As an answer to fast-growing Shopify, Amazon plans to launch what is effectively “Amazon as a Service,” which they are calling Buy with Prime. The pitch is to allow merchants the “shopping benefits of Prime…whether they sell in Amazon’s store or beyond.” The service will bundle Amazon’s Prime delivery service (and returns management) along with Amazon Pay checkout, running from merchants’ own websites. Significantly, merchant will also “receive shopper order information, including email addresses, which they can use to provide excellent customer service, and build direct relationships with shoppers.” The initial launch invites are limited to merchants using Fulfillment by […]
New Models
Reese’s Book Club Explores A Subscription Box
Content platform Hello Sunshine, home of Reese Witherspoon’s wildly successful book club, is considering a subscription box offering. Tech Crunch was the first to notice that a survey sent to Hello Sunshine’s email list April 16 included several box-focused questions. The 43-question survey, appropriately incentivized with a contest to win a book box, asks readers what subscriptions they already receive; what matters most in a subscription, with 12 options that include personalization, saving money, and “a box full of surprises”; and how they prefer to pay for subscriptions. It also asks how social impact affects readers’ buying decisions, one of […]
Barnes & Noble Opens New Store In Maryland
After a long gap, Barnes & Noble opens another concept store — their sixth — in the mall in Columbia, MD today. The 17,000-square-foot store features a new design for their cafe, now at the front of the store without any walls or barriers, and the cookbook section is right next to it. As the local Patch report notes, “There are three community tables throughout the bookstore, a concept which is part of the new prototype.” (From the pictures, two of those are in that large open cafe.) Sales staff will have tablets to help customers find merchandise, and there are […]
Ish No More; Bookish.com Is Live
After years of development, three ceos, eight figures of funding and the challenges of operating a start-up joint venture after the founding partners negotiated settlements with the Department of Justice over alleged collusion, Bookish.com officially launched to the public on Monday evening. (As HBG ceo David Young told the AP, “We received clearance for Bookish, but every time any of us talk about something we have to conform to the DOJ rules.”) The three founding partners–Hachette Book Group, Penguin and Simon & Schuster–are joined by 16 other publishers (including the other three largest publishers, as well as Harlequin, HMH, Norton. […]
At Kepler’s Conference, Participants Pledge to Raise More Capital
Ron Charles at the Washington Post filed three blog reports from the weekend’s gathering of approximately 80 “publishers, philanthropists, entrepreneurs and authors,” designed to help envision the new Kepler’s bookstore and plot the role of a community bookstore going forward. Perhaps most importantly, though, “members of this conference pledged to raise another $250,000” for the store, on top of approximately $750,000 that has already been raised from almost 700 people. As Charles wrote, the event really “isn’t meant to produce a revelatory business plan. It’s meant to make the participants feel personally committed to helping the struggling indie bookstore in […]
Tattered Cover One Step Away from Airport Stores; Politics & Prose Travels
A Denver City Council committee unanimously sent to the mayor and full council for approval the proposal to give the Tattered Cover the concession for four bookstores under their own name and one combined store paired with Hudson News at the Denver International Airport. The stores would open in early 2014. Washington, DC’s Politics & Prose bookstore has launched a literary travel tour program, working with DC-based Academic Travel Abroad (which works with the Smithsonian, National Geographic, and various alumni associations, among others). “Part tour, part roving literary symposium, each trip will be led by an expert in the field,” including store […]