3 November, 2015

Amazon launches a (real) bookshop

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Amazon is launching Amazon Books, a physical bookshop at Seattle’s University Village that it describes as “a physical extension of Amazon.com”.

The company says: “We’ve applied 20 years of online bookselling experience to build a store that integrates the benefits of offline and online shopping.”

The books in the Amazon Books store are selected based on Amazon.com customer ratings, pre-orders, sales, popularity on Goodreads, and the store curators’ assessments.

Amazon says each book will be displayed face-out and under each one will be a review card with an Amazon.com customer rating and a review.

The company says: “Prices at Amazon Books are the same as prices offered by Amazon.com, so you’ll never need to compare our online and in-store prices.”

Customers at the store will also be able to test Amazon devices, such as the Kindle, Echo, Fire TV and Fire Tablet.

Amazon says: “Amazon Books is a store without walls – there are thousands of books available in store and millions more available at Amazon.com.”

The concept was developed by Amazon’s in-house design team working with “a few” external partners, according to Amazon.

Amazon has already been making forays into physical stores for some time.

At the start of the year it opened its first standalone physical store, on the Purdue University campus in Indiana, US.

The staffed retail space has been designed for customers to pick up and drop off packages with the target market being students who Amazon believes will be ordering “textbooks and other college essentials”.

Images via Amazon.