Borders runs out of cash

I don't think anyone is going to miss Borders very much. Borders has been in trouble for many years, precisely because so few do buy there. Other chains will pick up the sales Borders loses.

We lost Borders here in UK a year ago.

They are a BIG miss.

Borders fucked themselves. Years ago, they had two things that made them special: they treated their employees well, and they had great title depth. When I was in college, my friends and I made Borders a destination store because we knew they'd have the best selection, it was a comfortable atmosphere, and the staff really knew their stuff. I mean, Borders used to have a book-knowledge quiz for prospective employees.

Some time later, I worked for them for a couple of years. I got to see first-hand the changes they made specifically to be more like Barnes & Noble, including stripping stock down to the bare minimum--"If we don't have it, we can special order it for them!" (dude, if they have to order it anyway, they're going to Amazon)--and McDonaldizing the workforce (hiring people to run registers and not deal with stock at all, doing away with or cutting the Info Desks way back, cutting starting pay, eliminating various bonuses). It probably improved their bottom line, at least temporarily, but I think it killed the chain.

They closed the local Borders near us, stores that had been open for decades. It pretty well forced us to become B&N customers and even THAT is a good half-hour's drive.

I'll be sad to see them go under and hope someone else picks up the stores, but they've made some bad business decisions.

RichardLeon said:

According to the article Borders still does around 8% of all book business in the US.

That's a lot of business to lose.

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Who says any of it will be lost? It just doesn't work that way. It's not like Borders is the only place to buy books. What borders loses will be picked up by other outlets. Do you think Borders customers are going to stop reading because Borders goes out? If they can't buy a book at Borders, they'll buy it somewhere else.

I mean, if a local chain supermarket goes out, as happened here not long ago, do people stop eating, or do they buy their food somewhere else?

It truth, Borders has already lasted ten years longer than many experts thought they would.

As Marlys says, Borders did it to themselves.

Now we'll see if the experts were also right about B&N.

Who knows, maybe this means independent bookstores will start making a comeback, which is something else the experts predicted twenty years ago.

But, really, just because Borders does eight percent of the book selling does not mean any of it will be lost because they close.

New slogan:

Anyone But Amazon.

I prefer Borders to B&N, but I mostly choose which to go to depending on the weather. and if I want to eat while there (B&N has better food selection.)

So yeah, I feel a big chain book store is as interchangeable as food court Chinese food. one might be better, but not so much that if it had a long line you'd still choose it over the other.

I also agree that when a book store offers to order a book for me I never take them up on it. why would i come back to a book store that doesn't have what i want when I can get it sent to my house? I've gotten in the habit of calling or just going straight to the search kiosk. they usually don't have the books I want.

But I see JAR's point. I'll still buy books, either at B&N or online. the prices are always the same unless you're picking something up of a specials table. they just sell for the list price and all the products are identical... like buying nikes at footlocker or Olympia sports.

If anything the closing of people's local bookstore (if there isn't a nearby alternative) will just boost ebook, online, and area coffee shop sales. but bookstores are like fast food, there's usually one a stone's throw from the next

My favorite Borders can become a huge Seattle's Best cafe -- the one they have now is always packed and turning caffeine fiends away. They'll just have to keep the magazine section and Wi-Fi, then they should be golden.

Seriously. In markets with high student populations, expanded coffee houses (aka study halls) could be a growth venture. The ones we have locally also serve as office space for tutors and freelance business people, meeting spots for tentative daters, and general hang-out spots. Magazines and newspapers and Wi-Fi are critical to the business model. Books not so much, though children's books would secure more of the parental/grandparental market.

The business model also depends on people fulfilling the coffee house social contract: Short stay rent = buying one drink; long stay rent = buying one-three drinks and/or snacks. Those trying to smuggle in Dunkin Donuts coffee must be taken out back and spanked.

I used to work at Borders about, geez, five years ago and it was a great place to work but by the time I left I could sense that things were starting to wobble because they redesigned the store I worked at TWICE in a corporate quest for The Perfect Store Layout.

