Amazon: From online retail to real-life bookstore

Twenty years ago, Amazon started selling books (among other things) online. Today, they're taking the opposite path and just opened a bick-and-mortar bookstore.

When Amazon started selling books online, two decades ago, it led to numerous bookstore shutdowns as much as it weakened all national book retail chains. The unmissable question is: why would Amazon open a physical bookstore now? As Amazon Books Vice President Jennifer Cast said: “We've applied twenty years of online bookselling experience to build a store that integrates the benefits of offline and online book shopping", i.e. the sales data Amazon collects every year are the best indicator of which books will be sold or not. The store, called Amazon Books and located at University Village in Seattle, offers nearly 6,000 references “based on Amazon.com customer ratings, pre-orders, sales, popularity on Goodreads, and our curators’ assessments”, as Jennifer Cast explains.

The prices at the 'real' store are the same as those on the website. With each book comes a card with its review and rating (most of them are rated with at least four stars on Amazon.com). Amazon now has a complete offer with both physical and digital stores. Will there be more Amazon Books in the future? Jennifer Cast answered to The Seattle Times: "We're completely focused on this bookstore. We hope this is not our only one. But we'll see."

*Photo: Amazon