Borders Going Bye Bye
 

Much to Susan's chagrin, Borders today announced that they are closing the last of their stores - possibly as soon as this week.

It's an end of an era. What was it they sold? Those papers attached together with words on them, what are they called? Oh, yeah. Books.....

When will B&N go. At this point the one across the street from us is just in the way of me getting to the stores I actually go to.

How I wish I had a good bookstore closer. It's a half hour drive to any bookstore from me.

I hope my B&N lasts a good long while. I don't buy a lot of books there, but I do spend a good 15 to 20 hours a week writing there. (and buying obligation chai.)

Sad. I don't buy many books, but always purchased mine there. Books are something I don't buy online - I like to browse. Granted, I spent 90% of my time in Borders browsing without buying.


But the truth is, I don't buy many books. Most of those I do are for gifts. I'd have purchased far more music and movies at Borders if their prices were competitive.


Too bad. And totally sucks about the 10,000 people now out of a job. Ugh.

flippy: B&N was quicker on the e-reader bandwagon, so they might be holding up better. Also, I always thought the smart thing they did in their business was to provide seating areas where you could peruse the books you were interested in, so that you got into them and then convince yourself that you needed to buy. And B&N's biggest mistake was when they let the number of chairs in their stores dwindle to where that became difficult. But with the Starbucks in the stores (also a revenue source), that's been less of an issue in recent years.

So I went by what used to be the HUGE Borders store near my office, and it's now a Crown Books. They've used a makeshift wall of bookshelves to block off the former Starbucks area and, oddly, the entire rear half of the store. I can understand that the side space of former Starbucks can be formally partitioned and leased out by Westfield as a separate retail operation - but there's nothing Westfield can do with the rear half of a giant space that has no access to the public throroughfare. Very strange.

And they managed to take what was a very upscale Borders location and, without adding anything new of their own, use the leftover fixtures and furnishings to create a decidedly downscale, totally schlocky shopping environment. (And, hahaha, all the "BORDERS" etchings on the windows have had the BS removed, and now read "ORDER.")



Sadly, a very unique and fantastic bookstore, Brentano's, was closed just downstairs from the Borders when it opened about 5 years ago. So now we're left with a really crappy Crown Books that is 30 steps down in quality from Brentano's. Bah.

My friend from Indana worked at a Border's bookstore that was closed the first round of store closings. She worked there for over 10+ years. She is now unemployed. It sucks. As much as I do like online book buying with my IPad instead of a paper back I loved going into an actual book store once in awhile. I have a feeling that with all this technology items books will sadly become a thing of the past (actual books not those downloaded etc for Kindle's, IPads etc) just like pay phones and actual phone booths are becoming extinct.