Three decades in, Amazon still working on its original books business

Within its first month of coming to life as an online bookstore in 1995, Amazon.com had shipped books to all 50 states. By 1997, it had shipped its one millionth order (hand-delivered by Jeff Bezos himself). So there’s something emblematic in how the company that billed itself as “earth’s biggest bookstore” has continued to evolve its bookseller business across three decades as it became an everything store, a retail giant with Whole Foods and various experiments in the bricks-and-mortar world, a global logistics provider, the country’s largest cloud computing services vendor, and most recently, a major generative AI investor. 

For all of its time spent in books — and what its success has done to the bookstore business — there are still some issues that Amazon has to work out with readers. In the middle of December, Amazon rolled out a new service, Your Books, aiming to tackle some of the challenges it still faces in helping users build a library that they turn to more often.

It starts with customer reviews, one of the oldest features on Amazon, and an integral part of its capacity as a bookseller. Helping customers to find their next book, through reviews and recommendations, is central to at least approximating the bricks-and-mortar bookstore experience, where customers could physically browse the shelves and speak with staff who may have known their tastes well. 

Reviews extend to all Amazon products, but with books there is an additional significance. Buying razor blades or sponges online doesn’t entail much of a lost experience compared to making the transaction in a physical store, but being in a bookstore comes with accidental discoveries — perusing shelves and a…