By: iPadfanzz staff on March 29, 2013
Amazon, the online retail behemoth, which has also ventured into into publishing, has just bought Goodreads, the social book-recommendation site for an undisclosed sum.
"Amazon and Goodreads share a passion for reinventing reading," Russ Grandinetti, Amazon vice president for Kindle Content, said in a statement on Thursday. "Goodreads has helped change how we discover and discuss books and, with Kindle, Amazon has helped expand reading around the world."
Given that lots of physical stores are closing or are in the process to shut down, Internet sites holds even greater importance to tell readers what they should read.
Until the purchase, Goodreads was a rival to Amazon as a place for discovering books. Goodreads is well known for being a reliable independent source of recommendations. Co-founded by Otis Chandler, whose family once published the Los Angeles Times, Goodreads has more than 16 million members, who have generated more than 23 million reviews.
Already Amazon owns part or all of Goodreads’ competitors, Shelfari and LibraryThing.
According to Chandler, Goodread’s management team would remain in place to guard the reviewing process that had made the site attractive to its 16 million members.
Commenting on the deal, Amazon's VP of Kindle Content, Russ Grandinetti, said the two companies will work together "to build many new ways to delight readers and authors alike." The acquisition should provide some useful reading data to Amazon and help the ecommerce giant create more of a social reading experience around its Kindle offerings, perhaps giving it a leg up on competition from Apple and Google.
The acquisition is expected to close in the second quarter of this year.
