Who's using it: GoodReads

  • Goodreads is a free website for book lovers to catalog books, post reviews, and engage with other readers and authors.

  • Goodreads' mission is to improve reading and learning globally.

  • Integrating Google Book Search allows Goodreads users to browse books online within the site, addressing a previous limitation.

  • The Google Book Search embeddable viewer API was easy to integrate using Javascript.

  • Goodreads plans to further integrate Google Book Search APIs to build more social features around book content.



Otis Chandler, founder, GoodReads

"Goodreads has over a million users who love to read books. Many of these members complain that they actually spend too much time on the site instead of reading. But now with Google book search we can help fix their problem - they will be able to browse the books right on the site!"


Who They Are

GoodReads is a free website for book lovers. Imagine it as a large library that you can wander through and see everyone's bookshelves, their reviews, and their ratings. You can also post your own reviews and catalog what you have read, are currently reading, and plan to read in the future. And it doesn't stop there — you can join a discussion group, start a book club, contact an author, and even post your own writing.

Goodreads' mission is to improve the process of reading and learning throughout the world.


Through its partnerships with publishers and the library scanning project, Google has amassed a collection of all kinds of books: Goodreads wants to bring the conversations happening around the books on its site into the actual book itself.

Goodreads excels at helping people find what books they want to read, through recommendations from friends or other readers with similar tastes. However, unlike in a real bookstore, members can't pick a book up they think they want to read and flip through it. Embedding the preview of a book using the Google Book Search Apis is going to help change that, enabling members to browse through the books online right on the site. This will be a very valuable service to members who are curious about a book and are considering reading it.

Integration using the Google Book Search embeddable viewer API was very easy. We just had to add some quick javascript - a snap due to great examples from Google - and a few hours later it was ready to roll!

And this is only the beginning: Otis Chandler, founder of Goodreads, will continue to integrate more functionality from Google Book Search APIs: "There are endless numbers of fun social features we can build around the book content now that it is available."


What They Did