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Exciting News About Goodreads: We're Joining the Amazon Family!
When Elizabeth and I started Goodreads from my living room seven years ago, we set out to create a better way for people to find and share books they love. It's been a wild ride seeing how the company has grown and watching as more than 16 million readers from across the globe have joined Goodreads and connected over a passion for books.
Today I'm really happy to announce a new milestone for Goodreads: We are joining the Amazon family. We truly could not think of a more perfect partner for Goodreads as we both share a love of books and an appreciation for the authors who write them. We also both love to invent products and services that touch millions of people.
I'm excited about this for three reasons:
1. With the reach and resources of Amazon, Goodreads can introduce more readers to our vibrant community of book lovers and create an even better experience for our members.
2. Our members have been asking us to bring the Goodreads experience to an e-reader for a long time. Now we're looking forward to bringing Goodreads to the most popular e-reader in the world, Kindle, and further reinventing what reading can be.
3. Amazon supports us continuing to grow our vision as an independent entity, under the Goodreads brand and with our unique culture.
It's important to be clear that Goodreads and the awesome team behind it are not going away. Goodreads will continue to be the wonderful community that we all cherish. We plan to continue offering you everything that you love about the site—the ability to track what you read, discover great books, discuss and share them with fellow book lovers, and connect directly with your favorite authors—and your reviews and ratings will remain here on Goodreads. And it's incredibly important to us that we remain a home for all types of readers, no matter if you read on paper, audio, digitally, from scrolls, or even stone tablets.
For all of you Kindle readers, there's obviously an extra bonus in this announcement. You've asked us for a long time to be able to integrate your Kindle and Goodreads experiences. Making that option a reality is one of our top priorities.
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 thanks to joining the Amazon family. (And if you want to be part of this, please check out our Jobs page for open positions. We've got a lot of hires to make!)
This is an emotional day for me. Goodreads is more than a company to me – it's something that Elizabeth and I created because we wanted it to exist. Since then it has grown a lot and become a place we love working at, full of incredibly smart and passionate people who also believe in our mission. I feel a little like a college graduate – happy to come to this milestone, nostalgic for the past amazing seven years, and incredibly, incredibly, excited for the future.
Otis
P.S. For the more official version of the announcement, here's the press release that went out today.
P.P.S. Please let us know – what integration with Kindle would you love to see the most?
Today I'm really happy to announce a new milestone for Goodreads: We are joining the Amazon family. We truly could not think of a more perfect partner for Goodreads as we both share a love of books and an appreciation for the authors who write them. We also both love to invent products and services that touch millions of people.
I'm excited about this for three reasons:
1. With the reach and resources of Amazon, Goodreads can introduce more readers to our vibrant community of book lovers and create an even better experience for our members.
2. Our members have been asking us to bring the Goodreads experience to an e-reader for a long time. Now we're looking forward to bringing Goodreads to the most popular e-reader in the world, Kindle, and further reinventing what reading can be.
3. Amazon supports us continuing to grow our vision as an independent entity, under the Goodreads brand and with our unique culture.
It's important to be clear that Goodreads and the awesome team behind it are not going away. Goodreads will continue to be the wonderful community that we all cherish. We plan to continue offering you everything that you love about the site—the ability to track what you read, discover great books, discuss and share them with fellow book lovers, and connect directly with your favorite authors—and your reviews and ratings will remain here on Goodreads. And it's incredibly important to us that we remain a home for all types of readers, no matter if you read on paper, audio, digitally, from scrolls, or even stone tablets.
For all of you Kindle readers, there's obviously an extra bonus in this announcement. You've asked us for a long time to be able to integrate your Kindle and Goodreads experiences. Making that option a reality is one of our top priorities.
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 thanks to joining the Amazon family. (And if you want to be part of this, please check out our Jobs page for open positions. We've got a lot of hires to make!)
This is an emotional day for me. Goodreads is more than a company to me – it's something that Elizabeth and I created because we wanted it to exist. Since then it has grown a lot and become a place we love working at, full of incredibly smart and passionate people who also believe in our mission. I feel a little like a college graduate – happy to come to this milestone, nostalgic for the past amazing seven years, and incredibly, incredibly, excited for the future.
Otis
P.S. For the more official version of the announcement, here's the press release that went out today.
P.P.S. Please let us know – what integration with Kindle would you love to see the most?
Comments Showing 601-650 of 2,216 (2216 new)
Ondřej wrote: "Sync reading progress from Kindle to my goodreads account."Now THAT is a great idea, but I'm still very tentative about this whole thing.
P.P.S. Please let us know – what integration with Kindle would you love to see the most? I love my Kindle and it made me read books twice as much as before and right now, I'm purchasing all my books from their digital store. I'm excited for any kind of integration that this merger will produce. I'm sure that its gonna be more like interactive reading! Cool!
Not happy about this.I hope GR will stay separate I'll go elsewhere if data gets merged.
