Two decades after it started selling books online, Amazon opens a shopping center storefront with books for sale on actual shelves. 
 
 Bookstore owners often think of Amazon.com as the enemy. 
 
 Now it’s becoming one of them. 
 
 At 9:30 Tuesday morning, the online retail giant will open its first-ever brick-and-mortar retail store in its 20-year life, in University Village. 
 
 The store, called Amazon Books, looks a lot like bookstores that populate malls across the country. Its wood shelves are stocked with 5,000 to 6,000 titles, best-sellers as well as Amazon.com customer favorites. 
 
 Last month, the online book newsletter Shelf Awareness broke a story speculating that Amazon was developing the store in the former Blue C Sushi location. 
 
 There is some irony in Amazon’s opening a physical store. For years, it could undercut physical retailers on price because it didn’t have brick-and-mortar locations. But those stores offered something Amazon couldn’t: the instant gratification of owning an item the second it was purchased, as well as the personal touch of a knowledgeable sales clerk. 
 
 Amazon is betting that the troves of data it generates from shopping patterns on its website will give it advantages in its retail location that other bookstores can’t match. It will use data to pick titles that will most appeal to Seattle shoppers. 
 
 And that could also solve the business problem that has long plagued other bookstores: unsold books that gather dust on shelves and get sent back to publishers. More than most book retailers, Amazon has deep insight into customer buying habits and can stock its store with titles most likely to move. 
 
 The company will stock best-sellers, of course. But it will also include books that get the highest ratings from its customers, including little-known titles. The store will also include such categories as “Most Wished-For Cookbooks.” Another section features “Award Winners, 4.5 Stars & Above, Age 6-12.” 
 
 Data only goes so far, though. Book lovers often see stores as a piece of their community. And some blame Amazon, and online retail more broadly, for the slow demise of independent booksellers. 
 
 Jennifer Cast, vice president of Amazon Books, is careful to say the store won’t be stocked solely on data. 
 
 “It’s data with heart,” she said. “We’re taking the data we have and we’re creating physical places with it.” 
 
 Some of that data includes reviews from the millions of Amazon customers who have left appraisals of books on the website. Below each book on the shelf is a card with either a review or a rating from the site. 
 
 And the company also has included a staff-favorites section that will change from time to time. For the opening, the section includes a few of Amazon Chief Executive Jeff Bezos’ favorite titles, including “The Gift of Fear” by Gavin de Becker, “The Five Love Languages” by Gary Chapman and “Traps” by his wife, MacKenzie Bezos. 
 
 “A page-turner written by an award-winning novelist, who also happens to be my wife,” Bezos writes. 
 
 The review cards are similar to the staff-favorite notes found at many bookstores. But Cast believes that having comments from passionate readers adds a wide range of voices recommending titles. 
 
 “The bookstores I love celebrate reading,” Cast said. “What better way to celebrate reading than to have the voices of readers under our books?” 
 
 Amazon’s customers help select books for the store in other ways as well. The new store includes, for example, “Bald, Fat & Crazy: How I Beat Cancer While Pregnant with One Daughter and Adopting Another” by Stephanie Hosford, a title that ranks 622,923 in books sold on Amazon. But those who have read it seem to love it. The book has a 5-star rating from all 56 customers who have reviewed it on the site. 
 
 One other way the store, with 5,500 square feet of retail space and 2,000 square feet of storage, is distinct from traditional bookstores: Every book will face out, rather than be stacked tightly with only their spines showing. That leaves far less space for books. 
 
 But Cast said Amazon wanted to showcase authors and their work, rather than cramming as many titles as possible on shelves. 
 
 “We realized that we felt sorry for the books that were spine out,” Cast said. 
 
 Amazon will charge the same price for books in the store as it does online. 
 
 It had reached out to sales staff at local stores, such as Third Place Books, to work at the new store. It wound up hiring 15 employees, including librarians, retail clerks and even a receptionist from Amazon who loves reading. 
 
 Ever since Shelf Awareness broke the story about the possibility of Amazon’s opening a retail store, there have been many rumors and much speculation about what it would be. 
 
