Earlier this month, The Sunday Times reported that amazon.com was searching for suitable locations to open "high street shops" in the UK. According to their report, the information came from British landlords, but amazon has yet to give any indication as to the validity of what is at this point only a rumor. Amazon had previously shown no interest in the possibility and the success of their online operations begs the question, why expand into a model that the ongoing implosion of Borders suggests is failing?

As The Times reports, amazon has consistently exceeded expectations for itself and the industry, growing at a time of economic regress. However, the article sacrifices a thorough treatment of amazon in favor of highlighting their competition with bookstores. Amazon doesn't owe its success exclusively to books, although the recent appearance of their Kindle reader does make their retail efforts a bit less straight-forward. Is amazon a bookseller with other things in the same way a grocery store is a food seller with a magazine section? The report suggests that amazon sees a potential profit in offering buyers a physical location for picking up orders placed online, but given the convenience of buying online this seems difficult to accept. Although it is not without exception, using amazon's basic free shipping option, I've almost never had to wait more than a week for an order and typically only two days. Moreover, what could really be gained if there was dissatisfaction? Is amazon really missing out on new customers because the convenience of having a purchase delivered to you for free and in a timely manner is too much to handle? Excepting new revelations of shipping misconduct, I find it difficult to see this as necessarily the most likely possibility. The report also says that amazon "is understood to be scouring the country for high-profile sites." Would it really be cost-effective to use high-profile sites as glorified parcel pick-ups? Although the Times seems confident and perhaps it has reason to be, the suggestion remains a rumor. But what advantage does amazon gain by having a physical location? Could a store be used as a way of showcasing Kindle, after the same fashion as outlets for Mac products? Is it reasonable to imagine amazon packaging their huge variety of products into a single location? If nothing else, it seems reasonable to suppose that these stores would be—to one extent or another—more specialized than the website. Whatever ultimate form an expansion to "high street" would take, booksellers everywhere will surely follow its development. However much amazon has expanded from being competition purely in the sale of books, it remains the arena they most thoroughly dominate. This didn't stopped them from releasing one of the first mass marketed digital readers and in the same way that Kindle has gone through three iterations now, presumably physical locations would be adaptable. When seen against its competition in this area, in terms of print and digital, the importance of showcasing that reader seems to become more important. Barnes & Noble introduced it's "nook" reader just this year and Kindle has been competing with a variety of older and new readers that have been available for physical examination for that entire time. Fortunately for booksellers, this would translate into competition for dominance in that arena, making the move less menacing for them in the short term. At the very least, The Times report repeats an interesting rumor, sitting on top of a distinctive set of constituents: amazon's recent financial success, the relatively recent and so-far successful introduction of Kindle, and that high-profile sites are here specified. Amazon managed to expand from books and CDs to a full retail selection and introduced Kindle without significant rebranding or resorting to pervasive advertising campaigns, so perhaps this is the thing to do. However, taking for granted that amazon knows the model followed by Target and Barnes & Noble stores the world over (x + Starbucks = profit), I could imagine this kind of venture falling anywhere along the spectrum of novelties and innovations.