See Inside Amazon's New Midtown Bookstore

MIDTOWN MANHATTAN, NY — Amazon's second New York City brick-and-mortar bookstore opened in Midtown Tuesday. The 5,200-square-foot retails space carries about 3,700 unique titles, most of them curated based on sales numbers and customer reviews on Amazon.com.

The new Amazon bookstore is located opposite the Empire State Building at 7 W. 34th St., and features a cafe section serving drinks from Stumptown Coffee Roasters.

Books are displayed throughout the store with their covers out, which helps convey the full essence of each item to customers, Vice President of Amazon Books Jennifer Cast told Patch. The goal of the store, which is seen as a "physical extension" of Amazon.com is to help customers discover great books, Cast said. Each book has an information plate underneath which features a customer review as well as the book's average rating on Amazon.

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Amazon's curators stock each brick-and-mortar store with a mix of best-sellers and hidden gems with great reviews, Cast told Patch. In the end, the store is almost completely driven by data and information collected by customers' actions on Amazon.

"We're completely customer obsessed," Cast told Patch during a tour of the Midtown store.

Books are arranged in both standard genre sections as well as various "features" within the Amazon bookstore. These features can help steer customers toward reading books they otherwise may not have heard of, Cast told Patch.

One feature at the new Midtown store is the "page turners" section. The books displayed in this section were all finished by Kindle readers within three days of starting them, Cast told Patch. Other features include a display of books that are on the most Amazon.com "wish lists," books that are best-sellers within New York and section recommending similar three books to some of Amazon's best sellers.

"We use information to determine what customers read, how they read and why they read certain books," Cast told Patch.

In addition to books, the store carries all of Amazon's technology products including various models of the Kindle e-reader and Amazon Echo smart home system. The brick-and-mortar store offers customers the unique experiencing of being able to physically compare different versions of the Kindle, a luxury not afforded to customers online, Cast told Patch.

Walk through Amazon's newest brick-and-mortar bookstore in Midtown Manhattan:

Amazon's first bookstore in the city opened in May this year inside The Shops At Columbus Circle. Amazon's new store is slightly larger than the store in Columbus Circle, Cast told Patch. Amazon currently operates 11 stores nationwide and plans to open two more stores — one in Los Angeles and another in Walnut Creek, California — before the end of the year.

After the holiday season Amazon plans to begin planning and opening more brick-and-mortar bookstores in the United States, Cast told Patch. Cast could not reveal specifics on planned future bookstores for New York City.

Photo by Brendan Krisel/Patch