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Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

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Re: Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

#31

Post by chrisseaton »

Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #13
Hokusai wrote: post #6

> Instead, it has stagnated: Amazon holds on to an effective monopoly on the discussion of new books This is the main point. It is the same thing that Oracle purchasing MySQL. What once was a promising raising technology is nowadays stagnant. (Interest over time https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=all&geo=US&q=%... ) GoodReads could help to find better books to read. But, Amazon likes the current state wher…

Amazon was pretty much forced to buy Goodreads: the original business model of Goodreads before the Amazon buyout was making money from referral links to booksellers. While links were provided to several internet booksellers besides Amazon, like Barnes & Noble, already the vast majority of internet users were hooked on Amazon and only buying through Amazon links. Consequently, Amazon was paying Goodreads a huge amoun…

> the vast majority of internet users were hooked on Amazon and only buying through Amazon links. Consequently, Amazon was paying Goodreads a huge amount of money in referral fees

This doesn't make any sense.

If consumers were already only buying through Amazon... why would Amazon continue to pay referral fees? The referral fee is there to get people who wouldn't buy through Amazon to buy through Amazon. But they were already buying through Amazon... so what's the point?

Re: Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

#32

Post by gravitas »

gravitas wrote: post #29

This reads and feels like a 33 paragraph thinly veiled marketing advertisement for StoryGraph, using the David vs. Goliath story model.

It's bugging me enough to reply to myself - the author is also throwing shade at LibraryThing passive-agressively by using the association fallacy. AbeBooks owned 40% of LT and Amazon acquired AbeBooks - but that's all the author had to say, no critical comparison of LT on it's merits as a book website. I find this to be disingenuous.

Re: Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

#33

Post by asicsp »

prepend wrote: post #7

I have used goodreads since soon after launch. It’s probably the worst site that I use, but I prefer it’s benign neglect over the “improvements” made on the main amazon site. I just use it as a list of books of I’ve read and am reading, and to see books that my friends are reading or have read. It’s been funny to me that the search is horrible and seems to be something worse than just regexing a list of book titles.…

I mostly use reddit [0][1][2] to build my TBR list. I follow only a few on goodreads, but my twitter timeline (which is mostly catered around book reading) comes up with nice recommendations.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/Fantasy/

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/booksuggestions/

[2] https://www.reddit.com/r/suggestmeabook/

Re: Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

#34

Post by LockAndLol »

thewhitetulip wrote: post #23
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon was pretty much forced to buy Goodreads: the original business model of Goodreads before the Amazon buyout was making money from referral links to booksellers. While links were provided to several internet booksellers besides Amazon, like Barnes & Noble, already the vast majority of internet users were hooked on Amazon and only buying through Amazon links. Consequently, Amazon was paying Goodreads a huge amoun…

It's alright if they bought it, and it is a very bad social media. You'd think that they'd improve the app right? Facebook/Instagram should just add a books section to their main page as a challenger to goodreads, maybe that'll help?

That's one of the best jokes I've read all day. Instagram and book reading. That cracked me up.

Thank you

Re: Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

#36

Post by dageshi »

chrisseaton wrote: post #31
Mediterraneo10 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon was pretty much forced to buy Goodreads: the original business model of Goodreads before the Amazon buyout was making money from referral links to booksellers. While links were provided to several internet booksellers besides Amazon, like Barnes & Noble, already the vast majority of internet users were hooked on Amazon and only buying through Amazon links. Consequently, Amazon was paying Goodreads a huge amoun…

> the vast majority of internet users were hooked on Amazon and only buying through Amazon links. Consequently, Amazon was paying Goodreads a huge amount of money in referral fees This doesn't make any sense. If consumers were already only buying through Amazon... why would Amazon continue to pay referral fees? The referral fee is there to get people who wouldn't buy through Amazon to buy through Amazon. But they wer…

They're saying that goodreads became an alternate front end to amazon for finding books but users used amazon (via affiliate links) to actually buy the book.