They used to give employees a monthly gift card as a benefit. I read somewhere they'd gotten rid of that and that's when I knew the place was on a downhill slide.

Well, for some of us, Borders is the only brick and mortar store in close driving distance. I mostly read ebooks now, but went to the borders for print books.

The nearest B&N is over an hour away (not to mention it's in a shopping district where I have to pay for parking). Yeah, everyone online is always "support your local indie store!" We don't have one. Well, there is one, but they don't stock the genres I read.

More and more, I have to order online if I don't want to drive all over trying to find the books I want. You can lambast Amazon as the great evil corporation, but I can find the books I want there and have them delivered to my door, even way out here in the country.

I will miss Borders. The employees were always very helpful and great at suggesting books I might like. A couple of them know my tastes pretty well.

Soccer Mom said:

Well, for some of us, Borders is the only brick and mortar store in close driving distance. I mostly read ebooks now, but went to the borders for print books.

The nearest B&N is over an hour away (not to mention it's in a shopping district where I have to pay for parking). Yeah, everyone online is always "support your local indie store!" We don't have one. Well, there is one, but they don't stock the genres I read.

More and more, I have to order online if I don't want to drive all over trying to find the books I want. You can lambast Amazon as the great evil corporation, but I can find the books I want there and have them delivered to my door, even way out here in the country.

I will miss Borders. The employees were always very helpful and great at suggesting books I might like. A couple of them know my tastes pretty well.

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If Borders moves out, someone will move in to take their place. As for Amazon, they are a great place to find books, and if that's all that matters to you, then Amazon is great.

Jamesaritchie said:

I don't think anyone is going to miss Borders very much. Borders has been in trouble for many years, precisely because so few do buy there. Other chains will pick up the sales Borders loses.

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There are three Borders stores in Ann Arbor and only one Barnes & Noble, unless you count the student bookstore. Then there are two. Borders corporate headquarters are here too--no great surprise since the Border brothers' first store opened here many years ago.

If Borders closes, I'm going to miss it a lot. There's a store right down the street from where I live. More to the point, the 600 people who work at Borders HQ are going to miss it too. Michigan does not need more job losses.

Haggis said:

If Borders closes, I'm going to miss it a lot. There's a store right down the street from where I live. More to the point, the 600 people who work at Borders HQ are going to miss it too. Michigan does not need more job losses.

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Not to mention Borders employees around the country who will be out of their jobs.

I would miss Borders, its the only book store I can get to and I host my writers group there. Having wiped out the indy books store, the chain store are pretty much all there is in some areas.

It's not like Borders is the only place to buy books.

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And yet, in many places in the country, they really were. The Waldenbooks we had in our nearest "city" really was the only place to buy. There was a Hastings (a southern chain) but it caters mostly to movie and music lovers. The books there are 90% used and heavily top 10 bestsellers. No mid-list titles at all. When they closed the Waldens, I discovered I had zero places to shop for new books in an over-150 mile radius around me.

I really feel for a lot of the people I know who work at Borders, including buyers and executives. I hope they can hang in there. They can reinvent themselves if only they would come to the realization that what they USED TO DO is what people fell in love with them for: large selection and employees who loved books enough to recommend them to readers. The stores that follow that one simple rule are recession-proof.

But I may have to wander off and buy some Borders stock. At worst, I'll be supporting my friends, at best, it's a terrific investment if they get in the right new management.

RichardLeon said:

The business may be more complex than you think it is.

Currently publisher sales reps talk to buyers. Buyers - including the ones from Borders - say "Yeah, we can take a few thousand of those."

The sales reps talk to their management and management decides whether or not to greenlight a project.

When sales reps talk to Amazon, Amazon says "Yeah - maybe - whatever." Because Amazon has a different business model, and books are just part of it.

So the sales team downsizes their estimates, and fewer projects get the green light.

And even in 2011, there are still many people who buy books because they're browsing and drinking coffee, meeting friends, and doing all of those things that people only do in real book stores.

It's especially bad news for midlist fiction, because a lot of midlist fiction is sold through physical browsing to readers who are looking for something genre-ish but new to them.

