Amazon Buys Shelfari

We got back from a short break in Slovakia to the usual pile of email. In among them was an interesting publishing string about Amazon and their market position, digitisation and whether all this was healthy for publishers. Anyone who has read this blog over time will be able to predict our response.

Then today we open up another email to read from the Seattle Post Intelligencer that Amazon has now added its small Seattle neighbour Shelfari to its list of acquisitions.

Amazon has now bought a number of publishing related companies. These include the likes of Booksurge, Brilliance, Audible, Mobibook, ABE and now Shelfari. Couple these with its global market dominance in Internet bookselling and you have a very interesting mix which covers all but front list publishing!

Some may consider that the shrewdest move is the pincher action that they appear to have taken in covering at one end the out of print content with ABE and the self publishing end with Shelfari. When you couple this with their underpinning technology, commerce and distribution platforms you start to see a different animal and one that can certainly change publishing as we know it.

Obviously you have to add the Kindle into the mix and also appreciate their growing and significant internet marketshare and some would say you potentially have a mix to die for.

Shelfari, is the Seattle social networking start-up for book lovers whose main rival is part owned by ABE. Shelfari is a social network that allows groups of people to create virtual bookshelves and share titles with friends. So will Amazon dispose of their stake in LibraryThing or consolidate it further with their new acquisition?

As publishers dabble with social networking and self publishing, Amazon has clearly moved. When the market dithered on audio downloads to Audible and DRM free, Amazon merely swallowed up the company. As self publishing continues to grow, Amazon now gives it a shop window. As inventory and distribution costs continue to climb Amazon takes a clear POD position offering both an alternative to Ingram, but also means for them to acquire digital content and distribution channel for self publishers. As publishers focus on front and experiment with reclaiming out of print, Amazon acquires the main player and information base.

We watch Amazon with both admiration and fear and once again are reminded of that old saying ‘be careful what you wish for.’

BookRabbit Displays its Shelves

What’s on your bookshelf doesn’t automatically mean that’s good or even that you have read it. In some cases it’s collectable and sometimes its place is given for a sentimental reason. When we look around our home office today we find some 30 plus books written by close family, 70 plus signed and written by friends and some 50 rare books. Next door there is another set of shelves with reference, lots of travel books, novels and others works. Our other apartment has thousands of books and six large bookcases, two of which are dedicated to art, design and photography. So what do you recommend to others and why and how do these represent you?

Today we have the launch of BookRabbit a new venture aimed at being a social book site, a bookshop and focused on redefining book buying on the Internet. It has had little problem in attracting media coverage and is headed up by Kieron Smith and backed by Charles Denton’s money.

So what do we think?

The idea is not new and others are doing similar most notably Shelfari.com. BookRabbit combines a social networking, browsing and a book shop offer. It plays heavily of people recommending books to others and offering their own bookshelves to entice others into reading books that they would not have heard of. It tries to create a ‘I belong’ community but are books enough and are they too broad and diverse a media?
There are some interesting issues. The book-world, unlike publishers and the high street, is not front list loaded. Most people’s collections are not time sensitive and consist on not only those books that may have failed in the market, but many that are now out of print. Importantly most book collections are eclectic and defy pigeon holes. Therefore the fulfilment offer needs to be far deeper and offer sources such as ABE or Alibris.

We had great fun searching and collecting together some 134 books of some friends and family, but didn’t find it easy. Many of the searches result in out of print results and understandably lack jacket pictures. The search results can be frustrating, rendering too many unwanted results and what many fail to address duplication and bad grouping. We typed in a good friend and prolific writer’s name ‘David Day’ and the results were to say the least frustrating, even on the advanced search.

The site has much that is fresh and new but why if it is building a community and trying to redefine book buying are discounts so high and across such a wide range of titles.

When we read this week of the apparent further demise of book clubs, such as Bertlesmann, we see new opportunities to redefine book clubs. Perhaps Shefari and Bookrabbit are some of these, but building community and selling books is not easy and we wish them well.

Amazon gets Their Space

Today we hear that Amazon has invested the book social networking website Shelfari. It hardly ironic that Shelfari is based in Seattle, home of its new investor. The site is interesting and enables individuals to promote their own shelves of books, build reading groups, develop book review blogs and generally socially interact around books. Their current model is driven by users promoting books which are then bought at a commission from Amazon, so the Amazon tie- in makes sense to all.

Looking at the site the cynic would envisage lots of spoof reviews and promotions but this doesn’t appear to be the case todate. It will be interesting to see how the service now develops and where the reviews are ‘trusted’ and how close they get to Amazon in their development.
www.shelari.com