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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 851-900 of 2,216 (2216 new)
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Mar 28, 2013 08:50PM
Very sad and disappointed.
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Book wrote: "Dottie wrote: "Jason wrote: "For those of you distressed by this news, consider that Amazon also owns IMDB (Internet Movie Database), which has remained a separate, thriving brand and site. It see..."Yeah, this is the true gen, right here. Damn.
Interesting that this announcement should come out on Maundy Thursday, the Thursday before Good Friday, the day that commemorates Jesus' Last Supper in the Christian calendar. Eat up everyone, before goodreads.com gets crucified at the altar of amazon.com. Unlike Jesus on Easter Sunday however, I'm not so sure the resurrected goodreads will be anything to rejoice about.
Sorry for getting carried away with my religious holiday-thing. As a good Catholic family, I never got to do the whole Easter bunny thing when I was growing up. The Easter season was a litany of Hell, with the nadir being reached on Good Friday. No playing, no eating candy, no leaving the house, no watching TV, no reading, no doing anything fun, no anything, because this was the day Jesus "died for our sins". Just praying, all friggin' day.
Bad news. I'll be leaving Goodreads as a result.
Alex wrote: "Bad news. I'll be leaving Goodreads as a result."Why would you make that decision NOW, when we don't know much as yet?
I always enjoyed that Goodreads was a community independent of any one bookseller or publishing company. This move makes Goodreads feel like less of a community for readers and more like just another extension of Amazon (a company that I'm not a fan of and one that I wish I wasn't being forced to support by wanting to be a part of GR). Seriously considering moving to another social reading site. Wish you would have consulted your users before making this move. It's your site and ultimately your decision, but it's our community too.
Huge conflict on reviewing policies right away.
We need to crowdsource a new venue that's not actually owned by anyone because it's owned by everyone and is not able to be bought out by anyone.
Amy wrote: "What about us Nookies?"
Exactly!
Exactly!
Glad to see Kindle will get special privileges. How very nice for them.
Hopefully all the naysayers who say they're going to close their account do-itI think you may be happy then. I know some people will be happy with the change, some will deal with it, but many won’t. All in all I don’t see how GR can gain customers though. How many people want to use a site like GR but don’t yet, but would do so because of Amazon as opposed to how many are turned off by it?
Dijun wrote: "I am not sure I am happy with that announcement but we'll see.
(I find it sad that it's certainly be all about the kindle...It already is when you read this article. there is more than one brand f..."
I couldn't agree with you more. Amazon branding is all over this blog posting. Not too thrilled with this news....we'll see how it goes.
(I find it sad that it's certainly be all about the kindle...It already is when you read this article. there is more than one brand f..."
I couldn't agree with you more. Amazon branding is all over this blog posting. Not too thrilled with this news....we'll see how it goes.
Kathleen wrote: "Anne wrote: "I'm an amazon customer and certainly don't hate the company and I am happy that people who took the initiative to put goodreads together are being rewarded financially. That said, thi..."Stalked by Amazon. Yes, that is how I feel too. I loved the independent reviews. I loved the lack of flame wars on the reviews. I stopped reading reviews on Amazon because I found them increasingly unhelpful.
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..."Mustafa wrote: "I get it, you need money. But I hope Amazon does not hinder the ability to buy books from other sites and prevent competition."
This pretty much sums up how I feel. Hoping a good thing is not going to be lost in this deal - I will wait and see, but this news does not make me happy.
Diana wrote: "I hope we can still rate a book without a required comment I really just like give the stars and done. Amazon does not allow that and it sucks."I have the opposite issue. I've always loathed the fact that Amazon won't let you review a book without giving it a star rating. I loathe star ratings.
This may or may not be a stupid question, but how much control will we have over what content from our Kindle shows up here? I don't feel the need to rate or share everything I read.
1. When i already own 1 edition of a book i don't want it to recommend a different edition. "If you liked the hobbit, try the hobbit". This is for both Amazon and Goodreads.2. When i buy a book from Amazon i should have an option to add it to my 'to-read' wall. A checkbox.
One of the main reasons I started coming to this site is because I can find what the authors write. Amazon's search feature whether by title or author sucks. I hope this new merger won't default to Amazon's practices.
Brixton wrote: "Hundreds and hundreds of librarian volunteers worked mightily around the clock for days and days to save Goodreads's ass last year when Goodreads supposedly opted to not submit to Amazon's desired monopolisation of absolutely everything book-related on and off the internet. I was proud of Goodreads the day they supposedly told amazon to take their exclusivity contract and shove it. Today I feel betrayed and used."THIS. I lost data, a lot of it, and I did a lot of work to help other people recover data, and now THIS? And a lot of Amazon's data is crappy anyway -- the wrong editions, wrong authors, wrong everything. And I still have blank books and no idea what they were, or who wrote them. I do feel really used. You at least owe people who worked for FREE to help your website an apology for going "Oh well, they bought us now and we have lots of great features and it'll be even better cataloguing!"
