Amazon's Seattle bookstore. (GeekWire Photo).
Amazon’s Seattle bookstore. (GeekWire Photo).

Amazon is opening another bookstore.

The company’s latest brick-and-mortar location will be in Chicago, reported The Chicago Tribune.

The Southport store will be Amazon’s fourth physical bookstore in the U.S. Last fall, the company opened its first in Seattle amid secrecy and anticipation.

Amazon's bookstore in Seattle. (GeekWire photo).
Amazon’s bookstore in Seattle. (GeekWire photo).
The Amazon bookstore in Seattle
Inside the Amazon bookstore in Seattle.

Just four months after opening the flagship store, Amazon confirmed a San Diego location was in the works. In June, Amazon said it would open a bookstore in Portland.

amazonbooksfirekindle121There are also reports indicating that Amazon will open a store in New York City’s Hudson Yards, though that’s unconfirmed.

In an interview with GeekWire last fall, just before Amazon opened its first location in Seattle, Amazon Books’ head Jennifer Cast hinted that more stores might be on the way.

“We hope that if this goes well, if customers love it, we’d love to do it in other places,” Cast said.

Amazon bookstores take a slightly different approach to retail. All book titles face outward, making it easy for customers to browse titles. Also, none of the books have price tags. Instead, customers wave the bar code on the book under a scanner in order to determine the price, which matches prices found on Amazon.com.

The store in Seattle, which spans 7,400 square feet and includes about 5,000 books, also showcases a healthy slate of Amazon devices, including the popular Kindle e-readers.

It’s a bit ironic that Amazon is opening physical bookstores, given that the company put many independent bookstores out of business with its online innovations that launched 20 years ago. But in recent years, the tech giant has increasingly unlocked creative ways to get closer to its customers. Physical retail stores, long the advantage of traditional brick-and-mortar retailers, is one way to do that.

Another example of Amazon’s brick-and-mortar strategy is the company’s plan to open drive-up grocery stores. GeekWire reported last week that a 9,759-square-foot retail space where customers can pick up groceries that they’ve ordered online is set to open in Seattle, in what the company calls “a new model of grocery shopping.”

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