
Bookstore Chain Borders is Dead - hung
http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2011/07/18/its-almost-official-borders-is-dead/
======
wheels
I can't tell if bookstores have gotten markedly worse or if I've simply become
more discriminating in what I'm looking for. When Barnes and Noble, Borders,
et al first swept through the US I thought it was wonderful. I've spent an
inordinate amount of money and time in big-box bookstores.

I moved to Germany some 9 years ago. In my first trips back to the US a
bookstore was one of the detours I was most excited about. I'd typically
return to Germany with a couple hundred bucks worth of books stuffed into my
bag. My family, noticing this, started a habit of buying me B&N gift
certificates (a pattern that's continued to this day).

But now, 9 years and thousands of dollars of Amazon.de purchases later, I
can't say that I'm terribly excited about visiting the big box stores. I
struggled to spend my most recent gift certificate. _Struggled!_ I went
looking for books on Chinese history, and in a two story Barnes and Noble in
an upscale Houston neighborhood there were _two_ books on the history of the
most populous country in the world. There were huge aisles of random throwaway
junk, games and other silliness and _two books on Chinese history_. Nor did
they have Bertrand Russel's _Principles of Mathematics_ or Aldous Huxley's
_Chrome Yellow_.

I love books. Paper books. I have around a thousand of them. But I won't cry
for the passing of the big-box stores if they're bent on becoming the Wal-Mart
of reading.

~~~
makmanalp
I'll bring in another perspective. I'm in a huge dilemma.

I love books. I also like paper books, but I believe that in the long run
we're better off without them for economic and environmental reasons, and
e-books are a pretty darned good alternative. I think that the inherent value
of a book is its contents. Whether it is tangible or not doesn't matter as
much.

Because of this, I think book romanticism is pretty stupid. However, I can't
help but feel captivated by it. I have a few theories on why this may be so:

I do like that my books are tangible possessions, that I can look back at the
notes my father made into them in college, that I can find an old train pass I
used as a bookmark that brings back memories. Or I know that that mark is from
when I spilled coffee all over my theory of computation book when I fell
asleep studying for the final. I associate my books with other things,
thoughts. Currently this doesn't quite work this way with e-books. That's why
they don't feel "personal". This can be remedied, but I don't know to what
extent.

I don't give a damn about big box stores, but I care very much about my local
stores. The difference is in experience. When I'm buying a book, I don't want
to feel like I'm a standardized entity there to benefit a company whose sole
purpose is to maximize profits. The alternative to this what I can only
describe as "intellectual flirtation".

Example: Today I happened to have some free time and I wandered into my
favorite bookstore. I looked around, grabbed a book about Cognitive Behavioral
Therapy and sat in a corner reading for an hour. No one nagged me to buy
anything. The book was well written but it wasn't as comprehensive as I hoped,
so I moved to the fiction section, and onto mathematics, dipping into books as
I wished. Finally, I found a book about the role of Tea in Japanese culture
and decided to buy it. While I was paying, the cashier struck up a
conversation with me about the book itself and we had a small debate about the
topic and he also recommended another author to me.

Now, as you can see the act of going to a bookstore is not a thing I do just
to buy books. I do it so I can have a change of scenery and pace, relax, learn
and have some personal time to just think (when do we do that, seriously?). I
also do it because it's profoundly social (i.e. not web 2.0 style "me too"
social). I like conversing about the things I find interesting, and it seems
bookstores gather people like me, whether they work there or just visit to
buy. Finally, the cost of all this is a possible few extra dollars on my book.

It's a tough choice for me.

~~~
frossie
The interesting point is how little of the positive bookstore experience you
describe actually involved taking the book home. It seems to me that there
might be a niche for something that is a cross between a bookstore, a library
and the old Edwardian gentleman's club - a space with books and coffee/bar
that is supported by subscriptions (and drink sales) as much as actual book
sales, and where the books are curated to some extent for their interest to
the membership rather than commercial value. I'd pay a monthly fee to be able
to go hang out in a nice space full of books that are selected to be
interesting (to me!) rather than stuff like "Chicken Soup for the Soul" and
the latest fad diet.

Sort of a bookstore version of HN, I suppose.

~~~
makmanalp
I would sign up for this! A gentleman's club sounds elitist - which is one way
of keeping "community quality" up I suppose. But to me it's a rather ugly and
exclusive way of doing it. Ideally, the audience would self select. The people
who wouldn't fit the place and mindset wouldn't want to come in the first
place. I don't even know how to begin to think about how one would come about
doing that or how one would start such a community and expect people to come
and socialize, though.

