Borders - the end

[DimesDan]

Waterstones is the only proper chain bookstore in the UK unless you count W H Smith. Central London, specifically Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue, have more secondhand bookshops per mile than almost anywhere in Britain (the exception being the town of Hay-on-Wye in Wales).

The time of chain bookstores is over. Independents will rise up from their ashes.

Well yes I do count Smiths, they tend to sell books and they even have some book only shops at mainline train stations and the like, so why wouldn't they count as a book shop?

As for number of used book shops per square mile (not sure why or what point you were trying to make here) but Rochester, Kent has a fair few, if not more used and second hand book shops that the Charing Cross road area of the capital and there is a place in Somerset called the Book Barn which as it sounds, is several warehouses fit to bursting with millions of used books.

One thing I've noticed in recent months is that more and more charity shops have wider book selections and it's not just (inter)national charities like Oxfam that have book only shops, here in Bath, a local Hospice, Dorothy House is opening a second hand book shop soon.

 

[JD]

Waterstones is the only proper chain bookstore in the UK unless you count W H Smith. Central London, specifically Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue, have more secondhand bookshops per mile than almost anywhere in Britain (the exception being the town of Hay-on-Wye in Wales).

The time of chain bookstores is over. Independents will rise up from their ashes.

Personally, I doubt that. If the chains can't survive, I doubt the independents will be able. I really think that the time of bricks and mortar bookstores in general is coming to an end. Everybody either buys off sites like Amazon or does ebooks.

 

[BrotherBenny]

The difference between chains and independents is that chains have a board of directors, shareholders, and plenty of others who need to be appeased with truckloads of money before the consumer is even considered. Independents focus on the consumer--what makes a consumer happy brings in money to survive. With the eBook revolution, independents can far more easily capture niche markets and cater to them without a chain stealing their customers or buying them out.

How many different book chains did Borders buy out? They got too big for their boots and ended up face down in the mud. They didn't diversify enough. B&N is staying afloat because of the Nook and games/toys in addition to the books, for now anyway.

I have a Kindle, and there are books from certain authors I read, and I know from subscribing to their websites their new books come out. That way I can download them straight away, no need to browse bookstore to find them or ask a badly-trained staff member to check for me. Amazon's recommendations are not great but reading "What are you reading now?" threads on forums like this or reading tweets give me a better way of browsing for books than a bookstore does.

This is the future of the book. Independents will survive, though probably not in their current form. They may become nothing more than print-on-demand kiosks with cafes attached. But they'll survive.

 

[DimesDan]

Waterstones is the only proper chain bookstore in the UK unless you count W H Smith. Central London, specifically Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue, have more secondhand bookshops per mile than almost anywhere in Britain (the exception being the town of Hay-on-Wye in Wales).

The time of chain bookstores is over. Independents will rise up from their ashes.

Personally, I doubt that. If the chains can't survive, I doubt the independents will be able. I really think that the time of bricks and mortar bookstores in general is coming to an end. Everybody either buys off sites like Amazon or does ebooks.

I occasionally buy the odd book online and I don't do ebooks so not "everybody" does it and I would guess that less than half of the general book buying public actually only buy books online or for their ebook device.

Bookshops may become a rarity, but I don't think they'll die out, both me and my other half love the feel of "proper solid books" in our hands, we also both really enjoy just looking around, picking a book up and then buying it. You can't do that with Amazon and you can't do that with ebooks, so, the humble hardcopy book sold on shelves in a shop where you can see and meet someone and interact with them will live on, even if it is someone like Bernard Black owning that shop

 

[Steve Roby]

The time of chain bookstores is over. Independents will rise up from their ashes.

I'd like to think so, but I don't think any of the indie bookstores that were here in Ottawa 20 years ago are still alive in the same form, and I can think of only two that are still going. A couple of others have opened since, but they're mostly niche stores -- gay, feminist, or literary, though Perfect Books has a decent genre selection.

The story in Canada over the last couple of decades has been the dominance of one particular chain. And it seems to be fairly healthy.

 

[OverlordSpock]

I remember one in particular, was a paperback of one of Charlaine Harris's books. The MSRP was 6.99, but the sticker was 17.99. I thought maybe there was some confusion and they meant to slap this on the hardcover ... so I compared them. Different barcodes.

I asked the manager about it, holding out the two versions of the book, and was told "That's just what the publishers suggest we sell them at. We can price them at whatever we want. If you want it, you'll pay it."

That's ridiculous! How does a bookseller expect to keep customers if it treats them so badly!

I should point out that I used to shop at the above-referenced Borders location all the time and never had such an experience. I never saw anything marked up above cover price and the employees there were nothing but gracious and helpful. At least in my experience. I obviously can't speak for OmahaStar.

The only reason I stopped shopping at the Maple location is because Borders opened a store in the Shadow Lake Mall in Papillion (suburb of Omaha) which was SO much closer to where I live. It is a smaller store, but I've had the same great experiences there that I've had at the other two locations in Omaha. My only real complaint about the Papillion location was that they did the typical small Star Trek section located on the bottom shelf thing.

I truly am going to miss Borders something fierce.

 

[Sakrysta]

SF discounts are up to 25% now, and Rewards discounts have been extended thru the weekend. Just FYI.

 

[JD]

Waterstones is the only proper chain bookstore in the UK unless you count W H Smith. Central London, specifically Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue, have more secondhand bookshops per mile than almost anywhere in Britain (the exception being the town of Hay-on-Wye in Wales).

