AMAZON To Open 300-400 Bookstores

Though it’s been rumored in a few ways, shapes and forms this past decade, Mathrani said during his company’s fourth-quarter earnings results that Amazon is looking to open at least 300 Amazon Books stores, but did not set a timetable.

Any plans to launch a chain of book stores around the country is likely to be met with dismay and resistance from the remaining bookstore chains, who survived Amazon’s online onslaught.

Amazon already has one physical store that opened back in November.

Amazon declined to give the WSJ a comment on Mathrani’s statement.

For comparison, Barnes and Noble has 648 retail stores in the 2015 fiscal year (though it had an additional 724 Barnes and Noble “College” locations). It’s unclear where Mathrani got the figure for Amazon’s plans. The store also prominently features Amazon gadgets such as the voice-activated Echo speaker and Fire TV streaming device.

“This is a consumer electronics store housed in bookstore clothing”, said Michael Pachter, an analyst at Wedbush Securities Inc.in Los Angeles, told Bloomberg News.

Amazon’s bookstore in Seattle carries books selected based on customer ratings and popularity on Amazon.com. Online makeup subscription service Birchbox “is cutting their overhead to open bricks-and-mortar stores”, he said. (GGP), a large U.S. shopping mall operator.

Amazon has been rumored as a bricks-and-mortar player before. The company didn’t immediately return a request for comment.