SAN JOSE — Amazon is opening its first Bay Area physical bookstore in San Jose’s Santana Row, a brick-and-mortar outlet that bids to combine Amazon’s vast online reach with physical retailing, the company said Wednesday.

Featuring about 3,500 unique titles, the store held what’s referred to as a “soft opening” on Tuesday, which allowed customers into the store ahead of the grand opening on Thursday. The store appeared to be doing a brisk business on Tuesday.

“All of the books are displayed cover out, and there are review cards under every single book,” said Jennifer Cast, a vice president of Amazon Books.

Among the features that call to mind Amazon’s online presence in book sales: The store features a collection of books that are rated 4.8 stars or higher.

That feature also underscores one of the unique aspects of Amazon’s business model. The retailer has access to a constantly updated stream of customer reviews and comments about its products — in this case, books.

“The biggest power that Amazon has over traditional retail is their collection of products is highly curated, because of the reviews from hundreds, sometimes thousands, of customers,” said Michael Tchong, founder of Ubercool Innovations, a Las Vegas-based firm that tracks technology trends. “This is the quantum leap that Amazon presents over traditional retailers.”

The one-story Amazon Books in Santana Row operates in about 4,100 square feet of retail floor space and has 15 employees.

Besides the Santana Row store, Amazon Books operates in eight locations, including San Diego, two in Massachusetts, and one each in New York City, New Jersey, Illinois, Oregon and Seattle, the site of the bookseller’s first store, which opened in November 2015.

Seattle-based Amazon also intends to open its first East Bay store in Walnut Creek’s Broadway Plaza.

Bookstores haven’t been taking the Amazon onslaught lying down. They even point to an upswing in store locations over the last several years, according to statistics about independent bookstores compiled by the American Booksellers Association.

In 2009 — a year after the Great Recession began to wipe out some long-time retailers, including Borders Books — independent booksellers operated in 1,651 locations in the United States, the American Booksellers Association reported. That number has increased every year since, and now is 40.6 percent higher, reaching 2,321 U.S. locations by the end of 2016.

And Barnes and Noble, the last national retailer in the U.S., appears to have stabilized its store numbers following the downturn. As of April, it had 633 U.S. stores.

Nevertheless, the number of independent bookstore outlets is down from prior years. In 1995, the American Booksellers Association said its members operated in 7,000 locations, and by 2000, that number had dwindled to 4,000 stores. So the current numbers, while higher than 2009, are roughly 42 percent below the 2000 levels.

“We’ve been able to cope with Amazon’s book retailing, but the thing that Amazon did that was the worst is: Amazon hollowed out the retail environments where bookstores are located,” said Amy Thomas, president of the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association.

Retailers closing their doors have caused traffic into bookstores to evaporate in some cases, Thomas said. One Pegasus bookstore that Thomas operates in Oakland’s Rockridge neighborhood must cope with empty storefronts up and down the street.

Now, Amazon is attempting to create a new experience for its bookstore customers.

“We are bringing Amazon into the physical world in this book and device store in Santana Row,” Cast said. “We know that people love to go to bookstores. We want you to have the book the way you want it — Kindle, Audible, physical form.”