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Amazon goes physical, opens book store

By Salehuddin Bin Husin - on 4 Nov 2015, 9:54am

Amazon goes physical, opens book store

Most of the books will be displayed with the cover facing outwards to showcase them and their authors, though space constraints mean not every book will get the same treatment.

Amazon's not your usual retailer.

While most famous American retailers like Best Buy, Walmart or Sears have their online websites, most of their business comes from their physical stores. It might hurt the companies if they lost their online capabilities, but they'll probably survive (at least for awhile), with doing business the old fashioned way. That can't be said of Amazon.

Amazon might have physical warehouses where they store their inventory, but they've never had a store you can visit to get your goods if you prefer not do to your shopping online. That is until now.

If you're a bookworm, chances are you're familiar with Amazon's Kindle tablet. It's the company's custom e-reader tablet that's done pretty well for itself. Due to that, one can assume that Amazon's e-bookstore is doing pretty well. In a weird turn of events, the retail giant's now opened a physical bookstore to complement their online one. Is it just us, or does anybody else also feel that it's like a step backwards?

Books sold in the store will cost the same as their online counterparts.

The store's called Amazon Books and right now, it's the only one of its kind. Situated in University Village in Seattle, the store stocks about 5000 to 6000 books, from best-sellers to Amazon.com customer favorites. Amazon's book store might be physical, but it's heavily leveraging the data being gleamed from Amazon's online e-book service. Data such as what books are popular and what people in Seattle are reading are compiled and then used to stock the shop with inventory that should appeal to those living in the area.

To showcase the books and the authors, all of the books being sold in the store will be displayed face out, instead of the usual spine showing stacking order found in most bookstores. Each book will cost the same price as it's online counterpart, so there's no mark-up from it being sold in a physical location.

On top of that, the company also uses review cards, which takes reviews or ratings from the website, to show potential buyers what they're in for. That's definitely not something any normal bookstore can offer.

Sadly, interesting as the concept may be, the company has no plans to open other outlets, which means if you want to try Amazon's take on a brick and mortar bookstore, you're going to have to make a trip to Seattle.

Source: Amazon (via The Seattle Times)

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