~~~
frossie
To clarify, I did not mean to indicate elitism by mentioning gentlemen's clubs
- rather their social purpose, which is in fact close to how many people use
Starbucks or other wi-fi coffee shops today: somewhere to go instead of going
home, where you can get a drink and something to eat and spend some quality
time with your laptop, or socialize if you are so minded. If you paid a
subscription, you wouldn't feel bad about occupying a table as long as you
wanted, and the bandwidth would be better :-)

------
crikli
Borders is dead because the folks in charge of the corporation made bad
decisions. They overextended themselves borrowing to expand. They failed to
shutter money-losing stores quickly enough, not in small part because they
signed off on long-term leases that made vacation a non-option in many cases.
And of course their online presence was managed by Amazon from 2001-2008.

The failure of the chain isn't a commentary on the changing book market, it's
a commentary what happens to businesses that abuse debt and make decisions for
the short term than have negative long-term implications.

------
dhyasama
I have hundreds of books which fill multiple bookshelves (I've even read most
of them) like some sort of trophy case for my intelligence. There are only a
handful I have picked up more than once (except to move), and the only ones I
pick up on a regular basis are cookbooks. Different books lend themselves to
different formats and purchasing options. I buy tech books in electronic
format, novels on my Kindle, and cookbooks I absolutely have to pick up and
thumb through before buying a physical copy. It's time for the big bookcase to
go, replaced with a small bookcase, a kindle, and a hard drive.

~~~
virmundi
How do you read the tech books? I've purchased two books, one on Stripes and
the other JavaScript: The Good Parts. I haven't started the JavaScript book on
my Kobo, but the Stripes book fails all the time. It freezes the reader. But
even when it doesn't, I find it hard to reference the material. I want to jump
to a certain page, but find the jump to feature slow and tedious, especially
when I don't know the exact page.

------
InclinedPlane
Most big box bookstores don't have as much variety or depth as we've come to
expect from exposure to online book sellers. You have to go to a sizeable used
bookstore to get that (famous examples being Powell's in Portland and The
Strand in NYC).

The problem is that people have diverse interests (niches) and a typical brick
and mortar retail operation simply can't afford to carry much depth in any
particular niche. The result is a lot of niches shallowly represented, at most
big box stores you can't even find all of the books written by a given author,
even famous ones, unless they are insanely popular at the moment.

Ironically I think in the next few decades the pre-internet trend will reverse
and independent used bookstores will stick around longer than the chains.

~~~
cypherpunks2
I don't think this was the problem with Borders. With Borders, the selection
was just poor. There are canonical books on many topics. If you went into the
computer section, you wouldn't find things like K&R, Stroustrup, etc., but the
latest and crappiest C and C++ books. The same thing was true of books on most
topics -- music, photography, sewing, etc. -- there are classics, and instead
of carrying those, Borders would carry Dummies and other books.

If you went into the sci-fi section, you wouldn't find Philip Dick, Stanislaw
Lem, or even a decent selection of Asimov -- you'd find a bunch of sci-fi
books written the previous couple of years, and in many cases, sequels without
the originals.

Finding books of quality at Borders was hard. I'd often want a book, go in
there for half an hour, and find nothing. The value-add of a good bookstore is
that they will have pre-selected the best books for you. If I go many of the
little used book shops in my area, it will be a rotating selection of
excellent books. Not every book will necessarily be my style, but every book
on the shelves will be great, and there will be books on most topics. This is
much more useful.

I don't really understand why this was the case. Borders ought to have
economies of scale, and really ought to be able to have some central office
somewhere picking out good books. Somehow, the selection was random and crappy
instead.

I think part of the problem was that Borders probably went the route of
overusing metrics, and providing more books similar to the ones that sold,
which lead to a bunch of crappy books on popular topics (where it's much more
useful to the customer to e.g. have the top 3 books on videography than the
top 3 books, hidden in a bookcase of crappy books, where the good ones take an
hour or two to find).

------
zwieback
It's strange - when Borders came to our town (Corvallis, OR) I was excited. In
the end, though, the number of full price books I bought I could probably
count on my fingers. The CD listening stations are now no longer needed and
the location wasn't convenient enough to stop in for a coffee.

