I thought the Amazon store was a terrible idea, then went there | Hacker News Reader

I thought the Amazon store was a terrible idea, then went there

vox.com

53 pointscurtis45 comments

Good article, even if personally I didn't read anything in it about the store I didn't expect. A thing that jumped on me:

> It didn't even seem weird when I snapped photos for this story on my phone

So why every single photo is labelled as "Stephen Brashear/Getty Images", while the TFA itself was apparently written by Sarah Kliff?

ETA:

Also,

> My favorite version of this interaction was between a middle-aged woman and a sales associate. He explained that the particular book she asked about wasn't available, but he could order it to the store for her. This felt absurd, given that Amazon offers free home shipping to everyone on orders of $35 or more, and to Prime members for all orders.

There are many reasons for that scene to not be in fact absurd. For instance, they may try to preserve the brick&mortar store. Maybe the woman didn't have (and didn't want) an Amazon account. Maybe she didn't have an address here or it was more convenient for her to pick it up from the shop or on her way to somewhere.

> So why every single photo is labelled as "Stephen Brashear/Getty Images", while the TFA itself was apparently written by Sarah Kliff?

Maybe because Vox hired a professional photographer, and actually had them follow journalistic standards, including getting model releases?

There are over half a million homeless in the US.

Yes. And many don't look like stereotypical homeless and have enough wealth to buy books. Thank you, I forgot about that explanation too.

Guess those photos didnt make it into the article

That would be my guess, but then it would also imply that the article didn't make it into the editor's inbox.

(This is not the case here, but the deplorable quality of news articles in general, even in mainstream outlets, makes me suspect that the job of editor no longer exists.)

Vox has a surprising amount of editors: http://www.vox.com/masthead

This is like salt on the wound isn't it? First they undercut everyone and drive 'em out of business then they open up a shop of their own. The only thing worse would be if they opened it at the same site as a bankrupt B&N store.

They very nearly have. Barnes and Noble shut down a store at University Village a couple of years ago. The Amazon store isn't in the same building, but it's the same shopping center.

Salt in who's wound, though? The bookstores that were charging us more for books? Not sure how cheaper books is bad for the consumer.

This makes me sad. The quintessential consumeristic, capitalist worldview, missing the point entirely.

Of course Amazon can offer cheaper products. They have grown to be a massive company, nobody can compete with them now and they make a massive profit that goes to the company owners.

Ignore the consumer. What about the bookstore owners who used to make a living and had to close their business because a bigger company basically put them out of business? People who might have worked generations there, perhaps even had family run businesses. Previously the income/wealth would go to many bookstore owners, now it goes to one entity - Amazon. If you don't see a problem in this simply because "hey, I get cheaper stuff, that must be good right?", then I am quite sad.

Not everything that is good for the consumer is good everyone on the way. Please remember that.

There's something to be said for the experience of browsing bookstores (especially ones that stock things other than just bestsellers).

I live pretty close to UVillage so I swung by on Friday last week.

It was honestly a great experience, and I think my initial gut feeling was that I wanted to try and hate it. But all the books are on sale for the same price as they are on the website, and there's still something pretty awesome about being able to flip through a book before buying it.

One funny anecdote - My wife and I overheard one person kind of scoffing at the whole thing while wandering in the store, "Pfft... these idiots, why pay full price here when you can just order it from their website..." Despite the fact that as you walk in there was a big orange sign "All prices the same as amazon.com"

I went there and the most jarring things to me were:

1) they don't take cash

2) when I swiped my card, my email address and amazon info was instantly/automatically linked w/ this transaction.

re: 2 -- we all know this sort of linking is possible, but I'd never experienced it like that. Jarring.

RE: 2, if it was some other store that automagically linked my CC with my Amazon account, I'd also feel weird. But in an Amazon store, this seems like something totally to expected (and welcomed). The store is an extention of Amazon webpage after all.

You've never bought something (a second time) from a merchant using Square? The first time you use a Square checkout, Square asks for your email address, and creates a bidirectional {email, CCN} index. The second time, they just look up the email from the card you swiped and send your receipt automatically.

Never experienced that, no. I guess I haven't bought anything twice from Square. I think that in places where Square might be used (that I'd be (food truck perhaps?)) I'm much more likely to go to cash as a first pay method. Amazon isn't the first place I've been that cash wasn't accepted (only the second I can recall off the top of my head, though), but I think it's supremely odd that I can't use legal tender to buy things. When a till can't break a $50 or $100 bill, that's understandable, but when a business refuses to deal with cash currency at all... well that's strange to me.

