Organic materials offer the advantages of cost-effective, environmental benignity, and molecular structural diversity as applications of electrode materials for lithium ion batteries. In fact, their lithium storage behaviors in terms of dynamics and kinetics intrinsically lie in ion migration in solids. Thus the solid forms including crystalline and amorphous states are crucial for the properties. In this study, a conventional carbonyl type organic material, namely zinc terephthalate (ZnC8H4O4), is obtained in both well-crystalline and amorphous forms and applied as anodes for lithium ion batteries. ZnC8H4O4 with amorphous structure shows higher lithium storage capacity and better capacity retention compared with that of crystalline one. It is ascribed that the amorphous phase provides a higher lithium ion diffusion coefficient than the crystalline one under the conditions of similar electronic conductivity.