viaNow that Amazon has swallowed up Goodreads it's safe to say most roads from the book social network universe now end in Seattle. With the exception of LibraryThing the rest are now wholly owned subsidiaries of the e-commerce giant.The only road left not ending in the Emerald City goes through Portland, Maine. Though Amazon, through their acquisition of ABE books in 2008, owns a minority interest, there is still plenty of independent light emanating from Tim Spalding and the LibraryThing crew.It was late in 2007 when I first started covering the then emerging book social network field. Being a bookseller, living in...
Amazon Tightening Its Grip on the Book World
Last month, in his post "The End of Indie," Richard Nash proclaimed: "Indie doesn’t mean anything anymore. It’s dead. Which is OK, because it won...So now the phase of indie is over, now that the monopoly on the production and distribution of knowledge, culture and opinion has been broken, what next, a new phase..."A week later Amazon released their updated terms of service which essentially, forces the hand of the many websites and companies that use their API to provide data to their users. The gist of the new terms is that if you use Amazon's data, then you must...
Author 2.0
It seems like the days of an author simply writing their way to bookshelves across America are coming to end.In his essay in the New York Times, See the Web Site, Buy the Book, J. Courtney Sullivan tracks the evolution of author Web sites and the "sizable industry" that has sprung up to meet the demand.HarperStudio, the new tech-savvy publisher who "believe traditional publishing models are broken and are experimenting with new ones," recently held a Social Networking pow wow for their authors. Here is a pdf of the presentation.Here's a look at role of the author in pre-internet days...
Barnes and Noble Gets Social
Barnes & Noble has launched "My B&N". It is the latest feature in their every expanding arsenal of online offerings.With "My B&N" users can now "create their literary identity, connect and share insights with other readers, discover and rate new products, and keep up to date on events in their local Barnes & Noble store on BN.com" says Tom Burke, executive vice president of e-commerce for Barnes & Noble.com.This pure social networking play solidifies the rise and importance of book social networking in the book world and will likely have an impact on the other players in the space.Publisher's Weekly...
Shelfari Added to the Amazon Mix
Less than a month after acquiring AbeBooks, Amazon has acquired the book social networking site Shelfari.Josh Hug, founder of Shelfari, posted the news last night on Shelfari's blog and the story was quickly picked up by John Cook at the Seattle PI. Amazon has yet to issue a press release on the matter.Amazon invested $1 million in Shelfari back in February of 2007 earning them a seat on the board and a front row seat for Shelfari's now infamous and dubious astroturfing campaign.Of course, the terms of the deal were not disclosed but "sources told the Seattle P-I the financial...