Publishers Lunch
Amazon is indeed opening a 5,500-square-foot bookstore, carrying a modest 5,000 to 6,000 titles -- all face out -- in Seattle's University Village on Tuesday, with 15 employees under the direction of Amazon Books vp Jennifer Cast. Store stocking is based on "data with heart," she tells the Seattle Times. "We're taking the data we have and we're creating physical places with it." That data includes such categories as top pre-orders and "most wished for cookbooks." And "below each book on the shelf is a card with either a review or a rating from the site."
The staff favorites selection begins with some owner's favorites: Jeff Bezos recommends titles including The Gift of Fear by Gavin de Becker, The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman, and Traps by his wife, MacKenzie Bezos. The Amazon Books store opens with 15 employees, and their prices are the same as the site's online prices (which means they will be changing prices a lot -- perhaps even daily). Geekwire notes that "prices aren't marked and need to be found at a kiosk or with Amazon's app."
Perhaps more interesting is what the store will not do. "The store will not be a location to pick-up Amazon orders. It won't be a showcase for Amazon Publishing imprints, whose titles often aren't picked up by the company’s retail competitors." It will highlight some Amazon devices, but "it will be first-and-foremost a bookstore," the paper reports. As for future plans, Cast says: "We're completely focused on this bookstore. We hope this is not our only one. But we'll see."
Cast was "one of Amazon's earliest employees and recently made news as a fund-raising activist behind a Washington ballot initiative to legalize same-sex marriage (to which the Bezoses contributed $2.5 million). She left Amazon in 2001, when she was vp of books, music, video and digital, and rejoined the company last October, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Separately, Greenlight Bookstore announced it will open a second location in Prospect Lefferts Gardens "sometime in the next year," having signed a letter of intent on a 2,100-square foot ground floor space at 626 Flatbush Avenue, a mixed-use building set to be finished construction by spring 2016. The new location, aside from operating as a general independent bookstore akin to the Fort Greene location, will also house the company's offsite sales business.
Co-owner Rebecca Fitting said in the announcement: "[We] are proud and excited that Greenlight will be opening our second store in Prospect Lefferts Gardens. Our business is ready to grow, and our hope is that by opening a bookstore in Prospect Lefferts Gardens, we are contributing to the community in a positive, constructive way. Right now neighborhood residents have to travel pretty far afield to buy a book, but our plan is to change that by bringing a bookstore to 626 Flatbush. When an emotional investment and a smart business decision coincide, it's a beautiful thing."
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