For the love of books

Many of you might have been surprised by it while we tried the service out; and now it is public – we will plastic wrap your books for you, every one of them that you order with us. No more hassles of going to the market to buy that sheet of plastic, measuring it against the book, cutting it and then wrapping it around the book.

We felt the need for it because I, myself, used to do so years earlier when I had ample time . But as routine got hectic and days shorter I stopped and would then often wish for someone to take over the job, especially when I saw many in my collection sitting half-naked on the shelves with their jackets wrinkled and torn from all the lending and handling.

So for all ye book lovers, we will plastic wrap the books for you. Here is how it works:-

The book is wrapped cleanly in a transparent plastic sheet such that no cello tape is used or adhesive applied. If you wish, you can simply remove the plastic off without affecting the book. The book is then bubble-wrapped and put in a cardboad box with the package finally plastic sealed as shown in our post on how we gift wrap them.

And all this for a small cost of Rs. 10 per book.

It has been over two and a half months since we launched, and from day one itself  we’ve been getting requests for ‘Gifting’ options. In fact, we ourselves have longed for such a service for some time now but could never really find a reliable one. Many a times, I have personally wanted to surprise a friend/cousin but there was nothing useful unless I wanted to send flowers through Ferns and Petals.

So to us the idea of enabling a gift option on our store always held a lot of appeal but what hastened our decision was a simple market research. Further, has anyone really tried to find out how many people search for the following terms on Google?

‘Send Gifts India’

‘Gift a Book’

‘Send Books’

Many do!! So here we are – formally announcing our new Gift Wrap options for sending books to anywhere within India.

Some of you, who have been regular visitors to our site, might be wondering what’s this all about when this option has already existed for a while now. Yes, the option was there but it was in the initial testing phase where we tried out various measures to ensure that the nice gift-wrapped packets don’t get damaged during transit. We wanted to ensure that the wrapping remained intact and the whole package appealed aesthetically to the recipients so as to bring a smile on their face.

And now we can claim with confidence that it will!

Here’s how we gift wrap the books for your special ones :

The book is first bubble-wrapped and put in a nice strong cardboard box – like every regular order of ours. We then gift-wrap the box and tie a red ribbon onto it. See the image. This gift-pack is then protected by two layers of bubble-wrap so as to prevent the paper from tearing. The address label is then put on the bubble-wrap and finally sealed in a transparent plastic bag. Phew!

A gift, nicely wrapped, can really make a person smile!!

How many of us tear through the wrapping paper whenever we receive a gift because we cannot bear to wait any longer? Or we un-layer it slowly and methodically, all the time heightening our anticipation of what the gift might be and who it might be that sent it to us?

Did we tell you that the recipient is given no clues whatsoever to indicate who has sent the gift until the packet is opened and out pops a personal note from within the book?

Here’s how ‘you’ go about sending the gift:

Select the book you want to gift and add it to your cart. In the cart, check box the Gift-Wrap option and proceed to complete the order. Once you have received the order confirmation email just reply back with the text for the note that you wish to be included. Or you may send a mail to orders@lebooks.in quoting your order number.

The note can be as small as a few lines or a complete letter, which can fit onto a double-sided white-A4 sheet with normal margins.

We realize that mailing the note back to us is not the smoothest way of doing it, and ideally a text-box for the note or an option to upload a text file should be implemented, which we soon will.

Ohh, did we mention that there is a small charge for this? Yep, there is. We have kept it reasonably low at Rs 30 per packet while still offering our discounts and free shipping.

We do hope that you like our offering. If you have any ideas that can help us improve your experience and make this service more valuable to you then do share them and leave your comments below.