Amazon opens first brick-and-mortar bookstore

SEATTLE – Bookstore owners often think of Amazon.com as the enemy.

Now it’s becoming one of them.

On Tuesday morning, the online retail giant will open its first brick-and-mortar retail store in its 20-year life in Seattle’s University Village shopping center.

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.

Last month, the online book newsletter Shelf Awareness broke the story that Amazon was developing the store.

There is some irony in Seattle-based Amazon opening a physical store. For years, it could undercut physical retailers on price because it didn’t have brick-and-mortar locations. But those stores offered something Amazon couldn’t: the instant gratification of owning an item the second it was purchased, as well as the personal touch of a knowledgeable sales clerk.

But Amazon is betting that the troves of data it generates from shopping patterns on its website will give it advantages in its retail location that other bookstores can’t match. It will use data to pick titles that will most appeal to Seattle shoppers.

And that could also solve the business problem that has long plagued other bookstores, unsold books that gather dust on shelves and get sent back to publishers. More than most book retailers, Amazon has deep insight into customer buying habits and can stock its store with the titles most likely to move.

The company will stock best-sellers, of course. But it will also include books that get the highest ratings from its customers, including little-known titles. The store will also include such categories as “Most Wished-For Cookbooks.” Another section features “Award Winners, 4.5 Stars & Above, Age 6-12.”

Data only goes so far, though. Book lovers often see stores are a piece of their community. And some blame Amazon, and online retail more broadly, for slow demise of independent booksellers.

Jennifer Cast, vice president of Amazon Books, is careful to say the store won’t be stocked solely on data.

“It’s data with heart,” she said. “We’re taking the data we have and we’re creating physical places with it.”

Some of that data include reviews from the millions of Amazon customers who have left appraisals of books on the website. Below each book on the shelf is a card with either a review or a rating from the site.

And the company also has included a staff favorites section that will change from time to time. For the opening, section includes a few of Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos’ favorite titles, including “The Gift of Fear” by Gavin de Becker, “The Five Love Languages” by Gary Chapman, and “Traps” by his wife, MacKenzie Bezos.

“A page-turner written by an award-winning novelist, who also happens to be my wife,” Bezos writes.

The review cards are similar to the staff favorite notes found at many bookstores. But Cast said she believes that adding comments from passionate readers adds a wide range of voices recommending titles.

“The bookstores I love celebrate reading,” Cast said. “What better way to celebrate reading than to have the voices of readers under our books.”