Goodreads was better at helping users find new books they wanted than amazon themselves and so it made sense for amazon to buy them.

Re: Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

#37

Post by chrisseaton »

dageshi wrote: post #36
chrisseaton wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the vast majority of internet users were hooked on Amazon and only buying through Amazon links. Consequently, Amazon was paying Goodreads a huge amount of money in referral fees This doesn't make any sense. If consumers were already only buying through Amazon... why would Amazon continue to pay referral fees? The referral fee is there to get people who wouldn't buy through Amazon to buy through Amazon. But they wer…

They're saying that goodreads became an alternate front end to amazon for finding books but users used amazon (via affiliate links) to actually buy the book. Goodreads was better at helping users find new books they wanted than amazon themselves and so it made sense for amazon to buy them.

> Goodreads was better at helping users find new books they wanted than amazon themselves and so it made sense for amazon to buy them.

I still don’t get it - people were already finding books on Goodreads and buying them on Amazon... so why did Amazon need to buy them? Why pay for it if it’s already working for you? And why pay a referral fee if people already want to ignore other options and go to Amazon to buy after finding on Goodreads?

Re: Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

#38

Post by Abhinav2000 »

chrisseaton wrote: post #37
dageshi wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're saying that goodreads became an alternate front end to amazon for finding books but users used amazon (via affiliate links) to actually buy the book. Goodreads was better at helping users find new books they wanted than amazon themselves and so it made sense for amazon to buy them.

> Goodreads was better at helping users find new books they wanted than amazon themselves and so it made sense for amazon to buy them. I still don’t get it - people were already finding books on Goodreads and buying them on Amazon... so why did Amazon need to buy them? Why pay for it if it’s already working for you? And why pay a referral fee if people already want to ignore other options and go to Amazon to buy afte…

Because they had to pay goodreads a commission each time (say 5% —> i’m completely making this number up and its probably a lot lower).

So if 70% of goodreads profit is from Amazon, amazon figured they could just buy them since the cost of running goodreads is a lot lower than the commissions it makes so amazon was basically paying them anyway. better (in their view at the time) to just pay goodreads one off and buy the company than to pay each year in perpuity. depends on the price they bought it at

Re: Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

#39

Post by [deleted] »

DarkCrusader2 wrote: post #28
freddie_mercury wrote: post #15

The author complains that it is "impossible" to find books on Goodreads. Simply adding the author's name to any query will always take you to the book you are looking for. Don't just rely on a title. Which should be common sense (if you were at a bookstore you would always tell the clerk the author's name and not just say "Do you have Holiday Heart?") but apparently isn't. The author complains that searching for 'hol…

I love Letterboxd's approach to movie recommendation wherein they don't provide any. Users can create arbitrary lists for all kinds of stuff based anything like genre, themes, feel, mood, cast/crew etc. There is probable a high quality list for anything you can think of. I have found some of my favorite movies on the site this way, no algorithms involved. I wish more site would do this instead of collecting every sin…

[deleted]

Re: Goodreads’ reign over the world of book talk might be coming to an end

#40

Post by henrikeh »

DarkCrusader2 wrote: post #28
freddie_mercury wrote: post #15

The author complains that it is "impossible" to find books on Goodreads. Simply adding the author's name to any query will always take you to the book you are looking for. Don't just rely on a title. Which should be common sense (if you were at a bookstore you would always tell the clerk the author's name and not just say "Do you have Holiday Heart?") but apparently isn't. The author complains that searching for 'hol…

I love Letterboxd's approach to movie recommendation wherein they don't provide any. Users can create arbitrary lists for all kinds of stuff based anything like genre, themes, feel, mood, cast/crew etc. There is probable a high quality list for anything you can think of. I have found some of my favorite movies on the site this way, no algorithms involved. I wish more site would do this instead of collecting every sin…

Goodreads does have that. It is called lists: https://www.goodreads.com/list?ref=nav_brws_lists
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