
Amazon opens first bricks-and-mortar bookstore - ljk
http://www.seattletimes.com/business/amazon/amazon-opens-first-bricks-and-mortar-bookstore-at-u-village/
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thinkling
I'm very curious what Amazon is trying to do here. Can the business plan
pencil out by selling enough additional goods to pay the store's operating
expenses? Is the real goal to expose more people to the Kindle who wouldn't
otherwise see one, i.e. it's a Trojan?

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vnorby
In 2013, Amazon had 65% market share of online book sales [1]. It wouldn't
surprise me if this was 20% higher now.

When customers walk into a Barnes and Noble (or any bookstore) and browse
books but don't buy (for example, because they found a cheaper price online),
they are most likely to end up on Amazon to complete the purchase. B&N did the
work but Amazon got the money.

Amazon doesn't have that problem. They don't need to sell books in the store
to "pay the store's operating expense" \- they just need people to come in and
browse.

Currently, Amazon doesn't compete for a high percentage of books (50%) moved
through physical stores [2]. They are in the enviable position of being able
to create stores that don't leak sales to competitors. This is the final nail
in B&N's coffin.

[1] [http://www.thewire.com/business/2014/05/amazon-has-
basically...](http://www.thewire.com/business/2014/05/amazon-has-basically-no-
competition-among-online-booksellers/371917/)

[2] [http://www.dailydot.com/business/ebook-
sales-2013-revenue/](http://www.dailydot.com/business/ebook-
sales-2013-revenue/)

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kenjackson
This is an interesting thesis... which is that brick and mortar can work if
you also own the online alternative.

I never bought books and B&N because I knew I could get the book cheaper at
Amazon. The same with toys when I used to shop at ToysRUs. But those are both
goods that I'd actually like to buy on the spot. If I know that the price in
the store is the same as online, I'd probably do a lot of in store purchases.

And since I'm a Prime customer, they save 2-day shipping cost to me (I'll
continue to be a Prime customer).

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teirce
I used to hold this viewpoint until I watched a video (I can't seem to find it
now) that made a pretty good point. The point was something along the
following: "I like book stores. I like going in and flipping through the
books. Sure, I could buy the book on Amazon for $4 less, but if I keep doing
that eventually book stores won't be around. And I like book stores."

Ever since then, I usually try to buy the book in B&N or wherever, provided
that's where I am at the time.

(Something like a campus book store and textbooks, however, is an entirely
different case...)

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amrrs
For such concerned customers, Amazon Book store seems to be the solution. So
still you can flip the pages and buy online but Book store won't go anywhere.

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tempestn
Is there an incentive for them to continue operating physical locations once
their competitors are out of business?

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OrwellianChild
Interesting what they might be able to do here with their geo data...
University Village is a high-end shopping center with a lot of high-income
traffic. The way they're stocking the shelves - covers facing out - combined
with the convenience of strolling down from the big Starbucks to the store to
grab the latest just might work for this clientele.

Not to mention the chance to get more Kindles into the hands of folks with low
price sensitivity...

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asciimo
If I could spend a couple hours comfortably browsing real books and then take
some of them home on my Kindle, I would be very happy.

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maxerickson
Can't you do this at any library or book store?

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whoiskevin
Maybe the library but the book store...well not if you are then taking home
only what you purchase from Amazon instead of the place you just comfortably
browsed inventory. I find it hard to understand the logic of using a place of
business in order to take advantage and not purchase from them. People justify
it in many ways but none of those justifications stands up to examination.

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theseoafs
There's nothing to justify. They let you freely browse their inventory, and
you browsed the inventory.

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nbarAKL
With the expectation that if you like their inventory, you'll pay for the
convenience and service in store. If you receive a benefit from that
convenience and service, there's no way to contribute to the existence of the
store outside of purchasing their product (I suppose you could donate straight
to the owner, but that's messy).

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peterburkimsher
This takes "Look Inside" to a whole new level.

It's a neat idea, and a good way to put a public face on their business.

The major reason I'd still prefer to shop online is the reviews. I doubt that
those are printed alongside the physical copies. Sure, I could read the
reviews on my phone - but why not then finish my one-click "Buy" instead of
walking all the way to a store just to look at my phone screen?

I hope that their employees are treated better than those in the warehouses,
too. (from what I've heard, it's pretty bad behind the scenes).

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anindyabd
According to the article, even though you can't see all the reviews, you can
see at least one review or a rating: "Below each book on the shelf is a card
with either a review or a rating from the site."

