Big news today in the book world, with Amazon announcing it has acquired reading social network, Goodreads.

First impression: this just makes so much sense. After all, Amazon’s never been really strong in social, and by buying the biggest reading-specific social net around, this may be just what they need.  Not only does it give them some social network juice around what may still be their biggest vertical, it allows them to finally have a real social infrastructure to build upon for a more social reading experience on the Kindle.

My second impression is priority number one needs to be making sure members are comfortable with the deal, many of whom are publishing industry savvy and view Amazon with a skeptical eye. Laura Owen interviewed founder Otis Chandler and Amazon VP of Kindle Content, Russ Grandinetti, and it appears that they are very aware of the potential problem there.

From Grandinetti: “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.”

I have a feeling no matter what they do, publishers will be nervous about what this means for them. While Goodreads has been an increasingly important channel for publishers to spend on launch campaigns, Amazon is seen more as a competitor ever day, and remaining cozy with Goodreads may make publishers nervous given how much access to reader behavior Amazon will now have through Goodreads.

On the other hand, publishers know that the virtually impossible task of avoiding working with Amazon to sells books just got much harder.

As for a competitive response, once again Amazon shows how far ahead they in front of the competition strategically with this move.   There really is no other similar book specific social network out there on the scale of that of Goodreads, so I don’t think there’s an immediate answer for Apple or Barnes & Noble.