With its “18 miles of books” languishing unsold on shelves, The Strand has begun selling a wide variety of candy in hopes that the sweet-toothed masses in Union Square will walk in craving a Snickers and walk out with a few hardbacks. A new rack of treats has been installed recently under the cash registers, Strand co-owner Fred Bass told the New York Daily News.
If everything goes according to plan, the candy will encourage visitors to linger while they snack and eventually find a book they want badly enough to buy on the spot and not wait to download it to their Kindle.
And even if the candy can’t convince loiterers to pick up some literature, perhaps the sweets alone can bring in some extra cash. “We’re selling five times as much candy as we did ‘register books,'” Bass told the Daily News. “Candy is an impulse buy.”
The Strand will be stocking a variety of sugary stuff that skews more toward the classic candies of years past. So if you just really need a Charleston Chew or some Nik-L-Nips, you know where to go. Perhaps the archaic brands will induce a nostalgia for a time, long ago, when people actually bought books? Hey, it could work.
