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Bookstore Chain Borders is Dead
- gregorymichael 15y agoHow far behind is Barnes and Noble?
- nerfhammer 15y agohttp://www.google.com/finance?q=BKS http://www.google.com/finance?q=BKS
- e1ven 15y agoThe Nook has saved BN from the same fate. I believe I read that something like 40% of revenue is currently nook-based.
- iqster 15y agoI'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 15y agoI 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 15y agoSteve Jobs said they weren't getting into the eBook business because people don't read any more. He was wrong. The Kindle has thrived where a good many people said it would go away after the iPad was released. With the Nook as a strong #2 in the market I think it's obvious now that reading will continue to be a popular hobby. Barnes & Noble has the retail presence that allows customers to try out their product in the store before buying.
- gyardley 15y agoMy wife works for bn.com, and I've met a lot of their employees at after-work functions. Slowly but surely they've been hiring strong talent, and based solely on what I hear from my wife and see at events, morale seems high. No one I've talked to seems concerned about bankruptcy. Given their share of the e-book market, vs. their current $1B market cap, B&N certainly looks undervalued. There's a reason why firms like Liberty Media have been making bids on the company -- they see money to be made there. Things can always change, but from my (limited) vantage point the two companies aren't on the same path at all.
- MatthewB 15y agoA 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 15y agoI'm hoping that B&N's willingness to innovate, or at least take part on the eReader bandwagon, will allow them to survive.
- pat2man 15y agoHopefully 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.
- beagledude 15y agodefinitely 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 15y agoThere are always the locally owned, independent bookstores. If any are left...
- illumen 15y agoThere's usually a really good indi book store right where the borders are(or used to be). Their tactic was to move in near the best, most popular store in each areas. I'm glad they're gone.
- ams6110 15y agoThat's what they did here. The indy looked at what he was facing and didn't even bother. He sold his inventory and closed down before he lost his shirt. That was over a decade ago; now that Borders is gone, closed last fall. B&N is the only real bookstore left in the area. There are a couple of independents but they have very limited inventory and seem to make their living selling a lot of accessories, pens, and stationery.
- runevault 15y agoThat 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 15y agoGood 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-independent-bookseller http://www.npr.org/2011/06/30/137529480/how-to-make-it-as-an...
- hswolff 15y agoThe 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.
- rmason 15y agoThough 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.
- btilly 15y agoI live walking distance from one of their remaining stores. I know where I am going this weekend.
- MatthewB 15y agoA 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 15y agoInstead 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 15y agoI have a physical iPad staring at me, its dark screen like a pool of liquid possibility, a bottomless ocean of imagination. And porn.
- SystemOut 15y agoDon't expect the discounts to be that good the first weekend...I mean, the first weekend I went to one of the closing stores I could get most items cheaper on Amazon still. By the time they got to sufficient discount numbers anything I was interested in was already gone.
- phuff 15y agoI'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 15y agoMy Border's actually had sections with Hello Kitty greeting cards and comic books and a "manga" section. It was odd..
- ghaff 15y agoAnd, 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 15y agoI 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 15y agoIn 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 15y agoWhere 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 15y agoIn 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.
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- zwieback 15y agoIt'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.
- cageface 15y agoMusic stores have suffered similar fates. The big, generic chains have been destroyed by ecommerce but smaller shops that provide expertise in a distinct niche have survived and even flourished. I think there's a lesson for software businesses in this too.
- keyle 15y agoBorder'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 15y agoThe 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.
- rmason 15y agoHere's Mitch Albom's epitath for Border's in the Detroit Free Press: http://www.freep.com/article/20110717/COL01/107170485/Mitch-Albom-As-Borders-fades-so-does-bookstore-magic?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|FRONTPAGE|p http://www.freep.com/article/20110717/COL01/107170485/Mitch-...
- yuhong 15y agoYea, 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.
- watmough 15y agoKinda 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.
- yalogin 15y agoHard 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.
- wyclif 15y agoYou've Got Mail
- felipemnoa 15y agoThe incredible part is that their business changed in just under a decade.
- philwelch 15y agoKind of like how Blockbuster killed the local video rental shop, eh?
- chubot 15y agoIt'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.
- uladzislau 15y ago90% 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.
- wheels 15y agoI 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.
- panacea 15y ago>But I won't cry for the passing of the big-box stores if they're bent on becoming the Wal-Mart of reading. There's likely some bad decision making behind a move towards a 'Wal-Mart-ification' of the big-box stores, but are you sure they could have survived if they tried to compete with the advantages of a warehouse full of diverse stock and shelf space that is virtual and costs nothing to expand by adding pages (ala Amazon). It seems to me that they've acted more like fish in a pond that's been drying up. Struggling to stay in a deep enough spot to keep breathing. I get a better price, better selection and more information browsing Amazon, but I'm not about to blame the physical book stores for going out of business because they changed, man. Related: http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2011/07/12/the-secret-bookstore/ http://www.theparisreview.org/blog/2011/07/12/the-secret-boo...
- cafard 15y agoThey've gotten worse. Borders was a revelation when it showed up on Rockville Pike outside Washington. I was delighted when it came to downtown at 18th & L NW. But during the last several years I could see (for example) the poetry shelves squeezing down from most of two free-standing chest-height shelves to part of one; the history section much compressed; the computing shelves progressively thinner and less organized.
- dhyasama 15y agoI 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 15y agoHow 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.
- jamesbritt 15y agoObPic: http://consumerist.com/2011/04/sign-at-borders-store-closing-in-chicago-tells-customers-where-to-find-a-restroom.html http://consumerist.com/2011/04/sign-at-borders-store-closing...
- daimyoyo 15y agoWow. 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.
- slowcpu 15y agoI 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 15y agoThe death of the old codex will go unlamented. Physical books will now only be a small niche for traditionalists, like eight track tapes.
- qjz 15y ago8-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 15y ago>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.
- gigawatt 15y agoI wonder if the people crying that the internet killed Borders are the same people that cried that Borders killed the independent bookstore.
- crikli 15y agoBorders 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.
- jschuur 15y agoI'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.
- parfe 15y agoSame 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.
- InclinedPlane 15y agoMost 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 15y agoI 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).
- dvdhsu 15y agoMark 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-performing-well-as-a-business-while-Borders-has-filed-for-bankruptcy http://www.quora.com/Borders-Books/Why-is-Barnes-and-Noble-p...
- forgottenpaswrd 15y agoMy 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 15y agoSorry 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 15y agoI would have assumed that he would have used OCR to conver the scans into text, which would be reflowable.
- roel_v 15y agoBut 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 15y agoFrom 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.
- MatthewPhillips 15y agoWhat 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 15y agoDoes 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.