# Amazon Books ---- Offline **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 3, 2015, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazon-books-offline/736516 "2015-11-03T13:09:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2015, 1:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazon-books-offline/736516/1 "2015-11-03T13:09:19Z")
You can now buy Amazon Books in an actual non-internet bookstore. > **[Amazon Opens Its First Actual Bookstore](https://www.huffpost.com/entry/amazon-book-store-seattle_n_56380dc4e4b079a43c0468ac)** > > Amazon Opens Its First Actual Bookstore > [@](#): > > Amazon has sold a lot of books, but never like this. > > On Tuesday, the online retailer will throw open the doors of its very first brick-and-mortar bookstore in Seattle, Washington. > > “Amazon Books is a physical extension of [Amazon.com](http://Amazon.com),” company vice president Jennifer Cast wrote in a statement published Monday. “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](http://Amazon.com) customer ratings, pre-orders, sales, popularity on Goodreads, and our curators’ assessments.” What an innovative concept! You can actually pick up the books and flip through them! Having undermined the concept, they’re now going to embrace it. In one bookstore, at least. > [@](#): > > Virtually all of the books are presented face-out “to give you more information as you browse.” Cast told the Seattle Times that Amazon “wanted to showcase authors and their work, rather than cramming as many titles as possible on shelves. ‘We realized that we felt sorry for the books that were spine out,’ Cast said.” They say that “virtually all the books are presented face-out”, but in the first and third photo I see plenty of book presented only spines out. ---
**Author:** ![sandra\_nz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/eada6e/32.png) [@sandra\_nz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sandra_nz)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2015, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazon-books-offline/736516/2 "2015-11-03T13:28:04Z")
> [@](#): > > The books in our store are selected based on [Amazon.com](http://Amazon.com) customer ratings, pre-orders, sales, popularity on Goodreads, and our curators’ assessments. So they’re only going to sell popular books? I’ll stick to my favourite independent bookstore, where the sellers are book lovers and can recommend me something different and interesting. ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [November 3, 2015, 10:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazon-books-offline/736516/3 "2015-11-03T22:49:47Z")
[![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/XCvwCcEP74Q/hqdefault.jpg "The Four Horsemen: Amazon/Apple/Facebook & Google - Who Wins/Loses (Scott Galloway, L2 Inc.) | DLD15") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCvwCcEP74Q) This guy predicted it couple of months back. I thought was funny, not sure if he’s right about everything else though. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2015, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazon-books-offline/736516/4 "2015-11-04T00:10:52Z")
> [@sandra\_nz](#): > > So they’re only going to sell popular books? I’ll stick to my favourite independent bookstore, where the sellers are book lovers and can recommend me something different and interesting. It looks like the goal is to sell highly rated books, not highly popular books. Based on the example book sections, it also looks like they’re using some data mining to pinpoint target audiences. ---
**Author:** ![Thudlow\_Boink](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/thudlow_boink/32/320_2.png) [@Thudlow\_Boink](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Thudlow_Boink)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2015, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazon-books-offline/736516/5 "2015-11-04T00:35:09Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > They say that “virtually all the books are presented face-out”, but in the first and third photo I see plenty of book presented only spines out. It looks to me like all the spines-out books in those photos are up high where you can’t really see them anyway. Which raises the question of why you’d have bookshelves up so high anyway. I can’t be sure they’re actual books, and not wallpaper or something. ---
**Author:** ![Rigamarole](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/77aa72/32.png) [@Rigamarole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Rigamarole)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2015, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazon-books-offline/736516/6 "2015-11-04T01:42:01Z")
So is this just a publicity stunt or is there an actual point to it? ---
**Author:** ![Sattua](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sattua/32/11906_2.png) [@Sattua](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sattua)\ **Post date:** [November 4, 2015, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/amazon-books-offline/736516/7 "2015-11-04T02:08:14Z")
I don’t know what to think of this. I have self-published books on Amazon and I can say, for a fact, that a couple months ago they re-jiggered their algorithms so that any book that wasn’t already a bestseller is now completely screwed. My sales went from “comfortable fun money” to “virtually nothing” overnight. Clearly they’re very much in the business of promoting what’s already selling–which puts the lie to this book store being somehow different than any other.