Questions and answers have been edited slightly for clarity.

Goodreads CEO Otis Chandler

What does the acquisition mean for Goodreads’ reputation as a neutral hub for readers, authors and publishers?

Otis Chandler [OC]: “One of the extremely important things to us is for readers to share what they’re reading, no matter how they’re reading. We have no plans to change that. We want Goodreads to be a place for readers of all types to share their favorite books. You can expect to see customizations and better integrations for people who do use Kindle. For everyone else, Goodreads will remain largely as it is.”

Will Goodreads remain a standalone site, and is its entire team staying on? Is the site getting a redesign?

Grandinetti says Goodreads will be an independent subsidiary of Amazon, like Zappos or IMDB. The site will remain based in San Francisco. Chandler remains CEO, reporting to Grandinetti. Chandler said that Goodreads’ entire team is staying on (and that the company is hiring). To the question of a redesign, he said there is “nothing specific to mention in relation to the acquisition.”

Will Amazon have access to all of the Goodreads users’ data?

OC: “Goodreads is or will be a wholly owned subsidiary of Amazon, so on one level, yes. Are things going to happen in the background without customers understanding it? I think the answer to that is no….We’ll make it very easy for someone to say, ‘Yeah, I’d love it if you could import all of my Amazon or Kindle purchases into my Goodreads shelf.’ We’ll make it very easy for people to do, but they’ll be aware of what’s happening.”

Users already have the ability to export their data from Goodreads, and they’ll continue to be able to do so.

Will Amazon use Goodreads reviews on its own retail site, or will Amazon reader reviews migrate over to Goodreads? In general, how much content will cross between the sites?

OC: “We’re going to think about this in terms of what’s best for our members. Maybe if we find books that don’t have any Goodreads reviews we might consider that, but I don’t think there’s any specific plans to do that at this time.”

Russ Grandinetti [RG]: “Our mentality here is to first do no harm, and make sure that if we’re going to do integrations, users genuinely find it to be a big benefit.”

Right now, Goodreads includes links to many retailers (like Barnes & Noble and Indiebound) on its book pages. Will that practice continue?

OC: ”It’s incredibly important to us that Goodreads remain a platform for all kinds of readers to use, whether they’re reading paper or on their Nook or Kindle or whatever. We always want Goodreads to be a place for people to share and talk about books…As for specific design of [the links], we’ll see, but we really think about it from the user perspective. If users really want those links [to other retailers], then those links will probably still be there.”

Will Goodreads now include a retail component — for instance, selling print or Kindle books from its site?

RG: “The design they have works incredibly well for users. You see that in the number of users who join that service.”

OC: “I think, short-term, the thing we’re most excited about is actually bringing the book into Goodreads and enabling people to just start reading right there from the Kindle Cloud Reader. We’ve never had a good book preview feature.”

Will Goodreads expand internationally?

RG: ”As you’ve seen in the last couple of years, one thing we’ve been working hard on at Kindle is [globalizing] the business…Goodreads has many users around the world. In terms of new languages and other countries, I think that’s an area of opportunity for both of us to work on.”

OC: ”Amazon has done a fabulous job of curating databases of international metadata.”

Speaking of metadata, Goodreads stopped sourcing its metadata from Amazon in early 2012, switching to Ingram’s metadata instead. What happens now?

OC: ”We’re going to determine what makes the most sense, but we’ll have access to Amazon’s metadata and certainly will probably be using it.”

Are the Kindle and Goodreads apps combining?

RG: ”Our goal would be…[for] the Kindle experience as it exists both on devices and apps, [to put] putting the connection [users] have on Goodreads as close to their fingertips as possible. When and how we do that, I’ll ask you to stay tuned.”

Will Goodreads retain its public API? Does Kobo get to keep its Goodreads review feed?

OC: “Yes [on the API],” and “we’re not going to shut [the Kobo feed] off.”

Why did Amazon buy Shelfari? Was that a failed acquisition?

RG: ”We’ve used [Shelfari] to generate quite a bit of incremental data about books. It’s powered features we’ve launched over time, such as book extras and X-Ray. But, of course, Goodreads has been much more of a social connection site and a larger social network. So when it comes to the graph we’ll use to connect people on Kindle, Goodreads will power that.”

Will Goodreads keep sharing data about its readers at conferences and so on?

OC: “Yeah, as far as I know, I think we’re still excited to share readers’ behavior…and create lots more 50 Shades of Grey infographics.”

Disclosure: Goodreads is backed by True Ventures, a venture capital firm that is an investor in the parent company of GigaOM/paidContent.

Photo courtesy of Shutterstock / Thomas Bethge

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Russ Grandinetti, vice president for Kindle content for Amazon, spoke Monday in San Francisco to magazine publishers and editors with the Association of Magazine Media about the challenges and rewards of bringing magazine content to the Kindle, which he said can be slightly different than digitzing books, although that also seemed like a challenge at first.

“Even books, which is an easier transition for people, is a difficult task. When we started, we didn’t look at who was selling digital books at the time, we looked at the print book,” Grandinetti said. “Because it’s lightweight, it’s resilient, it’s inexpensive. And the print magazine is also very very good at what it does. And the digital experience only approximates a small amount of that in many ways.”

