or Godzilla buys Frankenstein. Throngs still waiting for Superman.It will be a long time before the dust settles on this seismic event but here are some initial thoughts on the acquisition.First - How much did it cost?The folks over at TechVibes venture a guess that Amazon paid between $90-$120 million. Since Boris Wertz, former COO of AbeBooks, is on the Board of Directors of both TechVibes and AbeBooks, I'm going to believe the number is somewhere in that ballpark.Winners:AbebooksHits a home run. They have been steadily building their offerings through there own acquisitions preparing themselves for a potential buyout. Many...
Shelfari Changing Course
The Amazon influence on Shelfari is beginning to show. In their first major move since hiring publishing heavyweight David Nudo, former publisher of Publisher's Weekly, to be their Director of Sales and Marketing Shelfari has announced the creation of wiki-style author pages.Shelfari hopes that this new feature will help them "become a destination for not only biographical information but interactions between authors and their fans"Authors will now be able to create their own pages which "will feature an open wiki in addition to a message board and a list of written books."Jason Kincaid has a post on the new initiative...
The Book Social Networking Race : Shelfari, Goodreads and LibraryThing Accelerate
As expected, the first quarter of '08 has seen a whirlwind of activity from the Big 3 of the Book Social Network world. All have added new employees and all have added a host of new functionality to their websites. Here is a recap of some of the goings on:LibraryThing:-started the year off with the unveiling of Thomas Jefferson's library. They have since added nine others, ranging from Marie Antoinette to Tupac Shakur, and have a dozen or so heavyweights in the process of being added.-launched a neighborhood bookstore program which integrates the inventory of participating local bookstores with the...
The Library of Congress Hits the Jackpot on Flickr
No one saw this coming.The plan was simple enough. The Library of Congress teamed with Flickr for a pilot project called The Commons, which basically consisted of LOC opening a Flickr account and uploading a little over 3,000 images (the LOC houses 14 million prints, photographs and other visual materials!)The goal was to address two of the major challenges the library faces:1. "how to ensure better and better access to our collections, and2. "how to ensure that we have the best possible information about those collections for the benefit of researchers and posterity."The result was astonishing and could arguably be...
The Presidential Book Debate
As the presidential debate process marches on and the issues seem to get less and less attention lets attempt to get some book energy in the mix.I propose the great Presidential Book Debate of 2008.All the candidates are positioned in front of shelves filled with books from their library. The moderators can be drawn from the deep pool of writers, reviewers, bloggers and librarians whose world revolves around the printed (or digital) word.Potential questions:What is your favorite book? (Republicans must give a back up when choosing the Bible)What has the been the most influential book on politics that you have...