We're seeing printed books regaining popularity , while e-books or digital books are losing some steam after their initial surge many years ago. Bookstores have also devised new ways to attract customers and become cultural hubs, as we've discussed before.
Bookstores around the world want you to go straight to a blind date with a book. It's another one of those ideas that are trying to transform how we see these establishments, where it's becoming increasingly easy to find one of our favorite authors or meet people who have a great fondness for one of the genres we usually read.
The idea behind this program is to make the book completely anonymous so you won't know the title or the author's name. Best of all, it will be sold at a significant discount, so you won't pay full price.
A bookstore in Homer, Alaska, has launched this type of book blind date and explained that they use books that are sent to the bookstore for free as copies that are not intended for sale, to sell them for $3 each and a number of points for each dollar spent.
Book Culture is a bookstore located on the Upper West Side of New York City that offers a wide variety of books, carefully selected and wrapped as surprise books based on others you've already read and enjoyed. Another interesting initiative comes from a bookstore in Toronto that operates a system called Biblio-Mat ; it's a vending machine that randomly dispenses rare books for $2 each.
An interesting initiative to encourage the purchase of cheaper books that may contain a whole surprise, besides the fact that it may be the right time to read it, like when you open a certain page of one and find a message that suits you for that moment in your life.