This is a trend that slowly starts showing up around the world. In Oslo, they still tend to accept cash in shops, but they look at you weirdly. It's understandable - well-designed contactless card payment process is faster than cash, not to mention more hygienic.

(OTOH it can shut a store down if the Internet Connectivity Gods are in a bad mood that day.)

> It's a curated collection of items available for immediate purchase. If that doesn't sound revolutionary, it's because it isn't! It's how stores have worked for decades now.

Saying "decades" seems pretty inaccurate. We rather speak about millenniums.

> I couldn't have ordered the headphones or the book in time for my flight tomorrow morning

Prime now, although perhaps not for that specific book (they definitely have the headphones though)

Prime fresh, too, if you can wait slightly longer than now. My orders usually show up between 0400 and 0600 as long as I order before midnight.

This is a front to eventually sell Amazon hardware and be entrenched in an area wealthy and near both an Apple Store and a Microsoft Store.

It's not a "front" for that... that's literally what it is.

They're already selling Kindle and Fire devices in the store from what it looks like (presumably Echo as well).

All the Kindle devices (which I'd say might be the highlight of going to the store -- if you've ever wondered what form factor / features you wanted, and were a bit timid from guessing and buying online -- drop by the store and find out first-hand), and the Echo device (dimming lights as a show of strength to an entertained audience), and some other things like headphones and AmazonBasics bluetooth speakers...

...and a bid to be in every airport. This is tailor made for a better experience than a Hudson News in the target demographic.

> I don't expect a wave of [Amazon bookstores] popping up across the country, mostly because of how other large bookstore chains have shuttered in recent years. At the same time, now I can at least imagine a world in which they might work

> If there's a case for an Amazon bookstore, it's really the case for any other store in the mall: It will always (or at least the foreseeable future) be faster to buy something in person than it will be on the internet.

i shop at independent bookstores whenever possible, and it's not because it's 'faster'.

this essay sidesteps several elephants in the room...

What are your reasons, then? Of which elephants do you speak?

I'm assuming the OP is talking independent stores vs. Amazon as in "I don't wanna support the monolithic beast known as Amazon; I'd rather support mom&pop stores".... and other various data points around Amazon-is-evil-crazy-sweatshops-and-twist-arms-of-book-authors type stuff.

for one thing, i know that a local bookstore will never punish writers by, say, yanking all Hachette titles off their shelves in a vindictive, monopolistic fit.

like others have said: Amazon has been a big reason why other bookstores are going out of business, and we are culturally poorer for it. bookstores are about culture, not speed. and it's also about who drives culture: neighborhoods and curators? or a neoliberal megacorporation that holds authors and publishers in disdain?

I'd rather have a corporate bookstore than an independent one. My personal experience with independent bookstores is that they're usually biased about their stock and can be even more vindictive against authors they don't like.

It doesn't help that most bookstore owners I have met (maybe half a dozen) are aggressively opinionated about what books are "worthy."

Is that a negative, when there's another one down the street? I like people with opinions, when there's more than one to sample from. That Amazon has effectively destroyed the idea of a bookstore as a curator, without really replacing it, is still troubling to me (and random curators online don't have the same investment--that is to say, a financial one--in providing something worth considering).

I'm tired of seeing this headline structure. So overplayed.

http://www.powerwriting.com/caples.html

I wonder if this is just a temporary phase in the store format ,and the next format will include an on-demand book printing machine and some nice way have the shopping experience around it ?

I dislike that the author went in ready to "write a takedown". Dissuaded me from taking the authors opinions very seriously. (Is that ironic?)

Maybe I've been under a rock recently, but this is the first I've read of an Amazon brick-and-mortar store.

I think it opened quite recently. And it feels like a curious experiment for the time being, not quite mind blowing news.

There were some information about it few days ago on HN. I guess I've left from under the rock only a week ago.

Even now, I see a lot of parents/kids on weekends browsing/shopping in old style bookstores! There is a definite need. Good to see the offline stores coming back!

Pure advertisement.

Scott Galloway of NYU/L2, Inc. talks more about this "clicks to bricks" trend in his videos.

It's interesting that the Amazon store doesn't accept cash. No books for the poor ? Gotta give them credit for pushing the digital divide as hard as they can.

It's interesting that they don't accept cash. No books for the poor ? Got to give Amazon credit for pushing the digital divide as hard as they can.

I would think it would be illegal to reject cash in a brick and mortar store. Who else does it?

The only legal requirement is that cash be accepted as payment for debt (so a restaurant that gives you your check after you eat must accept it).

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