(Reuters) - Amazon.com Inc said on Thursday it plans to acquire the book recommendation website, Goodreads.
In buying Goodreads, Amazon gets a community of bibliophiles primed to buy and recommend books - one of its key areas of business.
"Goodreads has helped change how we discover and discuss books and, with Kindle, Amazon has helped expand reading around the world," Russ Grandinetti, Amazon vice president, Kindle Content, said in a release.
Based in San Francisco, Goodreads is a social network site that lets bookworms catalog and review books. Co-founded by Otis Chandler, whose family once published the Los Angeles Times, Goodreads has more than 16 million members, who have generated more than 23 million reviews.
"We're looking forward to inspiring greater literary discussion and helping more readers find great books, whether they read in print or digitally," Chandler, who also serves as CEO of Goodreads, said in a statement.
Terms of the deal, expected to close in the second quarter, were not disclosed.
(Reporting by Jennifer Saba in New York; Editing by Jan Paschal)