And that smug mug photo of the GR sticker on the Kindles was really a mistake, if you haven't figured that out already.
Dan wrote: "As far as bookselling goes, I seem to recall that Borders and Barnes and Noble were leading a consolidation of the industry that was closing mom & pop shops everywhere and driving the trade publishers to narrower and narrower lists, before Amazon ever appeared."Yeah, basically Amazon did to the megastores what the megastores were doing to independent booksellers, but at least the megastores weren't a giant union-busting chain that horribly exploits workers, dodges paying taxes, invades privacy, censors reviews, &c &c. Not to mention the Amazon Prime and next-day deliveries contributing to global warming and the addiction to cheap oil, but that's whole different rant....
Tasia wrote: "I'm... concerned. That, and I think we deserve some answers to the repeated questions: are we just becoming free labor for amazon? We read, we rate, they get the data?"That's basic web 2.0 policy, yeah. Then they profit off our data, by using it to advertise their products to us.
I have mixed feeling. After all, GR is a free website...I just have two things to say.
I really hope that GR will sustain the integrity of GR members' review. While a person may not able to post a book review on Amazon without purchasing it the site, anyone can post a review on GR. I hope there aren't many people who try manipulating book ratings. Also, there would be upset enough to leave GR in future due to "some changes", and some of them could be popular reviewers. Without those great contributors, GR community would be much less attractive.
Another thing is about book data. I wonder if you are planning to reload (?) book information from Amazon. Some years ago, GR's book info was cut off from Amazon data, as many of us remember. There were (and are) some messes among book data. Could reloading book-info from Amazon mess GR's book data again? If there is a possibility, please let us know such date.
Moira wrote: "Brixton wrote: "Hundreds and hundreds of librarian volunteers worked mightily around the clock for days and days to save Goodreads's ass last year when Goodreads supposedly opted to not submit to A..."I don't know why anyone would be a volunteer librarian here now. Let Amazon spend some of their money and use their labor pool.
Comment from GoodReads FB Goodreads "For those asking about your Goodreads reviews: Your reviews and ratings will remain on Goodreads, and we expect no changes to our policies for writing reviews. If you have any specific questions, feel free to contact us at support@goodreads.com"
So very very sad to hear... They must have been made an offer they couldn't refuse...
Sad. Another great independent website bites the dust. Hope not much changes around here.
Brenda wrote: "Alex wrote: "Bad news. I'll be leaving Goodreads as a result."Why would you make that decision NOW, when we don't know much as yet?"
Same reason I'm already backing up my reviews and collections, presumably - lack of trust in Amazon. I don't trust them - as I've said earlier in this thread - further than I could throw my own wheelchair. I don't have a Kindle, I don't plan to buy one and if I was given one I wouldn't take it.
Also, we know quite a bit, if you bothered to look at any of the links posted within this thread. There are several more informative pieces of news in those - more than we were given here, so I can understand you might think it a bit premature if you had only seen this post.
First and second, you have http://www.businessinsider.com/amazon... and http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/28/amaz... - and the last and most concerning, an interview with Otis and Amazon's VP of Kindle content: http://paidcontent.org/2013/03/28/fir...
Read those. Then you can start saying we're worrying too soon. I don't agree, though. I've already been avoiding Amazon as best I can for years; I do not appreciate their market monopoly being extended by buying out yet another site I previously used and enjoyed - I used to be on Shelfari, before they trashed it, for one thing.
The people who are going on about decisions being made too early, and the idiot who says this site will be better off without the majority of people responding to this thread who are doing so negatively, well...good luck with Amazon. You're going to need it.
Oh, and as a note to That Guy? Brits make up a very big proportion of the users on this site, after Americans, and the second most prolific GR reviewer in Britain has already talked of leaving (ze also happens to be in the top 5 most prolific readers and the top 10 highest-voted reviewers of the site). And ze posted on the first page of this thread, after which there are TWENTY PAGES of people mostly saying they don't like this development.
So... if you think this move won't have any real impact on GR's userbase, or you think it will improve... think again. And maybe try doing a spelling check before you post, next time (yes, I did notice).
Winter wrote: "Comment from GoodReads FB Goodreads "For those asking about your Goodreads reviews: Your reviews and ratings will remain on Goodreads, and we expect no changes to our policies for writing reviews...."