Our independent bookstores are still alive, luckily.

~~~
keyle
Border's demise, at least in Australia, was investing too much in the CD
business. That lead them to renting much bigger space that they needed and
increasing cost. When the CD years faded, they felt it hard on the balance
sheet.

~~~
kabdib
The CDs and DVDs were also horribly expensive compared to local competition,
even if you used coupons. I honestly don't know why they thought they were in
that business.

Our Borders had a tolerable collection of CS texts, diminishing in quality
over the past couple of years. When they stopped getting new SF in on release
days, I stopped buying books there.

------
dvdhsu
Mark Evans, an executive at Borders until 2009, had a few insights into why
Borders died.

[http://www.quora.com/Borders-Books/Why-is-Barnes-and-
Noble-p...](http://www.quora.com/Borders-Books/Why-is-Barnes-and-Noble-
performing-well-as-a-business-while-Borders-has-filed-for-bankruptcy)

------
MatthewB
A little bit sad but who didn't see this coming? At least Barnes and Noble is
venturing into the ereader market and trying to do something.

~~~
Apocryphon
I'm hoping that B&N's willingness to innovate, or at least take part on the
eReader bandwagon, will allow them to survive.

------
yalogin
Hard to believe a decade ago they made movies portraying Borders and BN as
evil and ruining book stores. You have got mail came out in 98.

~~~
chubot
It's also amazing that Borders beat its competitors on _technology_.
Apparently the founders developed some really innovative inventory software in
the 80's/90's that allowed them to keep low prices and a wide selection. This
allowed them to expand all over the nation.

------
beagledude
definitely going to suck to have a world where you can't go chill out
somewhere and check out some new books and magazines. Not to mention 10,000
more jobs gone

~~~
lutorm
There are always the locally owned, independent bookstores. If any are left...

~~~
runevault
That last part of your statement is important. B&N and Borders drove a pretty
large # of indy bookstores out of business (and Wal*mart killed a few more as
I understand it, going out of their way to increase stock in certain areas
until the Indies bought it, then going back to normal book habits).

I hope this event helps cause a resurgence in the indy stores. I need to make
it to the local Tattered cover soon, though I plan to make it for GRRMs
signing end of this month.

~~~
18pfsmt
Good to see a mention of the Tattered Cover, as they actually have 3
locations. There was a Talk of the Nation segment[1] that covered independent
bookstores, and how they are coping today just a few weeks ago (the Tattered
Cover owner was guest).

[1][http://www.npr.org/2011/06/30/137529480/how-to-make-it-as-
an...](http://www.npr.org/2011/06/30/137529480/how-to-make-it-as-an-
independent-bookseller)

~~~
runevault
Yeah one in Denver (I used to work next door to it) one in HR, and I can't
recall where the third is.

I'll have to listen to that later, thanks for the link.

------
rmason
Here's Mitch Albom's epitath for Border's in the Detroit Free Press:

[http://www.freep.com/article/20110717/COL01/107170485/Mitch-...](http://www.freep.com/article/20110717/COL01/107170485/Mitch-
Albom-As-Borders-fades-so-does-bookstore-
magic?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|p)

------
rmason
Though I had to drive over an hour to get there I still patronized Border's
orignal store in Ann Arbor. After the crash they were the only store to still
stock a fair inventory of tech books, though fewer with each passing year.

~~~
antidaily
Can't imagine it not being there on Liberty. Sad news.

~~~
rmason
I would hope that maybe Schuler's might buy the Ann Arbor store. Still would
be an independent bookstore downtown but it definitely wouldn't be the same.

------
forgottenpaswrd
My father told me about a time when the big cities were plagued with cinemas,
some of them really really spectacular. This time exist no more.

The cinemas of today... they are totally different like those circus with 20
elephants and tigers you just can't see it again.

Maybe it is time for people like google guys to enter and record with the
street view tech what is like a bookstore of today because maybe it is obvious
for us but our children will not know what is it.

I'm digitalizing all my books with the fantastic Fujitsu S1500 so I don't have
to carry a metric ton of books around with me. Ebook tech will only improve,
it is in its infancy today.

~~~
roel_v
Sorry for OT, but regarding the Fujitsu, do you cut the spines off your books
and throw them away afterwards? And do you read them from PDF's? On what, a
regular computer? That seems to be quite a step backwards; I love epub on my
ebook, but reading non-reflowable formats is hardship on it. Or do you have an
A4/letter ebook?

