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Amazon Will Open Its First Brick-And-Mortar Bookstore at Seattle’s University Village

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cameron

Member
Seattle Times
At 9:30 Tuesday morning, the online retail giant will open its first-ever brick-and-mortar retail store in its 20-year life in University Village.

The store, called Amazon Books, looks a lot like bookstores that populate malls across the country. Its wood shelves are stocked with 5,000 to 6,000 titles, best-sellers as well as Amazon.com customer favorites.

Amazon: "Introducing Amazon Books at University Village"
November 2, 2015

Dear Amazon Customer,

Tuesday morning at 9:30, Amazon Books will open its doors. These aren’t metaphorical doors: these real, wooden doors are the entrance to our new store in Seattle’s University Village.

Amazon Books is a physical extension of Amazon.com. We’ve applied 20 years of online bookselling experience to build a store that integrates the benefits of offline and online book shopping. The books in our store are selected based on Amazon.com customer ratings, pre-orders, sales, popularity on Goodreads, and our curators’ assessments. These are fantastic books! Most have been rated 4 stars or above, and many are award winners.

To give you more information as you browse, our books are face-out, and under each one is a review card with the Amazon.com customer rating and a review. You can read the opinions and assessments of Amazon.com’s book-loving customers to help you find great books.

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. Nevertheless, our mobile app is a great way to read additional customer reviews, get more detailed information about a product, or even to buy products online.

Amazon Books is a store without walls – there are thousands of books available in store and millions more available at Amazon.com. Walk out of the store with a book; lighten your load and buy it online (Prime customers, of course, won’t pay for shipping); buy an eBook for your Kindle; or add a product to your Amazon Wish List, so someone else can buy it.

At Amazon Books, you can also test drive Amazon’s devices. Products across our Kindle, Echo, Fire TV, and Fire Tablet series are available for you to explore, and Amazon device experts will be on hand to answer questions and to show the products in action.

Tomorrow is literally Day One for Amazon Books, and we hope you will visit and share your ideas and feedback by dropping a card in our suggestion box or clicking the link at the bottom of the page.

We are located at 4601 26th Ave. NE in University Village, next to Banana Republic and across from JOEY Kitchen. We are open Monday through Saturday from 9:30 a.m. to 9:00 p.m. and on Sundays from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

We hope to see you in the store –

Jennifer Cast
VP, Amazon Books

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If this becomes widespread, I wonder if this will be the final nail in Barnes and Noble's coffin. Pretty interesting concept, though.
 

Somnid

Member
That sign is such a dig at Barnes and Noble. I remember seeing a book online and wanting it that day and it costing about 30% more in store with no price match. I bought it on Amazon.
 
I was going to say what is the point? In terms of like a new walmart with all the shit amazon sells but once I saw that it is just for books that is pretty cool.

I don't see too many of these around though. Maybe like a couple in some major cities and that's about it
 

Condom

Member
Fucking assholes, avoiding taxes and destroying those that do have to pay taxes. It's the 21st century's way of doing things

EDIT: Have to say that this will probably be highly successful though, looking at it as a consumer Amazon is amazing.
 
They'll need digital price tags the way items on the website fluctuate.

Edit: Maybe books don't fluctuate as much as the products I had in mind.
 

Suikoguy

I whinny my fervor lowly, for his length is not as great as those of the Hylian war stallions
The only way this will work and/or spread, other than being advertisement for Amazon.com, is if they generate revenue via something other then book sales. Matching online prices means their margin is thin.
 

entremet

Member
If this becomes widespread, I wonder if this will be the final nail in Barnes and Noble's coffin. Pretty interesting concept, though.

I doubt it becomes widespread. Amazon runs thin margins on their book selling business. They actually lose money on books.
 

Suikoguy

I whinny my fervor lowly, for his length is not as great as those of the Hylian war stallions
I doubt it becomes widespread. Amazon runs thin margins on their book selling business. They actually lose money on books.

