In an era where bookstores are being forced to close Enthrill has come up with a plan to partner with bookstores to see "physical" copies of e-books in brick-and-mortar stores.

One of the plus points of e-books is being able to buy them online. But what if you want to give an e-book as a present? Or  if you love bookshops and want to support them?

Canadian company Enthrill has come up with a solution - packaging download codes and QR codes that access extras such as trailers and sample chapters in cards with an image of the book's cover and some descriptive blurb.

After consumers purchase the card they can go to Enthrill's website to download  the book as a PDF or EPUB file, which is readable on any device. If they then download other titles as well, those sales are credited back to the bookstore where the original purchase was made

Enthrill has a promotional video that explains how this marketing strategy is good for bricks and mortar stores. But at the moment this is just a plan and while the video shows shots of popular titles like Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and James Patterson’s Cross Fire  a disclaimer notes that the titles are for illustrative purposes only.  

"Of course we’re going to use the best possible selling books in our illustration,” says Kevin Franco, a co-founder of Enthrill. “That does not reflect the selection that will be [in the store].

Can this idea work?

Let's hope so - e-books have been a phenomenal success and bookshops have suffered as a result of book buyers going online  to purchase them so any plan that uses e-books to help save bookshops has to have merit.