 The store will not be a location to pick up Amazon orders. It won’t be a showcase for Amazon Publishing imprints, whose titles often aren’t picked up by the company’s retail competitors. 
 
 And while the store will showcase some of Amazon’s gadgets, such as its Kindle e-readers, Fire tablets and Fire TV streaming-media devices, it will be first and foremost a bookstore. 
 
 “Our goal is to do a great job selling lots of books,” Cast said. 
 
 Amazon has opened pop-up stores over the years to sell its Kindle devices. And it’s been replacing bookstores on college campuses with pickup locations, where students can retrieve orders. 
 
 The company chose Seattle for its first physical bookstore because it’s close to Amazon’s headquarters and because Seattle is a top market for readers. 
 
 Cast declined to detail future plans, including additional locations. 
 
 “We’re completely focused on this bookstore,” Cast said. “We hope this is not our only one. But we’ll see.” ||||| Amazon, which prides itself on being surprising, is doing two predictably unpredictable things this week. 
 
 First, the company is offering better benefits to its 222,000 employees. The hard-driving online retailer has traditionally not supplied its workers with many perks, at least compared to its peers in the technology sector. Jeffrey P. Bezos, Amazon’s founder, once looked toward Microsoft and said if Amazon became “a country club,” it would die, according to a book by John Rossman, a former Amazon executive. 
 
 So Amazon stayed lean in the smallest things. It eschewed, for example, free snacks. And it lagged in some of the biggest things: It offered no paid paternity leave and eight weeks of maternity leave. 
 
 On Monday, the biggest things changed. Amazon employees learned that birth mothers would now get 20 weeks of leave and fathers would get up to six weeks. Amazon also announced a flexible return-to-work program and an ability to share leave with a spouse who does not work for the retailer. These benefits, the retailer said, “give you more time and more choice in how to manage your leave in the way that works best for your family.” ||||| Remember all that scathing criticism about Amazon having a poor work-life balance? 
 
 Well, life for new parents at the online retail giant just got a little easier. The company announced a major overhaul to its parental leave policy on Monday. The new benefits mean: 
 
 -New moms can take up 20 weeks of fully paid leave. 
 
 -New dads can take six week at full salary. 
 
 -Employees can share their parental leave with a partner who doesn't get paid leave. 
 
 -Birth mothers and primary caregivers can ease back into work on a flexible schedule. 
 
 Related: These companies have awesome benefits for parents 
 
 The enhanced benefits come in the wake of a New York Times article published in August that called the company a "bruising workplace." 
 
 The story included interviews with former Amazon (AMZN, Tech30) employees describing an environment that was hostile to those with families, including one ex-worker who said she was told that "raising children would most likely prevent her from success at a higher level because of the long hours required." 
 
 The article prompted a broader discussion about work-life balance at large corporations. 
 
 But Amazon claimed the article misrepresented its workplace culture. Last month, the company fired back at the Times and accused the paper of unbalanced reporting and shoddy fact checking. 
 
 Related: Amazon and New York Times battle publicly over story's accuracy 
 
 Amazon's new policy means that new mothers can now take up to 20 weeks of paid leave. Previously, new mothers got eight weeks at full pay. 
 
 Birth mothers will now get four weeks of paid leave ahead of their due date and another 10 weeks of paid maternity leave. 
 
 New moms and dads are also offered an additional six weeks of paid leave following the arrival of a child. This is particularly good news for fathers at the company who previously received no paid time off. The parental leave can be taken in one chunk or split into two three-week periods within the first 12 months following the birth or adoption. 
 
 The new policies go into effect next year. The paid leave benefits apply to full-time hourly and salaried employees who've been employed with the company for at least a year, including workers in fulfillment centers and customer services associates. 
 
 The company also unveiled a new program called "Leave Share" that allows workers to share their six-week parental leave with a partner who doesn't get any paid leave. "When you return from your paid leave, you'll receive your base pay for the unused portion of the parental leave in your next available paycheck along with your regular base pay," according to an internal memo obtained by CNNMoney. 
 
