This week, Amazon revealed the location of its second brick-and-mortar bookstore, which will open in a few months in Southern California, at a mall near the University of California, San Diego. The online retailer seems to have big ambitions for its physical stores.
On Wednesday, Nick Wingfield, who covers Amazon for The New York Times, visited the only Amazon bookstore in existence, in the University Village mall in Seattle. From inside the store, he had an online chat with Alexandra Alter, who writes about publishing for The Times. They discussed Amazon’s strategy and how the retailer’s stores differ from other bookstores. Here’s what they had to say:
ALEXANDRA ALTER: Hi Nick! You’re reporting live from the mother ship! What’s it like?
NICK WINGFIELD: The best part is, I just tested the free Wi-Fi and it’s 114 Mbps, easily the fastest I’ve ever gotten. Thank you, Jeff Bezos!
ALEXANDRA: Great, so you can just buy stuff from the Amazon website while you’re sitting in the store. Unlike Barnes & Noble, I bet Amazon doesn’t mind if people browse in its store then go buy it online.
NICK: Exactly. Here’s the deal: At first glance, it looks like an ordinary but nice Barnes & Noble store. It’s clean and well-lit and corporate. It doesn’t have the charm of a funky used-bookstore. Once you start poking around the shelves, you notice the differences.
ALEXANDRA: How is the selection different? How are the sections organized?
NICK: They have 5,000 to 6,000 book titles, fewer than what you would find at a big Barnes & Noble. All of the books are arranged cover out, rather than spine out, in the belief that it makes browsing more friendly. I am so buying that “Boho Crochet” book.
ALEXANDRA: Ha, I see Amazon is going big on adult coloring books — smart move since those have taken over the best-seller list on the website. Can you check something out for me? I heard that the store has a shelf of books recommended by Jeff Bezos. Is his wife MacKenzie’s novel there?
NICK: I’ll go look now.
O.K., I’m back. You were right! He does recommend his wife’s book. He discloses his conflict of interest. But still …
ALEXANDRA: Lucky guess. What else is he recommending?
NICK: Kazuo Ishiguro’s “The Remains of the Day” and “Seveneves” by the science-fiction writer Neal Stephenson, who incidentally used to work for Bezos’s space exploration company, Blue Origin.
ALEXANDRA: A man of diverse literary tastes. Here’s another thing I’m curious about. A lot of people in the publishing industry were worried when they heard Amazon planned to open bookstores, in part because they assumed Amazon would heavily promote books published through its own imprints. Amazon has had trouble getting those books into brick-and-mortar bookstores, which don’t want to sell books by its No. 1 competitor. But I’ve heard that the Amazon bookstore doesn’t carry many Amazon Publishing titles. Is that how it looks to you?
NICK: I just asked a store employee and was told there’s no dedicated section for Amazon-published titles, though some of them are sprinkled around the store. There is, however, a small table near the front window called “Books That Inspired Amazon Originals” — that is, Amazon-produced TV series and movies. Philip K. Dick’s “The Man in the High Castle” is there. That’s corporate synergy at work.
ALEXANDRA: It’s like advertising for their shows, but they can sell the advertising. Here’s my biggest question about the bookstore. Amazon already has a huge market share of physical book sales through its website, 60 percent, by some estimates. So why does it need physical stores at all?
NICK: Amazon, officially, won’t tell you much about the motivations for doing bricks-and-mortar. But what I gather from my reporting is they have a lot of ideas about how physical retailing can be improved, ideas that come from their data-centric approach to online retailing. There is also a serendipity to book shopping offline that’s hard to replicate online.
By the way, I just saw a customer walking around with a copy of Donald Trump’s “The Art of the Deal.” I don’t know if he’s purchasing it ironically.
ALEXANDRA: An ironic purchase is still a purchase. I bet Trump and Amazon would agree on that.
So, some Amazon skeptics have suggested that books are just going to be window-dressing and what Amazon really wants is a place to showcase its digital devices. Is there a prominent area for Amazon devices?
NICK: Electronics, most of them made by Amazon, like Echo and Fire TV, are the nucleus of the store. They’re spread out on tables and stands so you can fiddle with them just like you can fiddle with iPads at the Apple Store a short hop from here.
Knowledgeable people tell me that Amazon views its physical stores as an important way to introduce the public to new, unfamiliar devices. Techies might be comfortable buying a device like the Echo online — a speaker and virtual assistant for the home — but a lot of people will want to see it in the flesh first. That said, I don’t think Amazon stores would have saved the Fire Phone, the Amazon smartphone that belly-flopped. I should also say that books are not necessarily going to be the focus of all of the stores it opens in the future. Amazon intends to experiment.
ALEXANDRA: Interesting. What else do you think it might sell in physical stores? Clothing? Pets? This is a company that delivers groceries and paper towels, makes award-winning television shows and wants to send tourists into space, so the possibilities seem pretty vast.
NICK: I’ve heard food is one of the things they’re considering.
ALEXANDRA: One of the biggest questions right now is how many stores Amazon will open, and how quickly. A business professor speaking at a digital publishing conference this week speculated that it might open “thousands” of stores. There have been wild rumors that have sent other booksellers into a panic. What are you hearing?
NICK: “Thousands” is a ludicrous number, at least in the short term. I’ve heard “dozens.” Keep in mind that about 15 years after Apple opened its first store, it has fewer than 500 of them.
ALEXANDRA:Still, even if the ambitions are modest in the short term, booksellers are definitely nervous about Amazon’s entry into physical retail. Independent bookstores are actually thriving right now, in part because sales of print books have stabilized and e-book sales are down. Publishing experts say physical stores are still the No. 1 way to drive discovery of books. And as you said, people still like browsing for books in stores. They like the serendipity of it. But if Amazon gains ground in brick and mortar retail, independents will lose their biggest advantage.
Are people are in there browsing right now?
NICK: It’s lunchtime on a weekday and there is no food for sale in the store, so there are not many people. The biggest question I have is, are malls the best place for these stores? It feels like a busy urban shopping area with lots of foot traffic might work better.
ALEXANDRA: Nick, sorry to send you on another scavenger hunt, but can you check to see if Brad Stone’s “The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon” is on the shelves? MacKenzie Bezos didn’t like the book; she blasted it in a one-star review on Amazon.
NICK: Wow, I just found it. They put it out of sight on a bottom shelf, but it’s there.