Goodreads is set to be acquired by Amazon

By Darshik Jariwala - March, 29th 2013

In a yet another acquisition news, Amazon is all set to acquire Goodreads, a Social Network site for Book lovers. Amazon announced yesterday that it is buying Goodreads, the amount of which is yet to be disclosed but the deal is expected to close in the second quarter this year.

This may not be very good news for the publishers and authors who used to promote their books on Goodreads without being tied to any specific retailer. This buyout does come as a surprise considering that in January 2012, Goodreads had Amazon who used to source the book details like Author name, Title, Page count and Publication data for them. Goodreads collaborated with another company named Ingram. “Amazon’s API licensing agreement is too restrictive” was the reason cited by Goodreads while replacing them.

Goodreads CEO Otis Chandler wrote on the company’s official blog, “We have no plans to change the Goodreads experience and Goodreads will continue to be the wonderful community we all cherish. Partnering with Amazon will help us focus on making Goodreads an even better place for readers.”.

They even sent an email to Goodreads Librarians. The company tried to assure them saying, “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!”

The comments on the blog post related to the announcement are piling up. Users are understandably worried as to what happens to their reviews, as Amazon’s policy is quite opposite to Goodeads policy when it comes to users reviews.

Goodreads acted as a catalogue for books which currently has about 16 million members. The users create a catalogue of books in their profile, books which they have read or wish to read. It even allows them to rate the books. They can also review it, recommend it to their friends and share.  Goodreads was started in 2007 by Otis Chandler and Elizabeth Chandler.

Source – Goodreads

Photo Credit – Julien GONG Min/Flickr