Which book recommendation website did Amazon acquire in 2013?

The story behind the answer

Amazon acquired Goodreads in 2013, the book recommendation website named in this question.

Goodreads was founded by Otis Chandler and Elizabeth Khuri Chandler in 2006 and launched publicly in January 2007. It combined book discovery with social features: members could catalogue their shelves, rate and review books, join discussion groups, and receive recommendations based on their reading tastes. That community-centered model made Goodreads valuable beyond a conventional online bookstore.

Amazon announced the acquisition on March 28, 2013, and the deal was completed later that year. The financial terms were not disclosed. Goodreads’ management initially remained in place, including founder Otis Chandler, which helped preserve the site’s identity while Amazon gained a major source of reader data and book-discovery activity.

A common mix-up is Shelfari, another book-community service Amazon had acquired earlier, in 2008. Amazon eventually retired Shelfari in 2016 and encouraged users to move to Goodreads. LibraryThing remains an independent cataloguing service, while Bookish was a separate book-discovery platform.

Source: Wikipedia · fact-checked Aug. 2026

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