Psst! Read Any Good Books On Amazon, Lately?

With Amazon’s purchase of GoodReads, the most visited social media site for books, the continuing battle for the soul of publishing tilts in favor of the retail giant. Now they will not only sell and publish books but also oversee the reviews of them. We now have the fox watching the hen house.

Amazon already owns part or all of the leading book sites, such as Shelfari and Library Thing.

GoodReads boasts of 16 million members and 30,000 book clubs. Will the site change to favor Amazon in some way?

Maybe GoodReads will only have options to purchase reviewed books on Amazon. Or maybe Amazon-published books will get special review consideration and advertising? Perhaps B & N or  publishers will get the shaft.

What if a book publisher owned Publishers Weekly or a sports team owned the local newspaper that reports on them? It seems like a conflict of interest, no?

The Department of Justice seems committed to supporting Amazon’s march to being a monopoly. All that’s missing is Jeff Bezos running for Congress.

Brian Feinblum’s views, opinions, and ideas expressed in this blog are his alone and not that of his employer, the nation’s largest book promoter. You can follow him on Twitter @theprexpert and email him at brianfeinblum@gmail.com. He feels more important when discussed in the third-person. This blog is copyrighted material by BookMarketingBuzzBlog ©2013