Barnes & Noble: Show Us Your E-Book, Get a Free Coffee

What would you do if you wanted to get more people to buy your products and visit your stores? Apparently, all it takes is offering free coffee to customers. At least, that’s what Barnes & Noble is banking on. The company is running a limited time promotion offering customers a free cup of coffee if you happen to have BN Reader installed on your portable device (or have your nook with you). Just show your e-book to the appropriate person, and you are all set. Let’s not forget that B&N is offering $50 gift certificates to new nook customers. So B&N customers have plenty of reasons to consider picking up a nook and start reading.

While these promotions are not going to make nook the leading device in the e-reader market, they can help boost B&N’s sales. This is a good tactic to sell more e-books and get more people in B&N stores. The company would have even more success if it dropped nook’s price.

B&N is in an interesting place with nook. The device is not looked at as being superior to Kindle. Neither it can go head to head with iPad and come out as a winner. B&N nook 2 could have a color screen and more Android apps for people to take advantage of. But e-reader prices need to come down. A free cup of coffee is nice but is not a deal maker for me.