A Digital Presence in the Physical World? Not Likely.

By Bob Hughes - Feb 06 , 2012

The biggest online retailer might be considering opening a brick-and-mortar store.

At least, that’s the speculation. According to an article in The New York Times, among other newspapers and news sites, since Amazon is in the process of opening more, and larger, distribution centers, can an Amazon physical retail presence be far behind?

Well, never say never, but it seems unlikely. Amazon is not only the largest vendor of books, but also a significant retailing presence for a wide variety of products, from shelf-stable grocery items to rugs and furniture and clothing.

Sure, bookstores sell more than books nowadays, things like toys, stationery, souvenirs – they have to, to cover the costs of selling books. But it seems that as digital sales of books themselves soar, Amazon would be foolhardy to open stores to offer all sorts of merchandise (or a carefully selected choice of all the merchandise it offers).

And Amazon sells so very many different things, a store would seem to be more like a crazy dumping ground like something you’d find in the sci-fi series Warehouse 13 than even the best-supplied Walmart. And does Amazon want to become like Walmart?

The discussion itself, though, reveals the interest in Amazon, as a kind of merchandising version of computer maker and seller Apple: seemingly all-powerful.

What does this represent for writers who are creating books (either for online or physical distribution), or building a platform to increase their audience?. Not much, really. As an author, your concerns are content, and distribution. As someone building a platform, you’re working on creating content and you’re building an audience to follow you wherever and however you distribute that content.

After all, the content is more important than the delivery system. And whatever Amazon does in terms of opening physical stores or not, it’s pretty likely that once you’ve built a large enough platform and finished your book, you’ll be able to sell it anywhere.