They lose money on books on their online website?
First i've heard of it, where did you see that?
 

davepoobond

you can't put a price on sparks
my guess is they are going to use these stores as warehouses and ship out stuff from them. also pick up is an obvious option. basically like a warehouse with a store front
 
my guess is they are going to use these stores as warehouses and ship out stuff from them. also pick up is an obvious option. basically like a warehouse with a store front
Unless it was sized only for local deliveries, I don't think that would be feasible. The typical Amazon warehouse (from what I gather) dwarfs a retail store.
 

entremet

Member
They lose money on books on their online website?
First i've heard of it, where did you see that?

My mistake. Physical books have razor thin margins.

They were losing money when they started selling ebooks to bolster Kindle sales since publishers were still selling ebooks at paper book prices to resellers.

So, a new Stephen King novel may be 25 bucks at the suggested retail price. Amazon pays 12.50 per unit wholesale from the publisher, both paper and ebook, but they then sell it later for 9.99 on Kindle, losing 2.51 on it.

They were doing this for a while, but many of the big publishers stopped it.
 

entremet

Member
Can they really cover the overhead with website prices?

It's just one store.

Amazon is way more than just books and media these days. They're the biggest e-commerce platform on the planet.

They also have a huge web infrastructure service--Amazon S3.

They can easily afford to write this small store down as marketing costs.
 

Somnid

Member
I wonder if they'll compete with Costco/Sam's Club next.

Nah, bookstores have this romantic notion to people which is probably where they want to go with this. People will visit for novelty. Business-wise maybe they can attract a certain customer that hangs around all day, maybe they can get people to buy more books, maybe they sell them a Kindle or some other device. Like some have pointed out, Amazon's margins are super thin so a store needs some other business interest attached to it.
 

Suikoguy

I whinny my fervor lowly, for his length is not as great as those of the Hylian war stallions
My mistake. Physical books have razor thin margins.

They were losing money when they started selling ebooks to bolster Kindle sales since publishers were still selling ebooks at paper book prices to resellers.

So, a new Stephen King novel may be 25 bucks at the suggested retail price. Amazon pays 12.50 per unit wholesale from the publisher, both paper and ebook, but they then sell it later for 9.99 on Kindle, losing 2.51 on it.

They were doing this for a while, but many of the big publishers stopped it.

Ah, that makes more sense. Regardless, you were somewhat right, in that the margin is not good enough to sustain a physical store.
 

frontovik

Banned
I hope that Amazon does the same in Canada, because our local chain, Indigo, refuses to match online prices, even from its own online store.
 

davepoobond

you can't put a price on sparks
So everyone has to get searched before they are allowed to leave?

i'm sure that'll happen at some point.


Unless it was sized only for local deliveries, I don't think that would be feasible. The typical Amazon warehouse (from what I gather) dwarfs a retail store.

let's say something gets ordered from Amazon, its only available at the Amazon Books retail location. someone goes, puts it in a easy-to-seal box, sends it in USPS or whatever. clicks a thing on Amazon's site saying its been shipped.

maybe they have a large backroom, i dont know. it's not unfeasible to think that a store like that can supplement the existing larger Amazon machine in a small way. Also, it is a location people can pick up at possibly (their existing system for Amazon Lockers would just have a presence there) and if shipped from the local store could get somewhere faster depending on where it is.

reduces the cost of having a storefront, possibly curbs the need for more warehouses from needing to open since you could say 20 or so of these stores might equal 1 of their normal warehouses or something.
 

temp

posting on contract only
It's nice. Not that huge, didn't seem like a lot of variety, just the biggest sellers in the biggest genres basically. Felt weird being in an Amazon store. Well-lit?
 

Dominator

Member
This is funny, my university just opened a Barnes and Noble bookstore on campus 2 years ago.

Amazon getting some skin in the game, I think I like it.
 

scamander

Banned
I can see them trying this in Germany, as book prices here a fixed by the publisher and all the books cost the same everywhere (except for imports).
 
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