Memo to Starbucks: When you offer your loyal customers a free book

Memo to Starbucks: When you offer your loyal customers a free book (or e-book, whatever), don’t wait until page 330 to reveal that the final 70 pages aren’t actually free at all.This week, Starbucks hit upon the idea of extending its free iTunes “Pick of the Week” beyond the music and videos it has to date given away. Instead, the java titan is currently offering what it describes in a blog post as “an extended sample” of novelist Erin Morgenstern’s The Night Circus. While the blog makes clear the company isn’t giving away the whole book, the gift cards in the actual stores that people use to redeem the book say no such thing. As MyNorthwest.com reports:The offer on the card does not mention that the book is only an extended sample. The card shows an image of the book with the text “Free with the code on back.” Text on the back of the card deals with offer expiration and instructions to download the book.Here’s the thing, Starbucks: Books aren’t like cookies or those bootleg Rice Krispie Treats you’ve been peddling recently. If you give someone a big chunk of one of those, it is a nice gesture. If you give someone the first four-fifths of a book, however, and then tell them they have to buy the whole thing in order to get the ending? Not so much. Follow The Daily Weekly on Facebook and Twitter.