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antsar
"A rating". Why not give high-margin items get a cherrypicked high rating, and
low-margin items a cherrypicked three/four star rating (you can't just say
_everything_ is five stars, of course).

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sib
Possibly, but given (1) everything in the store is highly rated and (2)
they're as much as asking customers to "showroom" and check for more
information on Amazon.com, it seems like that would backfire pretty quickly.

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vessenes
Interestingly a lot of data they say they're using is available to any
bookstore. I wonder if there are small mom-and-pop chains that use Amazon
ratings and sales ranks as cues for their buyer.

A tie-in to an e-reader that still makes the bookstore money is a killer
feature for me as a reader. Indies still haven't gotten that totally sorted
yet, and it keeps me buying more paper books than I'd like, and also buying
less books at indie's than I'd like at the same time.

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mmanfrin
A friend of mine gave me guff about my kindle -- his parents had a book store,
but couldnt keep it open. I started to think about how an indie book store
could work in an ereader world; my ideas:

You'd need an ereader with a small nfc reader or barcode scanner. Customers
browsing the paper books in store could elect to buy the same book for the
ereader in store if they wanted by just scanning the book with their ereader,
then taking it up to the front and pressing a 'show cart' feature that would
give a barcode for the cashier to scan, bringing up the cart total payable.
Upon that payment finishing, the ereader would get a ping from a server and
instruct it to download the ebooks just purchased. The store would get a
majority of the cut of the vendor side of the sale (if amazon takes 30%, a
bookstore would get 25% and the service provider/ebook mfg would get 5$).

This would allow people to support indie stores, continue to buy both ebooks
and regular books, and do them both at the same time.

It's not a complete or foolproof plan, just an idea I had that could help
batter down the hatches.

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alttab
The more you think about it, both the indie book store owner and Amazon would
have no incentive to participate. The indie book owner wouldn't want to give
away 20% of gross sales to survive, because there isn't much there to begin
with.

If Amazon books takes off, maybe they franchise it out and allow personal
branding of some kind.

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maguay
Today, a bookstore. Tomorrow, Amazon's the new Walmart/Tesco and everything's
priced the same as Amazon.com.

Either that, or this is a glitch in the Matrix and a digital store
accidentally became real.

Seriously though, the digital-to-physical world touches like a cookbook row of
the most wished-for cookbooks or Amazon's top preorders on a real shelf is
fascinating. Almost surprising we don't see more things like that already in
other stores. It's data eating the world.

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seangrant
Can Amazon compete with Wal-Mart though? Everything I see at Wal-Mart tends to
be a good bit cheaper than the Amazon equivalent.

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devindotcom
I was just there an hour ago to report on it. Any questions?

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tom-_-
How are the prices displayed? They should match the .com price, and I assume
the .com price can change frequently.

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devindotcom
The price isn't displayed - you see the standard/printed price on the book
itself (i.e. $25 in usa) and then take it to one of several little stations
that tells you the current price on Amazon ($16.94 or whatever, you save X
amount). You can also scan barcodes on each little review placard with the app
and it'll pull up the price.

Not ideal, I'll allow, but since the prices fluctuate there's not an easy way
to do it without looooots of digital signage.

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janesvilleseo
This seems so backwards. Amazon lead on cheap prices. But this retail store
only displays book/listed price. Which are higher. The only way to get the
real price is to manually scan each one. Why? What am I missing?

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dingaling
> Amazon lead on cheap prices.

Perhaps for the mass-market titles but once you start pushing into the long-
tail then RRP becomes much more common.

Couple of random examples from Amazon UK this morning:

You Save: £0.72 (2%) You Save: £0.55 (2%)

I doubt many people will see savings like that as incentives. Rather, Amazon's
advantage is that they actually offer such books for sale without the hassles
of persuading a clerk to order a single copy for you, assuming their supplier
carries it.

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mentos
Anyone think there is a future where 500 foldable e-ink screens can finally
replace the demand for a hard cover book?

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OrwellianChild
Nope. Real-world share-ability and resale is a pretty unsolved problem...

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paulcole
The latter problem seems to be solving itself.

Used bookshops are closing and selling used books online is getting less and
less profitable.

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tehstone8
I suspect ebooks will replace the mass market pulp sort of books while higher
quality first-run paperback and hardback books will persist. With a much
smaller resale market and books worth owning for more reasons than just one or
two read-throughs the whole market looks different.

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n0mad01
it's either a pr action or a new tax lowering/avoiding scheme.

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banku_brougham
the definition of being an _______

