Writers Tricks of the Trade Volume 5, Issue 6

PRESS “CONTROL” THEN CLICK “BUY” TO PURCHASE ANY BOOK AMAZON OPENS FIRST BRICK AND MORTAR STORE IN SEATTLE J.A. Konrath A Self-Publishing Icon BUY (Photo: Amazon Two decades after it started selling books online, Amazon opens a shopping center storefront with books for sale on actual shelves Amazon has opened its first “Brick and Mortar” store in Seattle, Washington, the same city where they launched the company as an online bookseller twenty years ago, but they still hope you’ll buy online. BUY Called Amazon Books, the store is in Seattle's University Village, an upscale outdoor mall north of the University of Washington that's already home to thriving Apple and Microsoft stores. The move was greeted online with a strong note of irony, as Amazon's online book sales have been credited with bringing about the demise of hundreds of bookstores around the country. If this venture into a “real” store is successful and spawns more Amazon Books stores, will they go head-to-head with Barnes & Noble, the remaining big box bookstore? It could undercut physical retailers on price for years because it didn’t have brickand-mortar locations. It appears Amazon discovered those stores offered something Amazon couldn’t: customers could experience the instant gratification of owning an item the second it was purchased, as well as WRITERS’ TRICKS OF THE TRADE PAGE 23 BUY NOVEMBER-DECEMBER 2015

Writers Tricks of the Trade Volume 5, Issue 6 | Page 25