I don't understand what people are saying about 1-star reviews being deleted on amazon. I've never had that happen, and I have given 1-star reviews. That said, the things I would like are:
1) I would like books I buy to be added to a "to be read" category, and to be able to categorize those into categories.
2) I would like to be able to update the book to "reading" or "read" from the device.
3) I would like to be able to review a book in one location and have it apply to both sites.
I'm very sad to hear that you've sold out to Amazon! I liked Goodreads because it was independent and not affiliated with any bookseller or publisher. I sure hope that Amazon doesn't ruin things here!
This really upsets me. I am not happy with the idea of Amazon buying Goodreads for a lot of reasons, which MANY people have already mentioned in the many comments here. One of the things I liked best about Goodreads was that it was independent of merchants, booksellers and eReader brands.While the Kindles themselves are great products, the nature of mobi/azw and Amazon's restrictions over them remind me of a police state and I don't like it one bit. They are far too restrictive and delete people's reviews of books. Just the fact that Amazon sells a proprietary format of eBook rather than using ePub like the rest of the eReading world shows that they are out to micromanage and have absolute control for the purpose of making money, money, money. Not because they actually care about reading.
I'm afraid these principles are going to bleed into Goodreads and tarnish what is a wonderful website and community. Just look at what happened to Shelfari - it was a great site for it's time, then Amazon bought it and it has been severely neglected and is crap now. Also - now that Amazon will own two similar websites, are they going to get rid of one for the other?
And most importantly - what about the rest of us that don't use Kindles? This what bothers me the most. I'm happy for Kindle users, but let's face it - development is going to be focused only on them now and they will get pampered while the rest of us who have chosen to break free of the shackles that come with using Kindles fall by the wayside. Hey, maybe Nook and Kobo users would like Goodreads integration also - as an independent site, this could have happened, but not now that Amazon will own and control everything. They will probably shut down any attempt to do so in order to "encourage" people to buy Kindles and Kindle books instead of other readers or ebook formats.
I just don't like this at all. :(
Lily wrote: "This really upsets me. I am not happy with the idea of Amazon buying Goodreads for a lot of reasons, which MANY people have already mentioned in the many comments here. One of the things I liked be..."Eloquently put! Thank you!
I hope the reviews will remain unbiased and not just to boost Amazon's sales!
What a shame. I have no desire to hand Amazon years of my data; they're monopolistic bullies to manufacturers worldwide. Will be canceling account tonight.
Really bad news.And after all the drama last year with recovering/saving book data...
I liked Goodreads and felt it was an independent site. I don't feel that way anymore.
You might be losing me too. I am a Nook user specifically because I think there should be competition out there. And I loved GR because they were independent. To anyone reading this who is smart enough to do it, please come up with a new nonaffiliated alternative to the now corporate owned GR. I am sure it is only a matter of time before Nook options are eliminated from the site and bad reviews start to disappear. Shame on you GR.
Amy wrote: "What about us Nookies?"You'll have to buy the Kindle book, crack it, and convert it to ePub. It'll be fun! :-(
I, too, am distressed by this news. But whatever. I can always start my own blog and take my reviews and information to a standalone service that won't sell me as a product.
Laura wrote: "What terrible news. Loss of an independent reader community, now another channel for the faceless machine to leech reader data to withhold from suffering publishers & booksellers. If through this a..."Couldn't agree more. What sad news this is.
Wendi wrote: "Too bad. Another good independent thing bites the dust. Happy for you and the money you'll make off the cool thing you started; sad for me, and sad for the internet, which will soon be owned by Ama..."Thankfully, LibraryThing's still around :)
Exciting News About Goodreads: We're Joining the Amazon Family!When I told my husband about this he said: The Amazon Family! Doesn't that sound nice! But Don Corleone had a Family.
Sorry but I had to share. It made me laugh.
Shame. After several experiences where small, vibrant companies have been bought up by larger predators and then discontinued (I'm looking at you, Google) I must say that this doesn't seem like good news to me.
Perhaps it is time to take off my author hat and put on my MBA hat. So, musical chapeau...There is an opportunity here based on the size of the databases. Amazon knows who buys books in which genres. They know who writes in which genres and they know who has no reviews, real, paid, free or bogus. My thought is that they could offer a reader a free work in one of their favorite genres by an author who has no reviews in return for writing a review. Authors would offer their books into the program for review. Amazon would know who they sent the book to for review and would be able to track who responded and who did not. By limiting the offer to authors with no reviews, they start a new author off with a real review by a real reader and reduce the temptation to buy one from a bogus site.
BOOOOOOOOOO!!! The reason I liked GoodReads is that you were independent of any one bookseller or publisher. So much for that! Money talks.
Clint Eastwood said it best in 'Pale Rider.' "Man cannot serve both God and Mammon ... Mammon being money."
Dudes ... you sold your readers out. You sold your authors out. You sold your independent booksellers and small publishing companies out. And you sold even the bigger publishing houses out.
