Amazon Opens Bookstore

Online retailer Amazon.com opened a brick-and-mortar bookshop, Amazon Books, on November 3, 2015 in Seattle’s University Village. Amazon’s corporate headquarters is located in the same city.

The store has 5,500 square feet of retail space and another 2,000 for storage, and stocks between 5,000 and 6,000 titles, mostly Amazon bestsellers and books rated highly by website customers, an approach Amazon Books vice president Jennifer Cast calls “Data with a heart… We’re taking the data we have and we’re creating physical places with it.” The relatively small inventory is partly because all books are shelved face-out. Cast said, “We realized that we felt sorry for the books that were spine out.” Retail prices for the books are identical to those offered on the website.

For more details, and photos of the store, see Amazon’s site.