He said the consumers love many of the things that have made books great for 500 years, and many of the challenges in getting them to adopt digital are even trickier with magazines. They tend to rely more on large glossy photos and less printed text, things that don’t always transfer as well to a variety of digital formats and devices.

But Grandinetti said he thinks the future for digital magazines is bright, even if the print product itself still has a good deal to offer, mainly because digital platforms give consumers the opportunities to bring the content with them anywhere they go.

“The strenth of the Kindle platform, which has led to our success in books and what we can help do in magazines, is that customers don’t plan out which devices they’ll use for which continent,” he said, noting that they were surprised by how many consumers said they were reading entire novels on their phones.

Grandinetti also noted that digital magazines offer greater potential benefits for monetization, because they’ve found that consumers who get trial subscriptions for magazines are extremely likely to then convert to a paid subscription, and because the platforms put advertisers even closer to points of sale with the consumer.

“There are many advertisers out there who want to get as close to a transaction as they can,” he said. “And on the device that we build, it can literally be just a matter of a click or two with a trusted source between them.”

The transition from totally print to totally digital is still in progress, he said, because, “Print is so good, that this is going to be a nice, long, slow transition.” But Grandinetti said publishers will have a huge advantage in accessing more and more data about reader patterns, which is quickly becoming more of an asset, as long as they use the information responsibly. He said Amazon learned the power of recommendations with its “People who bought this book also bought” feature.

“People were freaked out by that in 1998. Freaked out,” he said. “So I think publishers have that same opportunity.”

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Recently, though, Amazon shared some data about Kindle Singles with me, and allowed Kindle Singles authors to share their sales figures with me as well.

Amazon launched Kindle Singles in January 2011 as a home for “compelling ideas expressed at their natural length.” There are now 165 Singles, and Amazon adds around three more each week. Authors and publishers have to apply to have their work included. Most Kindle Singles are exclusive to Amazon. Others come from traditional publishers — like Random House and Hachette — or new e-singles publishers like Byliner and The Atavist, and are sold across platforms, not just on Amazon. While Barnes & Noble and Apple (NSDQ: AAPL) recently launched sections for e-singles on their sites, they don’t sign original authors and provide little of the marketing support that Kindle Singles authors receive.

How Well Are They Selling?

Amazon says that in the 14 months the program has been running, it has sold over two million Kindle Singles. Seventy percent of each sale goes to the author or publisher, and Amazon keeps 30 percent. Amazon wouldn’t disclose its total revenues from those two million singles, but the minimum price of a Single is $0.99 and most are $1.99 (the author or publisher sets the price). So with an average price of $1.87 multiplied by two million, a rough estimate of Amazon’s 30-percent cut is $1.12 million. (How much are some authors making? See our post later this morning.)

How does this compare to other e-singles sites? Total sales through the Kindle Singles store dwarf those at e-singles sites like Byliner and The Atavist, but the Kindle Singles list is much larger. Byliner has published 18 “Byliner Originals” (15 of those available as Kindle Singles) and told me it “expects to sell over 1 million copies this year” across Amazon, Apple, Google (NSDQ: GOOG), Kobo and Barnes & Noble (NYSE: BKS). The Atavist has published 13 e-singles (12 of those available as Kindle Singles) and would only say that it has sold “over 100,000″ copies.

A Home For Unknown Authors?

Kindle Singles editor David Blum, an adjunct professor at Columbia and former editor-in-chief of the Village Voice and New York Press, sees Kindle Singles as a place to promote the work of unknown authors, including some of his former writing students. In my conversation with Blum, he often described Kindle Singles in relation to the world of magazine writing. “There are a lot of obstacles in the traditional magazine world,” he says, calling Kindle Singles a “middle ground between magazine and book writing,” with “the shards of the magazine industry on one side” and “the decline in the publishing industry and magazine industry working against writers with ideas that don’t fit easily into one or the other niche.”

The program receives around 50 unsolicited submissions a week, and just a handful of those are accepted. Considering that three new Singles are published each week, that is an acceptance rate of six percent (probably less since Blum also solicits some titles himself).

Of course, many of the writers in the program aren’t newbies to the book world. Amazon gave me a list of the top 10 Kindle Singles bestsellers (by units sold), and seven of them are works by previously published big-name bestselling authors: Lee Child, Stephen King, David Baldacci, Dean Koontz, Karin Slaughter, Jodi Picoult, Jon Krakauer. (Picoult’s “Leaving Home” and Slaughter’s “Thorn in My Side” are only available as Kindle Singles; the other titles are not exclusive to Amazon.)

As the Kindle Singles store gets larger — and more brand-name writers decide to take part — individual authors may have a harder time standing out. Right now, one of Kindle Singles’ biggest benefits for authors — one that differentiates it from Nook Snaps and Apple Quick Reads – is the heavy promotion the list gets on the site. “It sits right on a level with many other big sections of the store,” Russ Grandinetti, VP Kindle Content, said. “If you’re on that list, it’s a lot easier to get noticed.” Kindle Singles are also sometimes included in Amazon’s e-mail newsletters and Kindle Daily Deal program.

