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Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

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Re: Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

#111

Post by dopa42365 »

80% of reviews being "got the ebook for free before release in exchange for a very honest review" or "here're my 10000 words thoughts on spoiler spoiler spoiler" and overuse of goddamn inline gifs everywhere made the review section unreadable. It's more like a social network with gamification of book reviews.

Looking at a random book: 4.36 stars, 74 ratings, 28 reviews. Release date: 18. July 2023 (in 15 days)

No comment on that required heh.

Goodreads is semi-useful to keep track of upcoming book releases, but don't bother reading the reviews, and the score is at best a vague indicator (and definitely misleading until months after the book is actually available).

Re: Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

#113

Post by ethbr0 »

fsckboy wrote: post #109
enriquec wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nothing about this would succeed. Do only monopolies perform mergers?

> Do only monopolies perform mergers? companies merge to concentrate market share, i.e. eliminate competition, i.e. increase prices, i.e. monopol ize . Let's not ban just monopol ies , let's also ban monopol ize .

Companies also acquire and merge to vertically integrate.

Re: Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

#114

Post by LVB »

fourmajor wrote: post #28
fastball wrote: post #12

Eh, Goodreads has always suffered from the same problem that plagues every other review system which uses "score out of X" ranking. Humans just aren't very good at ranking things on a normal distribution, so you invariably end up with every item (books in this case) being ranked somewhere in the 3.5-4.5 range (since Goodreads is out of 5). For IMDB the rankings all hover around 8ish. When in reality the average book…

I disagree that stars should be evenly distributed between 1 to 5 stars. I think it's quite possible that most books that people choose to read end up being a 3 (good with some flaws) or 4 (good but not all-time great). It's kind of like the same thing with pizza. I'd give most pizza a 3 or 4. Very few 1s and 5s to be sure. 1 doesn't have to mean bottom 20% of pizzas. It can mean "awful, couldn't finish," where very…

I had a debate on the Criticker site about this topic since they try hard to turn your raw ratings into a normalized span. The fact is that because of ratings sites, I'm very rarely watching 1-star movies. That's good! So the low end was dominated by a 2.5/3 type ratings, which per my scale meant "just OK," but they were mapping it to "bad," somehow inferring that my rating range is 3-5.

Re: Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

#115

Post by agloe_dreams »

AlbertCory wrote: post #29

> But Goodreads allows any user, not just those who’ve received advance copies, to leave ratings months before books are released. Authors who’ve become targets of review-bombing campaigns say there’s little moderation or recourse to report the harassment. Writers dealing with stalkers have pointed to the same problem. "Problem": chicken-and-egg problem. Until it's actually published, there's little or no way for a r…

The thing is that it is a pretty easy to solve problem. Print advance copies with a QR code that contains a link to the publisher's site with a GUID in the params. The publisher would have a page, authenticated with the GUID, with authenticated links to private review pages. This allows for knowing the person had the advance copy. Just that line will kill 95% of review bombing. You can also use the publisher side to collect analytics on books before retail.

Why am I telling you this? It's a not-half-bad B2B startup one could MVP over a week or so and your first publisher could get you in the door with the review sites who would love to have verified reviews.

Re: Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

#116

Post by londons_explore »

fsckboy wrote: post #85
teamspirit wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately that's exactly why so many startups get bought. Not to become part of the parent company's business, no, just not to become a competitor later. Would stronger (and enforced) anti trust laws be a solution? I believe businesses would just lie and say they are going to be part of the business but then just bury them anyway.

> I believe businesses would just lie and say they are going to be part of the business but then just bury them anyway. That's where my pet antitrust solution succeeds where others fail: ban all M&A. Companies only engage in mergers to consolidate market share, but their market share consolidation (i.e. monopolization) not only decreases competition, but also comes at the expense of employees and customers of the acq…

You could have other restrictions on mergers... For example, "All IP (trademarks, copyright, patents) from one of the two merged companies gets released to the public"

Or perhaps "Anyone with contractual obligations to one of the merged companies is released from those obligations".

Both of those would be half way to just dissolving one of the companies and re-hiring the staff by the other company to release a similar product.

Re: Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

#117

Post by [deleted] »

fastball wrote: post #12

Eh, Goodreads has always suffered from the same problem that plagues every other review system which uses "score out of X" ranking. Humans just aren't very good at ranking things on a normal distribution, so you invariably end up with every item (books in this case) being ranked somewhere in the 3.5-4.5 range (since Goodreads is out of 5). For IMDB the rankings all hover around 8ish. When in reality the average book…

[deleted]

Re: Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

#118

Post by somenits »

fsckboy wrote: post #85
teamspirit wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately that's exactly why so many startups get bought. Not to become part of the parent company's business, no, just not to become a competitor later. Would stronger (and enforced) anti trust laws be a solution? I believe businesses would just lie and say they are going to be part of the business but then just bury them anyway.

> I believe businesses would just lie and say they are going to be part of the business but then just bury them anyway. That's where my pet antitrust solution succeeds where others fail: ban all M&A. Companies only engage in mergers to consolidate market share, but their market share consolidation (i.e. monopolization) not only decreases competition, but also comes at the expense of employees and customers of the acq…

There is an optimal number of firms in competition with each other. It could be that for a particular industry, 10 firms means everyone is losing money and unable to make new investments, while 8 firms means that there's a healthy amount of profit that can sustain R&D and growth. Sure, eventually it might all work out as firms go bankrupt or go into a new business, but you can lose decades in waiting that out.

Also, this is easily circumvented by just buying the crucial assets of a competitor, like trade secrets, factories, offices, patents, etc.

Re: Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

#119

Post by [deleted] »

fastball wrote: post #12

Eh, Goodreads has always suffered from the same problem that plagues every other review system which uses "score out of X" ranking. Humans just aren't very good at ranking things on a normal distribution, so you invariably end up with every item (books in this case) being ranked somewhere in the 3.5-4.5 range (since Goodreads is out of 5). For IMDB the rankings all hover around 8ish. When in reality the average book…

[deleted]

Re: Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

#120

Post by biggoodwolf »

abc_lisper wrote: post #99
crazygringo wrote: post #6

Goodreads wasn't "the future of book reviews", it was a good review site that might have innovated great new things or might not have at all. But regardless, Amazon should never have been allowed to acquire it -- it was incredibly anti-competitive. Amazon never wanted to do anything with Goodreads at all -- as demonstrated by the fact that it hasn't done anything. It was a purely defensive move to prevent anyone else…

Can this not be reversed. Force amazon to spin it out?

And who would do that? Even if technically possible, there is no one willing to do it.
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