Amazon doesn't offer the same browsing experience for mid-listers. The book previews are too sketchy to close a casual sale, and "also bought" is ignored more often than not.

So the midlist shrinks further, which again means fewer commissions and sales of new projects.

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I know how the business works. I've been on both sides of teh desk for thirty years, I also know nature abhors a vacuum, and books sold very, very well before there was a Borders. If there's a demand, then business will always fill it.

Unless actual customer demand for books goes down, Borders going out will cause no loss of business to publishers at all, and unless human nature changes, a new bookstore will replace Borders, be it a B&N, or an independent.

Amazon? Who knows. They may be the benefactor, but Borders is hardly the only place to browse books. Good God, the closest chain bookstore to me is a forty mile drive, and the closest city that has two is a hundred and thirty mile drive. We don't even have a used bookstore here. But people here still read books. A lot of them, and most don't get them from Amazon.

If Borders actually closes, there will be a burp period while everyone adjusts, but the book economy does not rest with Borders, or B&N, or Amazon. It rests with readers, with customers, and those customers are simply not going to stop reading because Borders goes away, anymore than they stopped reading when independent bookstores went away. Someone will move in to fill the void. They always do. That's really the sole aim of business.

As for mid-list writers, that seems to be all I ever hear. When I first started in this business more than thirty years ago, it seemed every other article I read was about the mid-list being cut or eliminated.

One of the first things I did was read the archives our library had of The Writer and Writer's Digest. They went back to almost the beginning of both magazines. Decades and decades. It seemed every other issue also had dire warnings about mid-list writers.

And, in fact, I've seen several mid-list writer cuts in my lifetime. There's simply nothing new about publishers cutting the mid-list. The cuts did those particular writers no good, though some moved on and got out of the mid-list. As they say, that's why God created pseudonyms. But it always seemed to help the industry as a whole, and certainly helped new writers trying to break in. That's fine with me.

The mid-list going down does not mean fewer commissions or loss of sales. It means more new writers will get those commissions and sales. You move out the old to make room for the new, and in publishing, this means moving those who aren't selling well enough and replacing them with new writers who might do better.

Everyone seems to admit that publishing is a business, and then seem amazed when publishers actually act like one.

The void around me is quite large and I am not confident it would be filled very quickly. An island full of ground nesting birds can be wiped out by rats, the rats can be wiped out by one cat, the cat can then starve and die--leaving an empty island.

Currently there are two cats on the island and I would rather keep them than just hope for the best.

So James, how would explain the UK situation?

HMV looks like they are going under, dragging Waterstone's with them. The only other major book retailer is Blackwells and they are an academic bookseller.

That cannot be good for writers.

I'm reading an article in the local business news right now about the possibility of a Borders/B&N merger. It'll be interesting to see how that develops or if it even happens.

That sucks. TBH I only go to Borders for one reason--the 30% and 40% off coupons. If I haven't got a coupon, I definitely hit the indie bookstores instead.

My local Borders doesn't have a great selection of books (and I heard they were putting in a Build-A-Bear Workshop at all the stores? or did I imagine that?) but I have to say they have good customer service. I've been in multiple times to pick up a recent release paperback, and the staff will do an all-out search to find where it's been lost between the stockroom and the shelf.

More coffee, more snacks, more hanging-out and working space, I'm telling ya.

Jamesaritchie said:

As Marlys says, Borders did it to themselves.

Now we'll see if the experts were also right about B&N.

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Our nearest B&N (Saginaw, MI) has really gone downhill. They greatly expanded their "spiritual" and homeschool/ed supplement sections and toys/games sections at the expense of readers. Honestly I think they're competing with a nearby Sam's Club.

As someone else said, nothing annoys me quite so much is the offer to "order it for you" when it's something you could have delivered to the door.

I could make a similar complaint about our local Fye. Their selection is pathetic.

For bookstores, you still can't beat a high quality independent bookseller. I always end up buying more books when I visit a good independent bookstore compared to the franchises. Independents are so much better at stocking interesting things to read and hiring people who know what's good.