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Borders Books to close December 22nd unless buyer can be found

'Real' bookstores are going out of business partly because of online convenience and partly because they charge full list price for books.

I love browsing through the shelves, but I'll be damned if I'll pay $17 for a book I can get for half that on Amazon. Too poor these days.

ETA: Ironically, I just received an email offering 25% off list price of any book on Borders.com. :lol:
 
Books are one of the few things I don't like buying online, so I'll be upset when real stores go away.
 
The Borders Express at my local mall is closing down. I believe I overheard a salesperson say that only the Express stores in the US are closing.
 
Jeez, you guys scared me...I thought the whole chain was going under. I do like going there for stuff I can't get at the other stores. But honestly, if I want something I go to Hastings. Ever since we got that, and ever since Borders Rewards decided they couldn't be bothered to get me back on their coupon mailing list, I pretty much said F-U to them and took all of my business to Hastings.
 
All of our bookstores are gone.
Your world is very bleak. I think you should hook up with that Aragorn guy and his son and walk somewhere where there is books.

Yeah, most of the Borders express stores around here are gone. The last one is leaving Birch Run outlets, which sucks since they pretty much put the other two bookstores there out of business, and now there's nothing more for me to go to beyond the kitchen stores.
 
For a second, I thought it was happening in Australia too, but I found that are owned by someone else now. There is one in Newcastle (at Kotara), which don't mind using. It's been a while since I brought any books from there.

The Australian, New Zealand, and Singaporean stores were sold in June 2008 to A&R Whitcoulls (who also own local competitor Angus & Robertson) to pay off debt.
 
Yeah, I was just talking about it with the wife, and it's odd....we used to spend so much time there, with friends or each other, but we haven't been back in a long time.
We've been to Barnes and Nobles a lot lately, but the Borders not so much. Which is sad, since I don't usually drink the Starbucks at B&N, and only went there to find books I couldn't get easily elsewhere (like Hunger Games for some odd reason)
 
For a second, I thought it was happening in Australia too, but I found that are owned by someone else now. There is one in Newcastle (at Kotara), which don't mind using. It's been a while since I brought any books from there.

The Australian, New Zealand, and Singaporean stores were sold in June 2008 to A&R Whitcoulls (who also own local competitor Angus & Robertson) to pay off debt.
That explains why the links in the email I got from Borders the other day were stuffed - they linked to A&R's site rather than the Borders site. :lol:

It's disappointing that there's even less competition among bookshops here now. I do most of my book shopping at Dymocks, anyway.
 
Geez I hope this isnt a sign of things to come. I love going into Borders and Barnes&Nobel. I dont buy books online. Just not the same. I can usually get better prices in the stores especially if they have been out a year.
 
This all reminds me. Last year, one of the largest used bookstore around closed down. Acres of Books in Long Beach. And i never got to go. :(
 
I feel for the employees losing their jobs...I was in the exact same position last year: when Circuit City closed down, my store's last day was only a couple of days before Christmas. It was like the company was giving us a big symbolic Christmas card saying "Merry Christmas, You're Fucked"
 
Walmart sucks ass for book selection.
Wal-Mart even has books? And I don't mean books by Dr. Phil or Sarah Palin. :p

It really surprises me, since of the very few times I've been to a Wal-Mart, 99% of the customers don't exactly ring to me as the book reading type. :rommie:
 
^Me either. But, I've found new release Trek books there often enough to look any time I'm in. At $5.50 a pop, that's better than Border's and B&N.
Yeah, I was just talking about it with the wife, and it's odd....we used to spend so much time there, with friends or each other, but we haven't been back in a long time.
We've been to Barnes and Nobles a lot lately, but the Borders not so much. Which is sad, since I don't usually drink the Starbucks at B&N, and only went there to find books I couldn't get easily elsewhere (like Hunger Games for some odd reason)

I'm the same way. I used to spend a ton of time in Borders. Then, about a month ago, I went into one and found myself surprised that the DVD and CD sections were gone. Then I realised the last time I'd been in was around last Christmas. I go to Barnes and Noble to find books I couldn't easily find at Borders, as well as to buy my Godiva hot chocolate. I hadn't realized until a month ago that I'd just started going to B&N first...
 
Walmart sucks ass for book selection.
Wal-Mart even has books? And I don't mean books by Dr. Phil or Sarah Palin. :p

My local Walmart has the books you name (and others like them), but once it a long while I'm able to find a copy or two of a recent Star Trek book there. And, by "recent" I mean that it's typically two to three months old.
 
'Real' bookstores are going out of business partly because of online convenience and partly because they charge full list price for books.

I love browsing through the shelves, but I'll be damned if I'll pay $17 for a book I can get for half that on Amazon. Too poor these days.

Part of the reason Borders and similar chain bookstores are doing badly in the UK is actually the opposite - the introduction of discount books. There used to be a setup in Britain called the net book agreement where the bookstores had to charge publisher's recommended price for a book (ie the cover price) - although this was struck down later on as not in the spirit of free enterprise, it did mean that 'chain' bookstores didn't have the opportunity to crush small private places and in turn the supermarkets didn't have a chance to crush the chain bookstores by offering books at a loss to draw customers to buy their other products (Borders can't do that - it doesn't have any other products).
So the result was a book discount price war that has screwed 'real life' bookstores who tried to compete on price - they simply couldn't beat the prices of the much cheaper to operate online options. In a market where the only thing when buying books that seems to matter is the raw price (a market as much of the bookstores' making as anyone else's), places like Borders couldn't compete.
 
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