Amazon and Goodreads

[Derek]

Already reviewed :-)

[Whitney]

Ruby [Not a Fan of Censorship] wrote: "Oh, and since this IS a book thread. Here's a recommendation for everyone: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
It's free online, and I'm sure they'd ..."

Excellent.

[Derek]

And updated his author page...

[Ruby , Mistress of Chaos]

Derek (Guilty of thoughtcrime) wrote: "And updated his author page..."

Nice!

[Ruby , Mistress of Chaos]

Manny's review of The Art of War sums up my own feelings as well: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

I just don't understand what Amazon's aims are anymore. This debacle can't end well for them - by any monetary standard - but they do seem to have painted themselves into a corner. If I disappear tomorrow, remember I loved you all.

And do what the new moderator says!

[Riona]

This is getting more out of control every day.

[Riona]

Ruby [Has Been Censored][Isn't Happy] wrote: "Oh, and since this IS a book thread. Here's a recommendation for everyone: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
It's free online, and I'm sure they'd ..."

And this link no longer works and a search for the book returns no results....


Edited to add this (Thanks, google!)

[Whitney]

Has anyone suggested taking this battle over to the Amazon reviews? Or Amazon per se? You know, Jeff Bezos has an accessible email, it's jeff@amazon.com. Whenever he gets a complaint, he forwards it to the responsible parties.

[Ruby , Mistress of Chaos]

Whitney wrote: "Has anyone suggested taking this battle over to the Amazon reviews? Or Amazon per se? You know, Jeff Bezos has an accessible email, it's jeff@amazon.com. Whenever he gets a complaint, he forwards i..."

Not that I know of, but I've been offline for 24 hours. If you want to suggest it, most people seem to be checking in to the Feedback Group's Announcement thread pretty regularly. It's become quite the leviathan thread!

[Whitney]

I think it's pretty clear now that GR has become useless as a site for finding honest reviews, which is a shame. Seems to me the people who are going to be most affected are the new writers who are actually writers; i.e. care about their craft, about honest feedback, and about finding thoughtful readers.

It's still the best site for group discussions, as far as I know. I plan to stick around for that reason. Unless GR starts meddling in discussion threads as well, and banning all the interesting people.

[Ruby , Mistress of Chaos]

Yay! Laura Miller's Salon piece this week does a great job of addressing key concerns with GRAmazon's management of the whole situation: http://www.salon.com/2013/10/23/how_a...

Thanks to Ceridwen for being such an excellent advocate.

[Ruby , Mistress of Chaos]

GR retracted their deletion of my review: http://rubytombstone.tumblr.com/post/...

[Whitney]

A New Yorker piece on Amazon and its culture and how it relates to publishing. Not surprisingly, the article barely pays lip service to the idea that there are other possibilities for books outside of Amazon or the big publishing houses, but still a good read. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/20...

[Ruby , Mistress of Chaos]

Whitney wrote: "A New Yorker piece on Amazon and its culture and how it relates to publishing. Not surprisingly, the article barely pays lip service to the idea that there are other possibilities for books outside..."

Meep. I couldn't make it past page one. Too creepy.

[Whitney]

Ruby wrote: "Meep. I couldn't make it past page one. Too creepy.
..."

Yeah. This should rid anyone of any lasting delusions that Amazon's philosophy has or ever had anything to do with love of books or reading.

[Ruby , Mistress of Chaos]

Whitney wrote: "Ruby wrote: "Meep. I couldn't make it past page one. Too creepy.
..."

Yeah. This should rid anyone of any lasting delusions that Amazon's philosophy has or ever had anything to do with love of b..."

Now I can see why GR is forcing us to log-in continuously. Amazon doesn't want anyone ELSE getting their hands on our precious, precious data.

[Whitney]

Hey, check out that SWEET new feature on the homepage that lets us automatically sync our Amazon and Goodreads accounts!

[Derek]

and all the complaints that Amazon is linking accounts even without permission...

[Ruby , Mistress of Chaos]

I'm surprised it's only one way traffic still. I would've thought they'd have been far quicker to export the GR lists to Amazon so people can click "buy" and purchase their entire TBR.

[Whitney]

Here's an article from Bookriot on the new brick and morter Amazon store.
http://bookriot.com/2015/11/16/visit-...

It states that the books have tags with reviews from Goodread users. I find this more than a tad upsetting if true. I'm not here to provide free advertising for Amazon.

[Marc]

Whitney wrote: "I'm not here to provide free advertising for Amazon."

I was about to just be a smartass in my response, but I was intrigued about how they were pulling GR reviews--the article says they are, but this other one (http://thebillfold.com/2015/11/i-went-to-the-new-amazon-books-store/) actually shows them as "Amazon customer reviews". I read a couple more articles via Forbes and the Wall Street Journal and none of them specifically mentioned GR (which doesn't mean anything--I was just trying to find somewhere else in writing saying that GR reviews would be used in the Amazon bookstore).

My first reaction to hearing about the bookstore was that having mostly cleared out the biggest competition, Amazon should be able to establish a pretty solid physical presence (should they want to).

[Whitney]

I'd seen the other article with the Amazon review statement as well, so still wanting confirmation. I live not too far from there, but U. Village is a nightmare from now until after Christmas.

Elliot Bay, local awesome Seattle independent bookstore, offered a $75 gift certificate to the first person who showcased the Amazon store. Quickly claimed by a woman who took a selfie scouting out a book at Amazon and then ordering it from a small bookstore in another part of Seattle.

[Marc]

Good for Elliot Bay!
The amazon store sounds kind of odd (covers out, best of the best, etc.). Most of the fun in going into a bookstore is happening upon the unexpected, IMHO.

[Derek]

Marc wrote: "pretty solid physical presence"

I initially read that as "pretty sordid physical presence." Freudian slip. My bad.

As to " how they were pulling GR reviews", that's easy. GR gives anybody an API to do that. It can't pull entire reviews, though, and if Amazon is doing that, GR is violating its agreements with us (unless of course, they've secretly changed the Terms of Use, again).