“Amazon.com Inc. (AMZN) is gaining too much control in the publishing industry with its purchase of Goodreads Inc., a social network for readers and a competitor in online book reviews, an authors’ group says,” Dan Hart and Danielle Kucera report for Businessweek.
“Goodreads, which allows users to add titles to virtual bookshelves and track what friends are reading, has 16 million members who have written more than 23 million reviews, Amazon said in a March 28 statement. The company said the deal will probably close in the second quarter and didn’t provide terms,” Hart and Kucera report. “The site had potential to become an Internet bookseller to compete with Amazon, the largest online retailer, Scott Turow, president of the Authors Guild, said in an online post March 29.”
Hart and Kucera report, “‘Recommendations from like-minded readers appear to be the Holy Grail of online book marketing,’ said Turow, whose legal thrillers include The Burden of Proof and Presumed Innocent. ‘By combining Goodreads’ recommendation database with Amazon’s own vast databases of readers’ purchase histories, Amazon’s control of online bookselling approaches the insurmountable.'”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Bookr” for the heads up.]
Meanwhile our wonderful DOJ accuses Apple of monopolistic book selling practices.
That’s because Apple didn’t buy the right politicians.
No thats because the DOJ are absolute Morons.
Careful there there. The DOJ is under the direct control of the White House. Calling their actions moronic is a risky thing in this forum as (dare I say rabid) supporters of the current white house administration might descend on you like a horde of locusts.
Support your local businesses. They are your community. Go out of your way. Pay a little more. Don’t shop at the big box stores. Buy a book from a bookstore. Believe it or not they still exist. It’s the big outfits that put the little guy out of business. Just look at cell phones. Do we really want two cell phone companies? I don’t think so. I don’t really want to see BlackBerry go out of business. I don’t want one but a lot of people still do. Competition makes for a better product. Have you bought airline tickets lately? Can’t get the good deals that you could two or three years ago. And it’s getting worse with the recent mergers. I don’t want to see Apple, Amazon or anyone else all powerful. That’s just not a good thing. And whatever you do, don’t shop at Walmart. They have destroyed more businesses than the Great Depression of the 1930s. Walmart is evil. They make Google look like Mother Teresa.
Oh, I think you forgot to include not giving government too much control and having greater diversity in elective officials. We need fewer career politicians and more term limits so said corporations and interest have to work much harder as their money is termed on the politicians departure.
How about a visit to:
http://thegoodparty.org
Oh, I don’t think I forgot anything. What you mention goes without saying. That’s simply understood.
I assume with term limits you will also make it a crime for a politician to take a “revolving door” job with a corporation he/she was previously regulating? If not, then term limits make the politicians even more completely owned by corporations.
A very timely and considered reply. If competition is the question, consumers are the answer. Consumer awareness drives all commerce, and advertising drives lazy consumers. Think before you click, indeed.
But Amaon doesn’t make any money to speak of so since they don’t have an evil profit hoard, no one will go after them. The land of capitalism is happy with Amazon’s “social model” of low prices, high investment no profit, whilst Apple is Satan because it won’t just give away to a bunch of faceless, useless financiers all their money.
Goodreads will probably be killed off as soon as Amazon finalise the deal, just like they did with Stanza.
Yes, it is sad. Capitalism providth and capitalism taketh away.
Scott Turow and the Author’s Guild are looking out for their own self-interest, and the extent that it overlaps with yours is pure co-incidence. They want you to pay more for books. To pretend otherwise is silly.
Is everyone who dares to offer an alternative to Apple the Great Satan? In case you haven’t noticed, Apple seems to be floundering lately, and that invites more competition. Oh poor Apple and their $150 B-B-B-BILLION IN CASH. Could they maybe have outbid Amazon? Bought Amazon?