There are 165 Kindle Singles now. If three more are added every week, that would put the total around 280 titles by the end of this year, decreasing the program’s showcase effect.

All of the authors that I spoke with enjoy working with Blum. Many say they see him as a literary presence within Amazon — a tastemaker. It appears that he has been able to operate independently; the one other editor working with him used to be his intern.

“Let’s say you work for an underfunded literary magazine and your private mission is to promote literary good tastes and writers you think are talented and having something meaningful to contribute to the culture,” said Oliver Broudy, a former Paris Review managing editor who has written two Kindle Singles. “Now let’s say you have millions and millions of dollars to devote to that cause. That could be the Kindle Singles program. Dave is accountable to the rest of Amazon, but I do believe there’s something of that spirit in his enterprise.”

But will the lit-mag vibe survive if the operation becomes bigger and more commercial? I asked Grandinetti if he thinks more big-name authors will join Kindle Singles. “I hope so,” he said. “The more that publishers think about this as a companion opportunity to their main activity; the more that editors start to understand this is an option for things that come across their desk-that’s a real opportunity.”

Kindle Singles’ Function Within Amazon

Grandinetti wouldn’t disclose Kindle Singles’ share of total Kindle revenues, but said it’s “going to grow a lot, and that will partially be a function of how attractive writers and publishers find the format relative to more traditional books.” When considering the submissions to Kindle Singles versus the titles self-published through the Kindle Direct Publishing platform, “we don’t have a pre-conceived goal of how much ends up in Singles versus [in the broader store],” he said.

Kindle Singles and Amazon’s other publishing initiatives sometimes feed each other. Blum refers authors who aren’t accepted to Kindle Singles to KDP. One Kindle Single, Evan Rail’s “Why Beer Matters,” was originally published on KDP and “we just moved that over,” Blum said. Twenty-nine Kindle Singles are already in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library, which allows Amazon Prime members who own Kindles to borrow one e-book a month.

I asked the authors I spoke with — many of whom had also published full-length books with traditional publishers — if they’d consider publishing future books with Amazon. They all said they’d at least give Amazon a look at full-length projects, because of their experience with Kindle Singles.

In that way, Kindle Singles allows Amazon to draw in authors who deem the program low-risk because it’s not in conflict with other publisher relationships they may have. Those authors may then stick around, especially if they believe that doing a full-length project with Amazon has the potential to be as lucrative as Kindle Singles have been for many of them.

How lucrative? See the next post.

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Grandinetti said “we’re trying to be skeptical about this” but Amazon’s early data “suggests you can get people engaged in a book that they weren’t interested in otherwise.” Amazon compared two customer groups of Amazon Prime members who have owned an e-reading device for more than six months and have made at least one recent book purchase in the last 30 days. The members of one group used the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library and the members of the other group did not. Grandinetti said that after after the average customer’s first borrow from the KOLL, he or she went on to purchase 30 percent more books.

“Many publishers in this room give away books for free every day in a very coarse effort to increase demand,” Grandinetti said. He argued that the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library is a more refined approach backed by a lot of promotion on the Amazon website. “Some customers may be willing to try authors and series they might not otherwise have discovered,” he said. He gave an example, the very popular Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins. Nineteen percent of customers who borrowed The Hunger Games from the KOLL later purchased one of the other books in the trilogy instead of waiting another thirty days to borrow it.

The Hunger Games books appear to be among those included in the Kindle Owners’ Lending Library without explicit publisher permission. Instead, Amazon is paying the publisher the wholesale price for the book each time a customer borrows it. This is different from KDP Select, which allows self-published authors to include their books in the KIndle Owner’s Lending Library if they agree to sell them exclusively through Amazon. (Some KDP Select authors have found that this exclusivity pays, while others are skeptical.)

Amazon clearly hopes to convince traditional publishers that it is worth their while to agree to include their e-books in the KOLL, as well as to decrease skepticism about the program. It was unclear if publishers were convinced. Later in the day, Publishers Marketplace’s Michael Cader asked publishers if it’s true that the Kindle Owners Lending Library increases sales. “Are you just netting more revenue because you’re getting paid by Amazon for the read?” he said, referring to the cases in which Amazon pays the wholesale price each time the book is borrowed, rather than coming to any other kind of agreement with the publisher.

Bloomsbury’s Evan Schnittman pointed out that Bloomsbury runs similar promotions already. For an upcoming children’s series, for example, Bloomsbury released three free prequels leading up to the launch of the first book in the series. He pointed out that Grandinetti’s Hunger Games example was also about a series and it was unclear how giveaways affect paid sales of single books, especially if the author in question has not published any other titles that might enjoy a resulting sales bump. Also, as Cader noted, when publishers run the giveaways themselves they can control the timing and the length of the promotions.

Grandinetti stressed the data is “early.” “I don’t want anyone to think we’re definitive on this,” he said, “but this is the actual data on this and we’re doing our best to really map this out.”

The Digital Book World conference took place in New York this week. See all our Digital Book World coverage here.

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