Dear Goodreads: Hi. Not all of us have or want Facebook. A reply to our concerns ON YOUR OWN SITE might be nice.
does this mean Goodreads will finally use faster servers??
♥Robin ♥ wrote: "I'm curious to see what "GENIUS" member of GR is going to develop a site similar to this one. Hurry up, aren't you developing it yet. We need a place to go!!!!! I'm sure it will be developed pretty..."I'm checking out Riffle.
Well hoping for the best, but by the boatloads of negative comments, people are disappointed. Well i was truly saddened by this!
Sorry to hear this. I'd like to keep my freedom to choose where to buy books so bye-bye Goodreads. I still find it a conflict of interest when a site is a source for 'neutral' review suddenly goes to bed with a seller.
Rose wrote: "Moira wrote: "katie wrote: "are there any alternative sites like goodreads out there? but ones who haven't sold their souls to the devil / amazon?"There's LibraryThing, but the social network the..."
Well, as someone else said, it's a minority share, and the owner has done a lot to try to keep Amazon from driving it into the ground. I don't think there are any social network reading sites out there that are totally Amazon-free. But at least they aren't completely owned by Amazon.
D.G. wrote: "3. Amazon supports us continuing to grow our vision as an independent entity, under the Goodreads brand and with our unique culture. I really hopes this is true. I don't post reviews on Amazon fo..."
What is the reason if I may ask?
Phillip wrote: "Very disturbing news after all the trouble with Amazon last year."What trouble if I may ask?
Richard wrote: "Congrats. I know it's a big deal for you guys. And I'm sure it will be nice for some purposes...I just hope that none of my personal info or reading habits or reviews will be shared with Amazon u..."
Oh, no....I never thought to look under my bed!
Leonard wrote: "♥Robin ♥ wrote: "I'm curious to see what "GENIUS" member of GR is going to develop a site similar to this one. Hurry up, aren't you developing it yet. We need a place to go!!!!! I'm sure it will be..."Thanks Leonard!!! If anyone else finds or develops an awesome INDEPENDENT site please let US all know ☺☺☺
Yeah, the more I read here, the more I think about it, I'm going to be looking for an alternative to Goodreads. If I wanted Amazon to influence and monopolize my reading experience, I'd be over on their site. Not happy, not happy at all at this sellout.
I certainly hope reviews are not integrated and remain separate. I also agree Shelfari = shite
Susan wrote: "Well, this news should help librarything.com grow."That's just about the only good thing. Hope their servers are robust....
Michele wrote: "My greatest concern is that now Amazon will have even MORE access to my information. It is enough that they already know what I buy, but I cannot like giving them all my info--everything I've read..."I agree. It is creepy. The problem is that Amazon is a corporation who stays alive selling things. When we were just GoodReads we didn't have to worry about the impact of our entire reading past, present, and future. Now we are interacting with a corporation whose ultimate goal is profit. Bummer!!!
Is there a good and proper way of exporting one's reviews to one's computer. Is it just choose and paste?
It will be very much "wait and see" for me now. I agree with others who have said that being a part of Goodreads as an independent, crowd-sourced community versus being a part of Goodreads as a subsiduary of a large, profit-seeking book-selling company are two very different things. I fear for the security of our personal data and for our ability to impartially review books. I hope that Goodreads members are not going to come under pressure to purchase from Amazon. I VERY MUCH hope that Amazon does not now own all my reviews, as they do the reviews on their own site (if so, I will be leaving immediately.) And I am very sad at the loss to the world of one more truly independent, well-run and well-loved site. With Amazon's history of purchasing sites etc and neglecting them to the point that they fail, I have grave fears for the future of GR in general. Fingers crossed doesn't seem enough, really.
For those of us who'd rather keep our Amazon/Kindle lives separate from our Goodreads experience, can you promise that one day we we'll find ourselves obliged to login with our Amazon password?
Sue wrote: "We need to crowdsource a new venue that's not actually owned by anyone because it's owned by everyone and is not able to be bought out by anyone."This is a good idea except that managing anything takes lots more work than you'd think.
I prefer to see independent entities remain so and not get bought out by the big guys. It feels like someday everything will just be part of Giant Mega-Corp. It reminds me of putting together a home stereo system: I'd rather go piece out the best for each area than get the big ugly box that does everything (but not very well).Anyway I personally don't want any integration with the rest of Amazon. If I want to have my review posted in both places I'll take the extra two minutes to copy & paste it.
Maybe it would be best to just stop reviewing any of the books I read other than posting that I have read them. I don't DO Facebook or Twitter for a reason . . . it's nobody else's business WHAT I READ unless I CHOOSE to to share that info with people I CHOOSE!!!
