Inside Amazon's Physical Bookstore

What's Up rich on Techi's Rich Demiro here richon tech Dot TV. And last week I was so sad when I went to the Third Street Promenade in Santa Monica.

I saw that the Barnes and.

Noble bookstore has closed. That was sort of an institution there. It was at the end of this large pedestrian mall. It was a giant bookstore. Every time I went in there, I always wondered how it was still there. And here's the problem. I never really bought anything there because I knew the prices were cheaper on Amazon, and so you'd pay sort of full price for these books when I know I could just order them online. So I was sad to see it go, even though I definitely contributed

It's brand new.

They just redid the whole thing, like spent I don't know, over a billion dollars to redo this place.

And Amazon Books was there.

So I was at the mall for some other reason yesterday I'll explain later in the week, but I wandered into the Amazon Books and I fell in love with the bookstore all over again. So if you've never been in an Amazon Books, let me explain. It's basically like the Amazon website but in a store. So it's very fresh looking, very open. They've got a bunch of books there. Obviously the selection is not as vast, but they've got kind of popular best selling books there, good selection of those.

So here's the deal.

When you buy a book, so there's no price tags, or there's very few price tags. Some of the electronics have price tags, but the books really don't. So if you want to find the price for an item, you just scan a barcode underneath the book, or you can kind of scan the cover using the Amazon app and it.

Will tell you how much the book is. But here's the deal.

If you're a Prime member, yeah, the prices are just what they are online and they change all the time.

But if you're not a Prime member, you pay full price basically most of the time.

So on the book that I bought, which was Gary Vaynerchuk's new book, Crushing It, thirty dollars if you just walked in there off the street. But I paid eighteen dollars because I'm a Prime member. And then when it came to time to check out, by the way, I bought three things. I bought two books and a planner, and I was so impressed.

It was about fifty dollars total.

So when you check out, there is a human there to help you check out. They scan the books and then they say, hey, are you an Amazon Prime Member?

Do you have the app on your phone?

And if you have the app on your phone, all you do is you scan a QR code that's sitting by the cash register and then it's somehow that links you to them and it says, okay, do you want to charge this purchase to the credit card on file at Amazon? You can pick the credit card you want, or I had a credit with Amazon. They asked if I wanted to use that. I said no, and that's it. You're out of the store in like three seconds. The checkout process was so fast they can print you out

I said, yes, So it seems like they're going to bring.

Some of that self checkout technology to these Amazon bookstores as well. Maybe not right away, but sounds like maybe that will happen eventually. But overall, you gotta check out the Amazon Books. I love bookstores. I've always loved the bookstore.

Since I was a kid.

This is a fresh take on it because the prices are actually good. And if you're looking for something like a little gift for someone, or even an Amazon Basics item like a cable for your phone, kind of a charger or a little case or something, or a Bluetooth speaker, Amazon Basics are great and they have a large selection of those at the bookstore as well. So again, Amazon Books, Century City Mall. I really want to go back. I