Yes, and they were quite fun to browse. They were laid out in a way that books next to each other would be "recommended" for each other. In that way, you would often find a group of books that were interesting to you.

As others said, it was covers out, which in my opinion only had the downside of having limited shelf space.

Their design and layout (the "4-star" stores too) borrowed heavily from popular late 90s/2000s UK bookstore chain "Waterstones" IMO.

I've always found the physical similarity of Amazon's own retail store efforts to Waterstone's curious, as Amazon actually tried a partnership with Waterstones to sell Kindles and such years before opening their first stores back in 2012... First Amazon book store with remarkably similar design and layout to a Waterstones followed in 2015. As a UK expat living in the US my first thoughts on entering an Amazon Book store here was just how much it was like Waterstones.

Could just be coincidence!

> https://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/waterstones...

> https://www.theverge.com/2015/11/2/9661556/amazon-books-firs...

They had covers facing forwards, which made it incredibly exhausting to browse due to overstimulation.