Borders is Gone
 

http://www.annarbor.com/business-rev...group-e-books/

Not a good day for Ann Arbor, job-wise.

That's too bad. They were my favorite brick and mortar bookstore.

They went out of business over here about a year and a half ago. It was easy to see why, the shops were a mess in comparison to their rivals and, of course, expensive when compared to the supermarkets they seemed to be trying to compete with.

Borders attempted to buy Barnes and Noble hoping to save itself. When that purchase failed, Borders was done.

Borders did zero innovation. Ignored threats such as Amazon. Then tried to buy their way out rather than change the business model. Bankruptcy is how bad management is eliminated. If it does not happen fast enough, then employees also suffer.

Guess we shouldn't have bailed out all those financials then.

Goodbye Borders - you screwed me once and I never went back. Now it'll just be ANOTHER empty hole in the strip mall.

I blame medicins sans frontiers.

And your grammar are wrong.

I appreciated borders loyalty to old school book readers/buyers. I guess I was in the minority though. Still, I will miss the big store in the city. I could spend a whole day there with the kids.

FIFY

Borders is gone. You know what else is gone? The thrill. The thrill is gone. :(

Not really, it just sounded funny. The thrill is alive and well and living in infi's shed.

Mrs. Z, Zing #2, and I went to Borders last night to use up gift cards before everything is gone.

It was kind of sad. I see this as more than the end of a single retailer. I think it forebodes the demise or at least reduction of brick and mortar retailers in general.

I also think it's an indicator of the trend toward electronic books.

Neither of these is a horrible outcome, I guess. But it will be a different world.

Borders remained the retailer come lately, minimal online presence and they got into the ebook market late.

I think I mentioned elsewhere that my friend was a store manager. Her Borders Express (i.e., small, normal-sized rather than mega-store) closed down around the same time as the 25k+ sq foot monstrosities earlier this year, but for different reasons ... the mall didn't renew their lease. As a consequence, she was released in a different manner than the managers of the big stores and came out ahead of the game ... got her retirement, for example, which the closure store managers didn't.

A lot of the people affected by this are longer-term employees, the ones who really love selling books, and have been with the chain for 10 or more years.

It's a shame, but it's not surprising.

Sad, the demise of the book and replacement by Kindle's and other such electronic reading devices is a sad statement.

I'll be very surprised if my grandkids ever get to hold proper books, although that's probably a lie, because as an old fuddy duddy, I'll be giving them books. I'll probably be the only one though.

Even kids books are ebooks now. :(

I just went to a book signing tonight at a local independant bookstore. There were enough bibliophiles there that I believe real books will continue for a long time. But they'll become more expensive and less mass market.

For the record, the reading was Bonnie Jo Campbell "Once Upon a River". She was the first author or anybody I ever sent a fan mail to after reading her first novel, Q Road. I have now sent two fan emails, so she's a member of an elite club. :lol:

What's all this talk about the demise of books? E-book sales are growing at a much faster rate than print sales, but print sales aren't declining. They are increasing.

2010 saw a 5% increase in print book sales from the year before. And the year before saw a 4% increase.

The number of titles available has grown dramatically over the last decade as barriers to publishing are lower.

There is tons of information out there on the statistics of book sales, but a decent summary of recent years is at this book tracking site.