Amazon Bookstores take the best components from independent booksellers with a modern twist
When I heard Amazon was launching physical bookstores, I imagined it would be similar to Barnes and Noble. Sterile, huge selection of great books, a place to browse in for hours. What I discovered though was surprisingly different. They’ve managed to adopt the features from independent bookstores and make it work exceptionally well. However, if Amazon practiced one thing their predecessors have done, the stores would be unstoppable.
The first thing you’ll notice is the brick buildings Amazon Bookstores are housed in. It offers the old school feeling of an antique bookshop. Inside, it’s modern and leans closer to the aesthetic of an Apple store than a Barnes and Noble. A quick aside, in all fairness to B&N they’re scaling down their super-stores and giving them a makeover to stay competitive.†
Faces Out
Amazon has done something I haven’t seen done in any bookstore: the majority of books were all facing out. Displaying the full cover is typically reserved for perennial sellers or new bestsellers. It’s also an up-charge that bookstores offer to publishers.‡ This works well because Amazon Bookstores clearly are boasting quality over quantity. The University Village store in Seattle seems to have under 5,000 books on its shelves. Compared to an average B&N which probably has north of 30,000 books on their shelves.
Only Amazon can do this because they have something no other bookseller can come close to obtaining: sales data. Amazon sells half of America’s books.§ Each book that sits in their physical store has sold exceptionally well and will continue to.
If You Like This…
There’s a clever marketing move I saw in a bookstore in London. It’s a great concept but seldom practiced. If you liked this an arrow points to a book on the left, you’ll love that an arrow points to the right. If you liked Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl you’ll love Lionel Shriver’s We Need To Talk About Kevin. I imagine this is a highly converting shelf. It brings to life the ads we all see at the bottom of an Amazon product page: Customer who bought this item also bought this.
The Review Slips
A quintessential marker of an indie bookshop are the note-slips that are below a book. They’re beautiful commentary on the book above, usually written by the staff. A problem I’ve found with the slip is sometimes it’s difficult to read the handwritten notes. Amazon has done a remarkable job in placing real customer reviews on each book. The notes are curated and include the number of stars. You can also scan the barcode beside it to find the price. Prime customers will receive a big savings while others pay list price.
The 100 Books To Read In Lifetime
A pile of titles that have been nagging bookish people forever. I circled it, repeating the titles in my head muttering, “I need to read this one by year-end.”
4.8 & Above
Again, Amazon the boasts their highest rated books in an area called Highly Rated. It was the busiest section of the store when I visited.
The Staff
The staff didn’t act like they were a part of a massive corporation. They asked browsers for their names and were eager to help. This gave it a local shop intimacy. It reminded me of the Alexander Book Company in San Francisco.
The Quintessential Café
No bookstore is complete without the café. It’s what made Barnes and Noble change from a store to a place to lounge at.¶ The Amazon Bookstore in the San Francisco Bay Area had a café on site; but not all of them do.
What Amazon can do to keep people coming back
While the store is setup to clearly be a partial showroom for their electronic products, from Fire TV to Echo devices, it’s still a bookstore at heart and should put on events to give customers a reason to become frequent visitors.
A few months ago, Chase Jarvis, photographer and co-founder of CreativeLive, put on a spectacular event at the Union Square Apple Store.‖ The company had recently announced that they’re shifting their stores into Town Squares, a place to gather.◊ Jarvis spoke to a packed store, 100+ people, he was generous with his time and provided incredible value that day. It was a free event that I attended. It was valuable and got me familiar with the store which made me want to come back for future events.
Independent bookstores thrive from great events. It’s their secret in turning casual browsers to enrolled customers. McNally Jackson is an independent bookstore in New York City that not only has a superb collection of rare titles/genre (Romanian Poetry anyone?) but also hosts great events. I’ve seen plenty of authors there from Joyce Carol Oates to R.L. Stein. B&N is pushing their events as traffic drivers too.††
It would be interesting to see Amazon host author events for their best-selling self-published authors too. After all, Amazon has created an eco-system for writers to thrive and serve their niche audiences. E.L. James, Andy Weir, or Hugh Howey could draw large crowds to these stores. It doesn’t need to solely be authors. People would line up out the door to see directors, show-runners, or actors on any of the Prime Original series that Amazon Studios has produced. The stores are small, so it’ll take some clever feng shuing of the space, but it can work. If they can get events right, they’ll be unstoppable.
The events could be recorded, spliced up and made into an entire social media content strategy. It would be great example content to display on their in-store Echo displays, most notable their new 2nd Generation Amazon Show.‡‡
Nevertheless, it’ll be fascinating to watch the Amazon Bookstores evolve over time. Their data supporting a quality over quantity approach will satisfy busy holiday shoppers this year. But if you need a place to kill an afternoon, an independent bookstore is still the clear winner.
Works Cited
† Sax, David. 2016. “What Barnes & Noble Doesn’t Get About Bookstores.” The New Yorker. October 21. https://www.newyorker.com/business/currency/what-barnes-noble-doesnt-get-about-bookstores.
‡ Tabor, Mary B. W. 1996. “In Bookstore Chains, Display Space Is for Sale .” The New York Times. January 15. https://www.nytimes.com/1996/01/15/us/in-bookstore-chains-display-space-is-for-sale.html.
§ Author Earnings. 2018. “January 2018 Report: US online book sales, Q2-Q4 2017 .” Author Earnings. January. http://authorearnings.com/report/january-2018-report-us-online-book-sales-q2-q4-2017/.
¶ UPI Archives. 1993. “Starbucks teams with Barnes & Noble in book and coffee deal .” United Press International. September 3. https://www.upi.com/Archives/1993/09/07/Starbucks-teams-with-Barnes-Noble-in-book-and-coffee-deal/6526747374400/.
‖ Havlik, Dan. 2018. “Apple Stores Offering Free Photography Classes Featuring Photographer Chase Jarvis.” Shutterbug. July 11. https://www.shutterbug.com/content/apple-stores-offering-free-photography-classes-featuring-photographer-chase-jarvis.
◊ Matney, Lucas. 2018. “Take a look at Apple’s first ‘Town Square,’ its most beautiful retail store yet.” TechCrunch. October 22. Accessed 2017. http://tcrn.ch/2xYcmh1.
†† Cheng, Andria. 2018. “Barnes & Noble’s Problem Is No Longer Just Amazon .” Forbes. September 6. Accessed 2018. https://www.forbes.com/sites/andriacheng/2018/09/06/barnes-nobles-problem-is-no-longer-about-amazon/#39c4af5744d0.
‡‡ Price, Molly. 2018. “Amazon Echo Show (2nd Gen) review: bigger sounds and better looks.” CNET. October 8. https://www.cnet.com/reviews/amazon-echo-show-second-generation-review/.
Image Credits
Cover photo: University Village Directory website, Amazon Books, https://uvillage.com/amazon-books/
Amazon Bookstore interior photo: Foundation for Economic Education, https://fee.org/articles/amazon-just-invented-the-bookstore/
Bookshelf photo: taken by the author, Robert Maisano, ©2018.
Prime Originals photo: — Ibid.
Chase Jarvis / Apple Event photo: taken from Chase Jarvis’s Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/chasejarvis
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