brown and Co.) is available for pre-order from independent booksellers everywhere, with a release date of August 19, 2014.

The novel tells the story of a flavor chemist who discovers some alarming side effects in the lab animals fed an artificial sweetener he’s working on – anxiety, obesity, malaise. Many years later, “Sweetness #9” has nonetheless become the most popular sweetener on the market – and the chemist, now with a family of his own, attempts to blow the whistle on what he’s sure are widespread effects of the chemical that he’s begun seeing in his loved ones and all those around him. In an interview with MinnPost in 2013, Clark describes the book as inspired, in part, by an increasing sense of culture-wide paranoia after the attacks of 9/11; he’s quoted as saying: “The book is about anxiety and what you do about your fears of the unknown. Are these symptoms because people are eating this sweetener, or are they just part of the American condition?”

Hats off to Clark: his soon-to-be-released novel, which had already been getting good critical notice, looks to be seeing the same strong uptick in pre-sales and attention that Lepucki’s book enjoyed. It’s a welcome silver lining to a nasty feud all of us, readers and writers alike, will be glad to see over and done with soon.

Stephan Eirik Clark will read from “Sweetness #9” in a few weeks, August 19 at 7 p.m. at Common Good Books, 38 S. Snelling Avenue, St. Paul. For more about the author, visit his website at www.stephanclark.com.