~~~
RexRollman
I would have assumed that he would have used OCR to conver the scans into
text, which would be reflowable.

~~~
roel_v
But does the OCR recognize things like page numbers or chapter names at the
top of the page, chapter headers etc? If it just makes searchable pdf's with
the same layout as the original pages, it still wouldn't help much. But if OCR
software does do that, that's be great - then I can convert also 'normal'
pdf's into html/epub.

------
logic
From my own perspective: my wife and I love going to the local big-box
bookstore, grabbing a few books or magazines off the shelf, buying a few
coffee/bakery items, and sitting for an hour or so. Judging from the crowd
that accompanied us on most weekends, I don't think we're unique in that
regard: the only money we're spending there is in the coffee shop, or through
impulse purchases.

The fact is, we buy most of our books on Amazon or other online retailers; the
bookstore is a form of cheap entertainment for us, not a serious place to
shop. Their variety of inventory simply wasn't good enough to rely on (I paint
Barnes and Noble with this brush as well, and the last time I was in a
Chapters, it was similar), and overnight shipping is close enough to instant
gratification for us.

------
yuhong
Yea, I know that legacy MBAs and "shareholder value" based on stock price is
horrible and certainly helped the demise. Ackman (a activist shareholder who
specializes in takeovers) once proposed that Borders takeover B&N, which of
course would have been horrible.

------
phuff
I've noticed that borders has made some moves at diversification (they have
Legos on the shelf now, etc.) but I think it was pretty clearly too little too
late. The history of the company is just one poor move after another once the
original owners got out.

~~~
aninteger
My Border's actually had sections with Hello Kitty greeting cards and comic
books and a "manga" section. It was odd..

~~~
ghaff
And, from my experience with at least the downtown Boston store, they also
diversified into CDs and DVDs--which turned out to be a diversification into
something in even worse decline than their core business.

------
brianbreslin
I wonder if barnes n noble would pick off the highest sales locations from the
liquidators and convert them for markets where they weren't dominant yet.

Wonder what type of place could survive and be profitable at the size of the
typical borders stores (20-30k sq feet)?

~~~
ja27
In my area, every Borders was built quite close to an existing Barnes and
Noble location. It's pretty frustrating because there are other perfectly
viable locations with no bookseller or a tiny Waldenbooks.

I've spent some time trying to come up with good uses for empty big box
stores. I now have an empty Circuit City, Borders, and grocery store within a
few miles of my house. They get used seasonally for fireworks or Halloween or
calendar retailers ("the hermit crabs of the retail industry") but nothing
else.

I'd love to see someone go into one and open a laser tag / trampoline / rock
climbing / indoor playground type space, especially one with tables and wifi.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
Where I am in the UK the stores are mainly owned by rich landlords who
couldn't apparently care less if there's a store open or not (they don't lower
their rates). About half of our city centre locations are vacant (for real!)
and no-one can afford the rental rates being charged. Local gov taxes are
(roughly speaking) a multiplier (< 1) of rental rates.

Do you have this sort of problem there too?

~~~
brianbreslin
In my neighborhood, a touristy area of miami, 25% of the retail spaces are
empty and have been empty for YEARS. Landlords refuse to lower rents to draw
new tenants. There must be a tax incentive to "lose" money on these units.

Many new developments in suburban areas further outside of the denser areas
are offering tenants the first year free to get their feet settled. I think
this is a smart move, and wish more landlords were that forward thinking.

------
hswolff
The local Borders store had a big going out of business sale here about a
month ago. It was really sad walking inside and seeing all the shelves empty.
It was even more depressing walking out having seen nothing that looked
interesting to buy.

------
btilly
I live walking distance from one of their remaining stores.

I know where I am going this weekend.

~~~
MatthewB
A couple months ago I was at a Borders store that was closing down in a few
days. They had ridiculous discounts (80% off and such) on everything.

When I buy books, I usually buy how-to books to teach myself something. Even
though they were dirt cheap, I kept thinking to myself: "I could easily get
this information for free online." I ended up leaving not having bought
anything.

~~~
sliverstorm
Instead of thinking only about the money, think about it like this:

Book costs $5, but I could get it for free online. Hrm... If I have a physical
book sitting on my nightstand staring at me, am I more likely to actually read
the material? If yes, is the difference between not reading and reading the
material worth $5 to me?

