Something’s cooking at Barnes & Noble

The nation’s largest retail bookseller has dreamed up another innovative way to drive traffic to its stores.

Barnes & Noble has announced that it will be sponsoring the Barnes & Noble Cookie Bake-Off, a contest in which customers can submit cookie recipes for a chance to win prizes and have their winning cookies sold in Barnes & Noble stores.

“There is something so incredibly amazing about taking a recipe created in your kitchen and sharing it with people around the country. With the Barnes & Noble Cookie Bake-Off, we are leveraging the power of our Cafés and Sterling Publishing, who will publish the recipe book, to help share that experience with the most important people to us, our customers,” said Jason Giagrande, vice president of café operations at Barnes & Noble. “We’re all very excited to see what kinds of unique and interesting recipes we receive and we’re thrilled to have the support of a group of leading chefs who will help judge the recipes. They’re all as excited as we are to discover what our customers have created!”

The contest begins Dec. 4 to coincide with National Cookie Day, and the winner of the contest will receive $2,500 and will have their cookie produced and sold at Barnes & Noble Cafés during the 2015 holiday season. The bakers responsible for submitting the top three recipes will also all win a trip to New York City to bake their cookies with a renowned chef and then have it judged by a panel of celebrity chefs.

In addition, the top 75 recipes will be featured in the Barnes & Noble Cookie Bake-Off Book, coming in 2015 from Sterling Publishing.

To enter the contest, customers can visit any Barnes & Noble store to pick up a submission form, which can be placed in a special ballot box in either the Café or customer service counter. All submissions will be judged by a culinary team and narrowed down; first to the top 75, then the top 10 and finally the top three finalists.For more information, customers can visit BN.com/Café.

Holiday sales at Barnes & Noble retail stores and website have declined for the last two holiday seasons due to declining book sales and competition from Amazon.com.

Barnes & Noble Inc. operates 658 Barnes & Noble bookstores in 50 states, and one of the Web’s largest e-commerce sites, BN.com.