What is the name of the first product sold on Amazon.com?

The first product sold on Amazon.com was Douglas Hofstadter’s book Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies. The title was ordered on April 3, 1995, during Amazon’s early beta-testing period.

The full title is Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought. It examines analogy, creativity, and artificial-intelligence ideas through computer models, making it a notably specialized choice for the first Amazon order rather than a mainstream bestseller.

Amazon was founded by Jeff Bezos in 1994 and initially operated as an online bookstore. Bezos chose books partly because a physical bookstore could not stock anything close to the enormous number of titles available through distributors. The website opened to the public in July 1995, several months after the landmark beta order.

People sometimes remember a famous novel as Amazon’s first sale, but the early order was this nonfiction work. The first customer is generally identified as John Wainwright, a friend and former colleague of early Amazon engineer Shel Kaphan.