How does that apple taste? I hope it tastes good because you forgot to wear your figleaf. I, and the large reader/writing community I belong to, will be looking to jump ship to the first place that doesn't mercilessly mine our data or mess with our ability to post reviews. Standard Oil aka Amazon is not my favorite person, nor do I like Goodreads becoming a platform for a DRM-locked Kindle.
This is terrible news. Goodbye honest independent book reviews and discussion. Is there any way we can do anything about this? Gather money on Kickstarter and buy it back or something? This is just terrible. My condolences. This is the death of Goodreads.
This did inspire me to delete all my old Amazon wish lists and browsing history though.
In a word, this sucks. The word "independently" was used and this move couldn't be further from that. As stated by NUMEROUS members already, there is more than ONE ereader out there, and like many diehards out there, we buy both print and ebooks. (Yes, I'm aware some that own ereaders just buy ebooks only). I've been a proud member of GoodReads for several years. If this place turns into a shill for Amazon and promoting mainly Amazon titles ONLY, I will not be a member any longer. Sad to say this, but I'm not a fan of Amazon, nor will I be forced to become one.
Amazon isn't a family and a corporation isn't a person. A more accurate description would be "octopus" ... and a destroyer of bookstores.
FWIW, reviews didn't change, get deleted or otherwise corrupted on Shelfari, and those reviews actually show up on Amazon. Book details as well: they are unaltered and show as the users provide them. Zappos and others show Amazon is actually quite good at leaving successful acquisitions alone.However, one only need look at Shelfari to see that the site has slowly decayed, no new features in years, on-going bugs not getting fixed, and the community's complaints going seemingly unheard. I suspect the user base has dropped dramatically. For whatever reason, the Shelfari team doesn't care any more.
Hope that doesn't happen here.
I will no longer be posting new reviews here. There is no company on this earth I hate more than Amazon. I am disturbed by their apparent goals to dominate the entire book business and drive physical bookstores out of business. I chose to stop posting new reviews on Amazon for this reason. Please at least let us know if our reviews will in any way be imported to Amazon so we can then delete them if we choose. I refuse to have anything to do with Amazon as a person who hates e-books and loves real bookstores and books.
Will there be any changes to the site after joining Amazon?
Will the user information in Goodreads be shared with Amazon and used for commercial use?
omg please this can't destroy Goodreads. Amazon basically killed off Borders. I still have that hole in my heart. I hope this bad feeling I have goes away cuz i'm completely reluctant about Amazon and I hope it doesn't kill off Goodreads. THAT'D SUCK
I'm sorry, I'm happy for you and your success but I just can't be behind amazon monopolizing yet another piece of the internet I love to use.
Well, another one bites the dust....I kind of ended with you when you stopped the book trade...That was so cool and fun. Sorry to see you go...Not sure I will need you anymore.....
Eric wrote: "Will the user information in Goodreads be shared with Amazon and used for commercial use?"
Of course it will! Amazon will own the site and all the data will be theirs.
Of course it will! Amazon will own the site and all the data will be theirs.
Catherine wrote: "Feature Request: When I buy a book on Amazon I'd like it to automatically get added to my to read or reading shelf (unless I click a box to not post it, which I would do if it was something like a ..."I really like your idea!
I, too, am on the shelf about this. I would like to believe that my GR reviews will remain my own, that the fact that I own a Nook will not make my use of GR obsolute or difficult, and that the spirit of GR remains.
Sorry, but I'll be deleting my account. I've worked for too many independent bookstores to participate in a site that's gone the way of Amazon. What they really want to do is stamp out brick and mortar stores, places that I care about. Sad to hear about this.
omg please this can't destroy Goodreads. Amazon basically killed off Borders. I still have that hole in my heart. I hope this bad feeling I have goes away cuz i'm completely reluctant about Amazon and I hope it doesn't kill off Goodreads. THAT'D SUCK I agree. sadly I think I will have to close my account here.
I have more faith in the reviews in goodreads than I do in Amazon - I mean to say people giving 1 star to a book because the amazon shipped it late - I kid you not!Will see how it goes willing to give it a chance
Kimberly wrote: "Bye Bye Shelfari . . . Hello Goodreads!! I hope nothing changes with Goodreads. I hope Amazon merges my "To read" list with my Amazon Wishlist."I really want this feature too, except I would request that it be any list you select because I don't use my "to read" list as a wishlist, I have created a new list for that.
I don't think this is a such good idea. GR is fine just the way it is. No need to change it.
So what if they control Goodreads, why is it a problem?
Casey wrote: "I urge all who care about freedom in literature to abandon goodreads instantly. THIS IS A BETRAYAL!"What will they do, have you got proof to support what you're talking about?
Because I purposely stopped posting new reviews on Amazon (I still have a lot of old ones, like 10 years old, up there that one of these days will be deleted) because I despise Amazon, I despise their business model, I despise their attempts to destroy two of the things I love most in this world (physical bookstores and printed books) and I refuse to have one freaking second of my time, effort, and work used to help them further that goal. I will delete everything I have here before that happens.
Disabled readers are no less "true readers" than anyone else.