“After Borders, the 40-year-old retail chain that helped define the age of the book superstore, filed for bankruptcy protection on Wednesday, the struggling book industry was left wondering what was next — and maybe even who was next.”
Borders’ Bankruptcy Shakes the Publishing Industry – NYTimes.com
Filed under: business, Publishing
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This was a long time coming. With Amazon and B&N, what niche does Borders fill?
I’m not surprised. Large book chains like Border’s and Barnes and Nobles are pretty generic in their selection and the atmosphere is so sterile. I’d much rather browse for books in a local around the way mom and pop book store where the atmosphere is much more interesting and the selection is generally much better. If there’s a new release that I really want I just order it from the Library, which I’m afraid is also suffering in many respects as well.
What will be interesting is how many small to medium size publishers are going to be hurt by this because they have large outstanding inventories with Borders that will now be declared valueless. As the accounting winds out, this could be have serious ramifications.
In general, paper based print media has been in decline for several years: books, magazines and newspapers. This is the result of several trends: 1) the rise of the internet, 2) the rise of ebooks and 3) people just read less, especially young people. The latter is a worrisome trend on many levels.
Barnes and Noble and Books-a-Million are probably both hurting and either one could be the next to declare bankruptcy. Note that Borders isn’t going out of business, at least not yet. They plan to close 200 of their 2000+ stores and continue in business. That said I wasn’t inspired by their CEO’s email to Borders customers when I had to select view images to read what he had to say.
Borders in the UK went bust about two years ago. You’d think they’d learn from their mistakes.
I think superstores like Borders diminish the cultural value of books. In fact, this era of superstore shopping seems to diminish the value of everything. Books have become very disposable — and something to be associated with gift cards. I think it’s a shame. Hopefully the looming dominance of e-books will replace these superstores and actual, physical books will once again be appreciated, collected and enjoyed.
I wish my town had a Barnes and Noble or Borders. EBooks are wonderful but there something about print.
The bargain hunters depress me. I understand the impulse, and it’s not like everybody has $ to spare, but still it is depressing. I see people losing their jobs — people who know my daughter’s name.
Actually, while magazine sales have plummeted, physical book sales have grown every year for the past ten years, they are just being purchased online more often than retail outlets. That is not even counting the very fast growing e-book market.
If you write something worth reading, there is a market for it.
Whoops, 8 out of 10 years.
Ahh, but it’s an interesting perspective you have, Mr. Z.
I see the world of independent publishing becoming much less expensive (and mind you I’ve been tinkering in that arena since around 2003) and far easier for people to do, and the internet just makes the reach for the independents that much more reachier.
No longer are the same supply chains needed. No longer are the local stores needed as outlets when you can type in a few keywords, belong to communities and receive a constant barrage of recommendations and…
Well, what’s left?
See also: Record Industry, Video Rental Industry
Remember when you could go through a record store and the person behind the counter–regardless of patchouli cologne, crazy haircut, hippy ways, etc. could tell you just about anything, including upcoming shows?
And now, you see star ratings and tour date feeds.
Remember when you could walk through a local video store (or even a Blockbuster) on a Friday and the person who knew you as a regular would hold back the popular title for you without being asked? Or they’d recommend something from the library, or the employee favorites section would help turn you on to Darkman and…
See next: Video Gaming Industry
The more connected we are, the less we need to rely on the expertise for those who provide us with goods? The less we need to rely on those who can only provide a store front for the behemoths who can afford the sheer volume of product to place them there?
Is the service industry next?
Evolve or die, I suppose.
The more connected we are, the less we need to rely on the expertise for those who provide us with goods?
The problem I see is that because we are not relying on the local expert in the book/video record store these people will become extinct. There’ll be no more people who choose to work in the small local book store just because they love to read and like the smell of books, who know where you can get a Dickens first edition at a bargain price. There might have been, but he couldn’t find one to work in so became a barrista.
We will all suffer from the loss of these knowledgeable people because we’ll end up in a world made of averages. And that will be a very average world indeed.
Russ:
Do you have kids? Of course I can buy books online. I can even produce and sell them. ;)
But there’s something to be said for having a local bookstore where you can read books to your kid after school or on a Saturday.
Once we had local bookstores that filled that function (and many others). Borders and B&N pushed most of those stores out of business. Now Borders is suffering. Karma perhaps, but the directors who are responsible for Borders’ troubles aren’t going to have less food on the table or fewer Cadillacs to drive. The people getting laid off at this store are not responsible for its troubles and may have a very hard time getting their next jobs. They are nice people who know me, my kid, and her mother because we’ve spent a lot of time in that store, and they’ve watched my daughter grow up. It may have been owned as part of a chain, but it operated like a local bookstore because of the people who worked there and the nice feelings of community they fostered.
There are still a few local bookstores in my city, thank goodness, but none in my immediate neighborhood, and no chains in my immediate neighborhood either. From my neighborhood’s POV, this is a loss.
Russ, P.S. I did not mean that to sound antagonistic toward you and I hope you didn’t take it that way! :) I see your perspective and even share it, but I also have a different view from lived experience in that place. A vital experience and nice people are being taken out of my daughter’s life and the lives of a lot of kids in this area, and that is sad to me.
We consume we do not shop. You can make it sound romantic when you speak of how the web has changed how we consume media but you are giving the web way to much credit. That event just happens to coincide with the sociopathic nature of what we have become as a group.
No longer do we want the relationship between consumer and merchant. My hat is off to you. Teaching the daughter be natively interactive, to reach out to the glow of a smiling face instead of a monitor. All social this and social that on the web when natively we have regressed as a culture. The technology has become an excuse for our behavior .
Borders started here in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I live. I used to shop in the one and only Borders store – it was a smallish place on State Street, right downtown.
The reason we all loved shopping there was the staff. They were incredibly knowledgeable, not just about the books in the store, but books in general. They could find anything for you. It was amazing customer service. (They also had an innovative database system for inventory, but that wasn’t as readily apparent to the average buyer.)
As they grew, the outstanding customer service went away. Prices got lowered, margins got chased – they went for the commodity theory of book sales and forgot what made Borders special in the first place. They decided to compete on price alone and in the end, that’s what did them in.
In my opinion, that’s what will keep the smaller, local bookstores going. I can’t go to Amazon and say, “Hey, I’d like to read a book that has beautiful prose and a satisfying ending. Oh yeah, and I just adore epistolary novels. What should I read?” But I can go over to Nicola’s Books, and someone – sometimes even Nicola herself- will be able to give me some great ideas. There’s where the value in bookstores is – not commodities, but service – just like it’s always been.
Folks in Ann Arbor are very sad (and a little scared, too) about this bankruptcy. It’s painful to see what had been a home-town success story end this way. But I have hope for the little guys. They might not all make it, but the ones who can deliver good customer service hopefully should be able to keep going.
I feel your pain. :( Our Borders closed several months ago and another bookstore has yet to replace it. For now, our area has ZERO bookstores. (And yet we have 17 “Steeler’s Gear” stores… Ug…)