I absolutely loved the University Village Amazon bookstore. I've got a big list of reasons why. First of all, there was no need to absolutely pack the books. Ea

I absolutely loved the University Village Amazon bookstore. I've got a big list of reasons why. First of all, there was no need to absolutely pack the books. Each book was displayed cover out, with some space around it, with maybe an endorsement or a bit of a review under it. It made it easy to discover interesting stuff simply by looking around. As a sci fi nerd, I'm used to the sci fi section being a bunch of paperbacks squished together floor to ceiling with just a vague title and an author name facing me. This was a huge step up. I found more than one new book there, and knowing that I'd get the Amazon price for it when I checked out made purchasing it and walking out an easy call (unlike at another bookstore, where for a new release I would've had to choose between getting it today or getting it 30% off the "list price" on Amazon). That said, the whole reason this works as a store design is that the store has no particular motivation to have a big back catalog. If they don't have it, you're just gonna go get it on Amazon, so they haven't lost a sale anyway. The store did get worse over time, though. More and more of the floor space became focused on selling a bunch of stuff that worked with Alexa. Stop it. You're not an Apple Store. Just be a book store. And as much as the book selection was pretty great to me the first few times I went in, when I stopped in a year later and the book selections were mostly the same, it was a lot less great.