~~~
buff-a
I have a physical iPad staring at me, its dark screen like a pool of liquid
possibility, a bottomless ocean of imagination. And porn.

------
daimyoyo
Wow. When Borders closed the store closest to my house, I understood why since
the only people who ever seemed to go there were vagrants getting out of the
heat and people using the wifi(I used the wifi). But there's a flagship store
here that always hosts author signings and events located 5 minutes south of
the Strip in Vegas. I hope Barnes and Noble buys the space since there's no
existing stores near it, and the place is always packed with people. I'd hate
to see my favorite hangout become another overly self important clothing
store.

------
watmough
Kinda sad, but for my book-buying habits, used books on Amazon have killed my
fiction buying, and NoStarch, Manning etc., have killed my bricks&mortar tech-
book binges.

------
jschuur
I'm sitting at the South Coast Plaza Borders right now in Orange County, and
the cafe folks said they were shutting this location down on Friday.

------
pat2man
Hopefully this helps out smaller book sellers. There will still be a market
for hard copy books but it won't be large retailers selling them.

------
gregorymichael
How far behind is Barnes and Noble?

~~~
e1ven
The Nook has saved BN from the same fate. I believe I read that something like
40% of revenue is currently nook-based.

~~~
iqster
I've heard similar things. I don't totally understand how the Nook exists in a
world where the Kindle and iPad exist. My only explanation for why people are
buying these things is that they want a cheap tablet (closer to the price of a
Kindle rather than the iPad) and don't want to buy it online. If that's the
case, Amazon dropped the ball big time wrt distribution channels. Anyone have
a counter theory?

~~~
Aloisius
I use the Nook iPad app and I have an original Nook as well.

Originally, I bought a Nook over the Kindle because there was a rather large
number of free public domain books that I wanted to read and the Nook
supported open formats. I pulled down hundreds of books from Project
Gutenberg.

Barnes and Noble pushes them in all their stores and believe it or not, Amazon
doesn't have every customer in the world. Physical stores can still push a
product better than an ad can.

------
MatthewPhillips
What is Barnes & Noble doing that's so significantly better to Border's
strategy?

They've executed well on their eBook strategy (although they came to the party
late too).

They have Starbucks in their stores.

Not to discount those things, but is that really the different between
bankruptcy and success?

------
cadr
Does this mean they will stop spamming me now? I mean, it just goes to my spam
folder now, but they went from occasionally sending me something useful to
junk almost every day, no matter how many times I unsubscribed.

------
jamesbritt
ObPic: [http://consumerist.com/2011/04/sign-at-borders-store-
closing...](http://consumerist.com/2011/04/sign-at-borders-store-closing-in-
chicago-tells-customers-where-to-find-a-restroom.html)

------
parfe
Same problem as Tower Records. If you can only physically stock 60,000 titles
there is no way to compete with an online company that can simultaneously
offer all of them.

------
gigawatt
I wonder if the people crying that the internet killed Borders are the same
people that cried that Borders killed the independent bookstore.

------
slowcpu
I read a lot more now. Before ereaders, I used to read a book a week. I now
read between 4 to 5 books a week. In addition, the books I read are of higher
quality ( less trash, more mathematics, medicine, philosophy, political
analysis and finance ) now that I mainly read from a e-reader. Multi-volume
books are so much easier to carry around in a ereader.

------
slowcpu
The death of the old codex will go unlamented. Physical books will now only be
a small niche for traditionalists, like eight track tapes.

~~~
qjz
8-track tape has few (if any) aficionados, due to its self-destructive media
and scarcity of quality playback devices.

Physical books, on the other hand, require no special playback technology and
are arguably one of the most perfect user interfaces ever devised. I have
century old books in my library that are still fascinating and useable, in
contrast to my collection of audio tape, floppy disks, and even some CDs that
can no longer be read reliably (my vinyl still works, though). It feels a bit
premature to declare the end of physical books.

~~~
yuhong
>8-track tape has few (if any) aficionados, due to its self-destructive media
and scarcity of quality playback devices.

Vinyl has a lot of aficionados though.

------
uladzislau
90% of bookstores will go out of business sooner or later because of eBooks.
There's no point to feel sorry about Borders, others will follow.

