Cue the Ambivalence Machine. Goodreads has just “joined the Amazon family.”
While all indies should be happy and thankful that Amazon helped break traditional publishing’s stranglehold on the market, lack of competition–or in this case, a blow to independent reporting and reviewing–isn’t really good for anyone.
It will be interesting to see how other book distributors like Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and Apple react. Is this the warning bell Apple needs to get off their ass and actually make iBooks work? Will Kobo take the challenge and soak their parent company Rakuten for more bank to fight the good fight?
Or are we watching the end game?