That was announced today. Consider it their move against Bookish that three publishing houses got together to create.
I saw this earlier. Interesting, and I'm a bit concerned. I'm more worried about the reviews and some of the potential issues with those, since Amazon has been taking a stance lately (and enforcing it) that they don't want authors to review books, which is ridiculous. It's also potentially problematic, in that goodreads links to a number of sites to purchase a book, and I wonder how committed amazon will be to preserving that. I'm guessing not very.
Not to drop names, but there was someone banned from here who reviewed his own book-and didn't even try to hide it. So, I can understand their viewpoint. However, the fact that it could keep author's from legitimately reviewing each others work could prove problematic. I think the real reason they're doing that is to keep people from reviewing their own books and basically 'ruining' the review process on Amazon. And being that their business is based of reviews, whether it's DVD's or otherwise (there's anime I've bought/seen just based off the reviews on Amazon. They're usually spot on too.), to have people discredit it would cause serious harm to their business model.
Yes, but they've been over-zealous in this, in taking down reviews from unrelated people simply because they, too, are authors, and they therefore consider them "competitors." That particular aspect is ridiculous, given that other authors are often the best reviewers, and in the best position to offer a reflective, informed review. The whole issue about buying reviews and reviews that unfairly either flatter or degrade a book is problematic. And goodreads is affected, too. But I worry, because sometimes there is a difference in the reviews on those two sites, so if they're somehow conflated, we'll be losing something.
