Reports debate how much Amazon paid for Goodreads

Following the news that Amazon is acquiring Goodreads, now everyone wants to know (or at least speculate) about the price tag.

See also: Amazon acquires Goodreads, aims to meld Kindle with social

For starters, Amazon hasn't revealed how much it paid for the literary social network -- and it likely won't. All that has been confirmed is that the deal is expected to close during the second quarter.

Thus, plenty of analysts and media outlets are taking it upon themselves to estimate how much the Seattle-headquarted corporation forked over.

That debate is actually getting a bit heated.

Earlier on Friday, Bloomberg BusinessWeek published its possibly educated guess of $1 billion. The news service backed that up with a lengthy worksheet based on the number of Goodreads users and lined that up with how much users are worth at other social networks, such as Facebook and LinkedIn.

Interestingly, Kara Swisher at AllThingsD quickly shot that hefty figure down, positing that the Kindle Fire maker paid something closer to $150 million.

While she admitted that she is "still trying to determine how much of the deal was cash and how much was stock," Swisher described the BusinessWeek report as "a we-are-just-guessing story," adding (unnamed) sources told her "that number is simply wrong."

Regardless, whatever Amazon paid is likely going to pay off in the long run as it integrates Goodreads's popular social platform (and user base of more than 16 million) onto the Kindle brand of e-readers and tablet.

(Also, whatever Amazon paid, it can probably afford it without blinking.)