 Amazon is also offering a "Ramp Back Program" that gives birth mothers and primary caregivers an eight-week transition period of flexible work time after they return to their jobs. Workers can choose from three reduced-hour plans that offer between 50-75% pay for a period of eight weeks. 
 
 Related: Amazon unveils 'Black Friday Deals' store 
 
 Tech firm Nvidia (NVDA, Tech30) also announced a sweetened parental leave policy Monday. Its offering new mothers 22 weeks of paid leave, besting Amazon's new policy by 14 days. Fathers and adoptive and foster parents will get 12 weeks. 
 
 New parents previously received only six weeks of leave at full pay, plus an additional six weeks with reduced wages for birth moms. 
 
 Nvidia, which is based in Silicon Valley and employs more than 9,200 people, said in a statement that its rolling out the policy for U.S. workers now and is working to expand it internationally. ||||| Amazon.com Inc. will give new fathers paid parental leave and extend paid maternity leave for mothers, as the online retailer seeks to enhance its benefits as a way to attract and retain talent. 
 
 Women who have a child can now take as much as 20 weeks of paid leave, up from eight weeks. New parents can take six weeks of paid parental leave. The Seattle-based company previously didn’t offer paternity leave. The new benefits apply to all births or adoptions on or after Oct. 1, according to a memo distributed to employees Monday. 
 
 Amazon’s changes come three months after video-streaming service Netflix Inc. raised the bar on time-off for new parents in August by offering as much as one year of paid leave to new mothers and fathers in the first 12 months after a child’s birth or adoption. At Facebook Inc., mothers and fathers get four months paid leave plus $4,000 in “baby cash,” while at Google Inc. employees are entitled to 18 weeks of parental leave. Microsoft Corp. in August said it would offer 12 weeks of paid time-off for all new parents. 
 
 Technology companies offer generous benefits compared with other industries because of competition for top talent. Issues of gender equality and family balance have also become hot-button topics in the industry. Only 12 percent of U.S. private-sector employees have access to any paid family leave through their jobs, according to the U.S. Department of Labor. The U.S. is the only nation in the developed world that doesn’t mandate maternity leave with pay. 
 
 Amazon’s expanded parental benefits also follow increased scrutiny over the company’s treatment of workers after a scathing New York Times report in August portrayed the online retailer as a pressure cooker where worker hardships are ignored and back-stabbing is encouraged. Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos rejected the article and Jay Carney, Amazon’s senior vice president for global corporate affairs, responded last month with a blog post that refuted some of the newspaper’s claims. 
 
 Sam Kennedy, a spokesman for Amazon, declined to comment on the new parental leave policy.
– New moms and dads at Amazon have a new perk: six weeks of fully paid leave, CNNMoney reports. Birth mothers will get an additional four weeks before their due date, plus 10 weeks after the birth, for 20 weeks' total paid leave. Plus, employees can share any unused portion of their six-week paid leave with partners who don't work for Amazon. The company is also debuting an eight-week transition period that lets new birth moms and primary caregivers ease back into work using flextime. Bloomberg notes the new benefits count for births or adoptions after Oct. 1. When asked by the New York Times if these new perks are a response to the company's scathing back-and-forth with the paper, a rep simply pointed to a line in its announcement that said: "We review our benefit programs annually and began considering our leave policies in early 2015." Even more surprising, however, is the company's second bit of news: the opening Tuesday of a brick-and-mortar bookstore in Seattle's University Village mall, the Seattle Times reports. Although local booksellers are meeting this news "with some befuddlement," notes the New York Times—why would a successful online retailer take on high overhead?—Amazon Books is different from traditional bookstores in a couple of important ways. First, patrons will see each book displayed facing outward, with a customer review and rating below it, per the Seattle Times. "We felt sorry for the books that were spine out," VP of Amazon Books Jennifer Cast tells the paper. And there's another huge advantage the store wields: the "troves of data it generates from shopping patterns on its website" that it can use to display only the books it thinks will appeal to local shoppers, cutting down on unsold inventory, the Seattle Times notes. "It's data with heart," Cast says. (Amazon doesn't have to worry about the "Netflix of Books" anymore.)