The time of chain bookstores is over. Independents will rise up from their ashes.

Personally, I doubt that. If the chains can't survive, I doubt the independents will be able. I really think that the time of bricks and mortar bookstores in general is coming to an end. Everybody either buys off sites like Amazon or does ebooks.

I occasionally buy the odd book online and I don't do ebooks so not "everybody" does it and I would guess that less than half of the general book buying public actually only buy books online or for their ebook device.

Bookshops may become a rarity, but I don't think they'll die out, both me and my other half love the feel of "proper solid books" in our hands, we also both really enjoy just looking around, picking a book up and then buying it. You can't do that with Amazon and you can't do that with ebooks, so, the humble hardcopy book sold on shelves in a shop where you can see and meet someone and interact with them will live on, even if it is someone like Bernard Black owning that shop

Well, you can browse, read the blurb, and then download a sample for Nookbooks, don't know about Kindles though. Other than the whole "feeling a real book" thing, there really isn't anything that you do in a bookstore that you can't do in the B&N Nookbook store.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

You get to do more if you actually go into the Barnes & Noble with your nook...you get an hour to read any eBook you like, to REALLY sample it before you buy.

 

[Zman1]

I think it has as much to do with the fact that Americans are becoming more illiterate as it dose with the economy.

I've been working retail for long enough to realize that the average customer is getting dumber. Some would blame the schools for setting lower standards the whole no kid left behind b/s, I however think it's more in line with semi-passive eugenics. Less intelligent people tend to breed much more quickly usually with no regard for their own resources expecting AID/welfare to make up the difference, while people who think about it first at least attempt to not have more children than they can support only using social services as a last resort. The net effect is that of short-sheeting our own gene-pool.

 

[BillJ]

I think it has as much to do with the fact that Americans are becoming more illiterate as it dose with the economy.

I was thinking the same thing the other day.

 

[Skywalker]

Well, I was in a town with a Borders today, so I figured why not. Ended up walking out with seven new books and three new graphic novels.

I loved the discounts, it's just too bad it means Borders won't be around for much longer.

 

[plynch]

Up until I got my Nook I did most of my book shopping at Borders.

That says it all.

I am a former Ann Arbor resident and used to hang out at store #1.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

I used to work for Borders. I used to work for Tower Records. This, like that, saddens me.

Seems every job you have is bad luck. Stop picking the short straw.

I was well clear of each place when they folded. I hope to be well clear of my current job--high school teacher--when he state swoops in and makes a bad situation worse.

 

[Idran]

I think it has as much to do with the fact that Americans are becoming more illiterate as it dose with the economy.

I've been working retail for long enough to realize that the average customer is getting dumber. Some would blame the schools for setting lower standards the whole no kid left behind b/s, I however think it's more in line with semi-passive eugenics. Less intelligent people tend to breed much more quickly usually with no regard for their own resources expecting AID/welfare to make up the difference, while people who think about it first at least attempt to not have more children than they can support only using social services as a last resort. The net effect is that of short-sheeting our own gene-pool.

That's what every single generation in history has said; you can find people from any century you want, going back to the ancient Greek days, saying that people were getting dumber than they used to be. But going from the hard evidence that's out there, every single measure of intelligence that exists has shown an increasing trend over time that is continuing even today. The tendency over time continues to be that average intelligence is going up, not down.

I'm sorry, and no offense to you, but the problem is you're looking at a small, self-selected, and non-representative sample, alongside the many cognitive biases that everyone has in their brains; confirmation bias especially in this case. Because of both those factors, it's important to keep in mind that for any sort of statement like this, the plural of anecdote is not data. Personal experience is not reliable, and in fact often is in direct opposition to what's really going on. People are really good at finding false patterns just as capably as true ones, and so without doing some sort of randomized study across a representative cross-section of the populace, it's impossible to say anything with confidence about a claim like that.

 

[plynch]

I don't disage with people becoming less literate. That is documented.

But - Borders had a huge physical CD section. Oops. They farmed out their online presence to Amazon (!) choosing to concentrate on kiosks that people would go in person to, to order things. Oops. They also expanded their stationery section. Oops. They came late to the ereader game with "Kobo."

Note that Barnes and Noble is still alive and well. And we have two small bookstores and one used bookstore in my town of 15,000.

Borders should have stood pat with the beautiful store #1.

 

[Therin of Andor]

I don't disage with people becoming less literate. That is documented.

Is it? The compulsory years of schooling get extended and extended all the time, more people attempt tertiary education than ever before, and there are less manual/factory/assembly line jobs around these days - meaning that more less-literate kids stay longer at school, and must struggle to compete for jobs they are less-suited to.

 

[BrotherBenny]

I won't say there's hard evidence of a more illiterate civilization, but there's anecdotal evidence all around. The issue is not whether there is or not, the issue is what to do about it. You can't make the whole world read books, but make one person at a time read a book. Think of it like the Starfish Story.

In the past, I have given a book I no longer wanted to someone who didn't read books (too boring, apparently) and was interested in the subject matter (in the form of comics and games). He now reads as avidly as I do.

Try it yourself and see what happens.

 

[Christopher]

The New York Times just reported that book sales are on the rise:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/08/09/books/survey-shows-publishing-expanded-since-2008.html?_r=1&hp

 

[Therin of Andor]

Try it yourself and see what happens.

I'm a teacher librarian. Every day I cajole/intrigue/reward/trick/convince kids to read books (and comics, graphic novels, etc.)