Amazon are online retail giants, valued by some at around the $180 billion mark. Now, in what was a rather undercover operation, they have opened their first physical book store in Seattle’s University Village neighbourhood.

So what sets this ‘physical extension of Amazon.com’ apart from other bookstores? On the surface it might look similar but there are some nifty little tweaks. TIME reports:

Amazon Books doesn’t look much different than an average book shop. But Amazon’s store is unique in that it includes reviews customers have posted on its website. The company also says books sold in its store are priced the same as the ones on its website. The books are also placed cover-out, rather than the traditional spine-out…

Books are sorted by how many stars they’ve received on Amazon.com and by genre.

Specific reviews are placed near relevant titles in the store. Although Amazon sells physical books in its store, there are stations for its Kindle e-reader, too.

The store also includes categories based on shopping habits from Amazon.com.

Let’s have ourselves a good look around.

The only fundamental flaw I see is that you actually have to leave the house and walk there, as opposed to clicking a few buttons on a screen and waiting for someone else to do the hard yards.

[source:time]