Amazon continues its inexorable march to buy everything on the internet related to books. According to the Seattle Post Intelligencer, Amazon, an early investor in Shelfari, is now buying the book lover site outright. This might signal some kind of merging between Shelfari and LibraryThing.com as Amazon will soon own a stake in both. AbeBooks is a 40% shareholder in LibraryThing and Amazon is acquiring, or has acquired AbeBooks.
One of the benefits to Amazon owning these social networking sites for book lovers is that all of the buy links for books will go directly to Amazon, whether it be new or its used market.
Uh oh. For some reason this doesn’t sit well with me.
I am deeply unsurprised. It was partly owned by Amazon and had ‘Amazon’ written all over it from the outset.
God, they just have to get their grubby little hands on everything don’t they. It’s like they are the Walmart of the book world. Since they already were part of Shelfari, I hope nothing changes with the actual site.
Although, I am probably one of the few people when buying books online that have only bought from Barnes and Noble. When I am in the mood to actually shop in a book store, Borders is my preference.
If the thought of Amazon causes worry, Tower Books has excellent prices!
http://www.tower.com/surf/explore/division_1.cfm
I hope nothing changes!
I usually get my books on paperbackswap.com I have saved so much money, you only pay for postage. My username is Cindyw5, come check it out. Put 10 books on the site and automatically get 2 book credits!