Amazon’s Other Physical Retail Test: A Mini Bookstore for Kindle Ebooks

It only takes up a couple square feet, a small fraction of the size of Amazon’s first real bookstore in Seattle, but the company has been quietly making another foray into physical retail — offering individual ebook gift cards for sale under a pilot program at Bartell Drugs in Washington state.

The pilot was launched in October, in time for the holiday shopping season, but it flew largely under the radar until now. Amazon has long offered general gift cards in many retail locations, like other digital merchants, but the move to offer cards for specific ebooks is a new move for the company.