What product did Amazon first start out selling?

Amazon first started out selling books. Jeff Bezos launched Amazon as an online bookstore in July 1995, choosing books because the publishing industry offered millions of titles while online retailers could not practically stock them all in a physical shop.

Before settling on books, Bezos considered several product categories, including music, computer hardware, software, videos, and compact discs. Books stood out because they were relatively easy to describe and ship, had standardized editions, and could be sourced through large distributors.

Amazon’s first recorded book sale was Douglas Hofstadter’s Fluid Concepts and Creative Analogies: Computer Models of the Fundamental Mechanisms of Thought. The company initially operated from the Seattle area and promoted itself as offering an exceptionally large catalogue rather than as a traditional local bookstore.

Amazon later expanded into music, electronics, clothing, groceries, cloud computing, streaming, and many other fields. That broad expansion is why people sometimes remember it primarily as a general marketplace, but books were the company’s original product category.