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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

#141

Post by cratermoon »

batch12 wrote: post #35
garciansmith wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish news organizations would not give direct quotes when pure marketing nonsense was written. Just say something like "Amazon did not give us any substantive comment on the matter."

I suspect it's a case of one hand washing another. They publish the fluff so they can be on the list of publications that get early dibs on 'news' that will drive engagement.

Don't forget the Jeff Bezos owns the Washington Post. If they didn't give Amazon's side unquestioned, someone would be in trouble.

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

#142

Post by hcal »

unreal37 wrote: post #126
fsckboy wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Company A is 6 days away from going out of business. They will shut their doors. All employees will lose their jobs. All customers will lose access to whatever Company A does that they find helpful. But then Company B agrees to buy them for $1 so that they continue running. Pays the employees, and continues running the service for customers. Ban it?

I'm not advocating for banning M&As, but I think that could be addressed by only allowing acquisitions under specific bankruptcy conditions.

Again, though, I'm not advocating for that position. I'd hate to spend part of my life building a business and not be able to cash out when the time comes for me to retire.

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

#143

Post by kortilla »

unreal37 wrote: post #126
fsckboy wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Company A is 6 days away from going out of business. They will shut their doors. All employees will lose their jobs. All customers will lose access to whatever Company A does that they find helpful. But then Company B agrees to buy them for $1 so that they continue running. Pays the employees, and continues running the service for customers. Ban it?

They can still go bankrupt and company buys the assets without employees ever losing pay. Many bankruptcies work this way.

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

#144

Post by nologic01 »

ZacnyLos wrote: post #94

Now Bookwyrm is the future of book reviews. Because it's FOSS and federalised with ActivityPub protocol.

Came here to say the same.

Bookwyrm is a good example of how the fediverse architecture is more profound than social media (and definitely more profound than mastodon that is in the end of the day a twitter imitator).

People may tire of social media inanity, whether it is centralized or decentralized. But there will always be communities that want to exchange information, thoughts, feelings, whether that is about movies, books or any other creative artifact.

Its important that those conversations don't take place inside a giant automated vending machine.

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

#145

Post by RoyGBivCap »

garciansmith wrote: post #10
CaptainZapp wrote: post #7

> By joining Amazon, Goodreads has accelerated their mission to delight customers with the help of Amazon’s resources and technology. Seriously, reading the diarrhea vomited out by corporate PR shills nowadays seriously makes my teeth hurt. Do those people actually believe the bullshit they're spouting to the general public?

I wish news organizations would not give direct quotes when pure marketing nonsense was written. Just say something like "Amazon did not give us any substantive comment on the matter."

Devil's advocate: What if they gave a comment the publication didn't like (but readers would) and hid it?

Publishing what was said is more "just the facts, please" than editorializing the response, as shitty PR-speak as it is.

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

#146

Post by lkbm »

pessimizer wrote: post #107
JohnFen wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> partially about reviews from people who haven't read the book, but object to the subject matter or something else about the book Which is a fake review in my view. Or, at least, an irrelevant review. A review is supposed to be about the particulars of that book, not about whether or not the reader thinks the subject matter is objectionable. Presumably, people who dislike the subject matter won't be reading the book…

If it's a "fake" review for values of fake that don't include dishonesty, you can easily choose not to read it. This is not that. The big example cited is a bunch of people registering their objection to a light book being written about Soviet Ukraine while there's a war on. This is a real objection that a lot of (silly, annoying) people have. The reason the book was not published is because they thought that this ob…

> you can easily choose not to read it.

I cannot easily exclude it from the ratings. There's a pretty widespread understanding that star ratings are meant to aggregate the opinions of people who read the book.

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

#147

Post by cratermoon »

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…

> Humans

There's the problem there – assuming human input makes up an important part of the rankings.

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

#148

Post by sedatk »

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…

Yes, one person I knew rated my book 2/5 because, as he said, it was beginner/mid-level-oriented and he wasn't aware when he purchased it (clearly stated on the book's page, and pretty much everywhere). A star rating system gives more emphasis on an individual's own preference of what a good rating should be which works against the consumer.

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

#149

Post by jzonedotcom »

cratermoon wrote: post #125
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…

Amazon's inshittification of everything continues. They also own AbeBooks, have their own cargo airline, Twitch, Audible, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Kindle, Ring, Whole Foods, IMDb, Zappos, Egghead, the late lamented DPReview, and a few others. > incredibly anti-competitive. A description of Amazon in general.

In my opinion Amazon’s purchase and immediate dismantling of the vaunted Stanza was most egregious & anticompetitive. I loved that app. And then poof gone.

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

#150

Post by AlbertCory »

prox wrote: post #38
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…

There is also a problem with quotes; you have these nobody self-help book writers adding hundreds (?) of quotes that are very poor, and gamed with upvotes. So you some see some nobody authors quote next to Plato.

What does that last sentence mean?

Edit: the current comment is not what I was responding to. It's clearer now after editing.

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