Amazon Gobbles Up GoodReads!

In a move that is sure to further consolidate Amazon’s dominance of the on-line book retails, Amazon acquired GoodReads, a website well known by book lovers and writers alike and the leading social media site for book aficionados.

GoodReads had already expanded to selling digital books from its site, thus threatening Amazon’s market share of the digital book market.  As the price of the acquisition, which is expected to become final in the second quarter, was not disclosed, we are left to wonder how much Amazon is ready to pay to consolidate its dominance.

Founded in 2007, Goodreads allows users to track books they want to read, read user reviews and start book clubs.

The site now has more than 16 million members and hosts more than 30,000 book clubs.  Members add “want to read” recommendations to their virtual bookshelves at the rate of more than four books per second.

Goodreads fits with Amazon’s evolving digital strategy by complementing its “x-ray” technology, which pulls up additional information for users of its Kindle reading platform and Prime video streaming service. For example, a prime viewer can see an actor’s complete IMDB listings or a Wikipedia page on a place mentioned in a novel.

In addition, it strengthens its dominant Kindle ebook business. One of the biggest concerns for publishers in the transition from print to digital is the discoverability of new books, a role formerly filled by the “hand sell” of bookstore owners recommendations. Goodreads has emerged as an important platform for digital discoverability.

“Goodreads has helped change how we discover and discuss books and, with Kindle, Amazon has helped expand reading around the world. In addition, both Amazon and Goodreads have helped thousands of authors reach a wider audience and make a better living at their craft. Together we intend to build many new ways to delight readers and authors alike,”  said Russ Grandinetti, Amazon Vice President, Kindle Content.

Otis Chandler, a software engineer who founded the company in his living room after stints at Monster.com and Tickle.com, added, “I’m incredibly excited about the opportunity to partner with Amazon and Kindle. We’re now going to be able to move faster in bringing the Goodreads experience to millions of readers around the world.

Here is the letter GoodReads sent to its “Librarians”

Today is a very big day for all of us at Goodreads. As you may have seen on our blog, we are joining the Amazon family.

We greatly appreciate all you do as a Goodreads Librarian so we wanted to reach out to you individually since you play an important role in our community.

You’ll be glad to know that this announcement is great news for our catalog. Amazon metadata will be returning to the site, and we will have an even more comprehensive record of self-published books, as well as more complete records of international books. We will continue to link to a variety of sites on our book pages, of course, including OCLC WorldCat for library data. All of your reviews and ratings will remain on Goodreads.

By joining the Amazon family, the Goodreads team will be able to invest more in the things that our members care about. We’ll also be working together on inventing new services for readers and authors. As part of this, we’ll be increasing the size of our team over time, and will be able to add lots of great new features that members and librarians will be excited about!

I can’t make this clear enough – we plan to continue growing Goodreads and investing in making it a great community for librarians, and everyone else.

We said in our blog post that our team gets out of bed every day motivated by the belief that the right book in the right hands can change the world. Now Goodreads can help make that happen in an even bigger and more meaningful way as part of the Amazon family.

Here’s to the next chapter!

Otis, Elizabeth, and the Goodreads Team

Let’s hope their hope will materialize and will not be hampered by Amazon’s other agendas.