Barnes and Noble has been consistently lambasted by the media for losing ground in the e-reader wars and seeing diminished e-book sales due to Amazon. The Nations largest bookseller has closed many stores in the last few years as it tries to regain profitability. In order to help drive up sales the company has just released fancy new plastic bags.
Barnes and Noble has designed a series of plastic bags featuring book art and quotes from Mark Twain, Herman Melville and Lewis Carroll’s classic novels. Over 100 million have been printed and will soon be available at the companies 700 bookstores in the US.
“You don’t get a shopping bag when you shop online — you get a box,” Glenn Kaplan, Barnes & Noble’s creative director, told Bloomberg.
Barnes and Noble is hoping that their new bags become status symbols by the literary minded. The intention is to eventually make them as ubiquitous as Tiffany, Barneys, or Organic Avenue bags.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.