Amazon is Buying Goodreads, "Kindle" Mentioned Almost Same Number of Times as "Books" in the Official Press Release

Goodreads CEO / co-founder Otis Chandler.   

Amazon announced that it plans to buy the San Francisco based Goodreads, the vertical social network for book lovers for an undisclosed price. Goodreads is a social network where members share reviews, ratings and reading list with their friends and participate in book and author related discussions. Goodreads also has a recommendation tool based on what the member has read in the past. 

Seattle based Amazon.com started as an online book seller in 1995. While it has has successfully diversified from selling books   into selling a diverse set of products ranging from DVDs, CDs, electronics, toys/ games  to apparel and accessories,  sporting goods  and even esoteric categories such as industrial and scientific supplies, people still strongly associate the brand with books.  The  brand affiliation of the Amazon brand with books was made stronger by cutting edge innovations such as "Search Inside the book" and the Kindle series of e-Book Reading devices. 

The Chief "Goodreader",  Otis Chandler posted an announcement in the goodreads feedback group starting with "Today is a very big day for all of us at Goodreads. As you may have seen on our blog, we are joining the Amazon family. Our blog post has the official press release and some more background on this, but I wanted to post here for two reasons" 

He then went on to say that Goodreads has always appreciate the feedback from its members  and assured the members that there were no plans to change the Goodreads experience and Goodreads will continue to be the wonderful community "we all cherish". He also referred to Amazon acquisition as "partnership" claiming that it will help Goodreads focus on making it in an even better place for readers. 

However, despite his assurances, the reaction from the members ranged from under-enthusiastic to negative.  The concerns raised by the goodread community members included questions about ownership of reviews - the member claimed that Reviews posted on Goodreads are owned by the members, whereas reviews posted at Amazon become Amazon's property. Also, there were concerns about Amazon reproducing the reviews on its website, the issues about the integrity of the book database, linking of Amazon accounts to goodread accounts, etc. A one sentence post by someone named "Nikki" summarizes  these concerns well "I have so many concerns about this I don't know where to start." 

The official press release from Amazon included a quote from  Russ Grandinetti, Vice President of Kindle Content  at Amazon that mentioned how Amazon and Goodreads have a shared passion for "reinventing reading”, elaborating that while Goodreads has helped in the way book lovers discuss discover and discuss books, Amazon Kindle has expanded reading around the world. He also mentioned how both platforms have helped independent authors reach readers and make a better living.  

Interestingly, the official press release from Amazon mentioned the word "Kindle" 10 times, almost the same number of times it mentioned the word "books" (mentioned 13 times).