Join the team that launched the first-ever Amazon Books retail store as we prepare for our second and third stores openings later this year. We apply Amazon’s 20 years of online bookselling experience to build physical stores that integrate the benefits of offline and online book shopping. It is very much still day one for our team and we are looking for entrepreneurial, analytical, creative, flexible leaders to help us make Amazon Books a place that customers love to shop. If you want to join a fast-paced, innovative team that is making history and breaking new ground for Amazon, this is the place for you.
Amazon Books aims to help customers discover great books. To facilitate browsing and discovery and create a unique shopping experience, we choose a variety of well-known and lesser-known books and present them all face-out on our shelves. Amazon Books’ Curators lead this critical component of our strategy. They are the ones carefully selecting the books we carry and making sure our assortment delivers on its promise that there is a book for everyone in our stores.
We are looking for a Lead Curator to select books for a variety of Nonfiction and Lifestyle categories and manage our Nonfiction/Lifestyle curator team. You must have expertise in at least two of these categories: Business, Self-Improvement, Arts & Crafts, Cooking, Home & Garden, Biography, History, Science & Nature, Religion, Travel, and General Nonfiction.
You will choose all of the books in your categories and make sure that our selection remains fresh and appealing. You’ll stay abreast of upcoming new releases and select the books you think our customers will love. In addition to your expertise and judgment, you will use a variety of data inputs to select and remove books, determine the pace of those changes, and analyze the performance of all your books and categories. You’ll apply your creative skills to conceive featured groupings of books that will engage customers, and strategic thinking to plan improvements and innovate for the future, including determining ways to curate smartly across more than one store.
The right person for this role has a passion for and deep knowledge of books, in particular nonfiction or lifestyle books, and is analytical and able to use a variety of inputs to make data-driven decisions rather than rely solely on personal judgment. This person is an experienced manager who enjoys helping their team develop and succeed. Other skills needed to be successful in this role are excellent writing and communication skills, high standards, attention to detail, customer focus, and the ability to innovate on behalf of our customers. You thrive in fast-paced, energetic, and ambiguous environments, and you are excited to build a world-class bookstore that customers will love shopping.
Responsibilities:
· Select all of the books in your categories, including not-yet-published books
· Use sales and other data to analyze performance of the assortment, iterate based on the data, and recommend strategies for improvement
· Work closely with other Amazon teams (Trade Books, Kindle, Goodreads) to create opportunities to integrate the online and bricks-and-mortar shopping experience
· Work closely with the store layout team to set up processes so books are merchandised in a way that facilitates browsing and discovery
· Own selected strategic projects and run them on behalf of the entire curation team
· Write shelf talkers
· Manage a team
BASIC QUALIFICATIONS
· Deep knowledge and love of books, with category expertise in at least two nonfiction or lifestyle categories (and comfort with additional categories)
· 5+ years of book industry or book-related editorial experience
· Excellent written communication skills
· Excel proficiency
· BA/BS
· Experience in data-driven analysis
· Experience managing people who report directly to you
PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS
· Passion for customers (especially readers) and for books across all formats
· Ability to conceptualize and execute projects, with strong bias for action and ability to prioritize
· Professional experience making decisions about books
· Strong attention to detail and organizational skills
· MBA
