Borders files for bankruptcy

[The Sad Punk]

Aw, screw you guys, Borders is the best shop to waste an hour in. Also, the public toilets are always full of informative graffiti.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

I love just being in bookstores and hanging out there..there's something about it. And the library, I've been going to the library once a week since the snow stopped and I love it. It's been great relaxation for me. I don't have an ereader yet but I admit I'd love to have one because I just don't have the space for books and I love the idea of being able to carry big clunky hardcover books in my purse or tote. I would read more.

I see from that list that the Borders I go to is closing and I'm sorry for the job losses too. I never knew how it survived anyway because it's just down the street from a B&N. If they go out of business that will really be the end

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

Couldn't disagree more. Soft cover books? Sure, they're cheap and unsightly, but a nice collection of hardcover books beats digital copies any day. Even more so when you're talking about books with any sort of illustrations. I regularly buy hardcover photography books to add to the collection.

I agree about CDs though. Havent bought one in years, but instead buy vinyl. Again, it's about having a nice, aesthetically pleasing collection for me

Canadiens1131 makes a great point though. I almost always order online. It's cheaper, books are almost always in stock, and you dont have to worry about dust jackets being damaged from people flipping though them.
But there is one store in Toronto that is awesome to buy books at. It's called BMV. They buy books in bulk (by the pound, i believe) from the bigger stores and sell them at a huge discount. In the past month, I've picked up 3 or 4 books for around $20-$30 each that usually retail for $80-$100. Selection can be limited, but when you find something good, it's like hitting the jackpot

the aesthetic value is obviously something that will never go completely away. and, yes, there is something about holding a book in your hands vs. reading it off a smart phone.

as someone who commutes three hours a day, changing subway lines three times just to get on a train, being able to read off of my droid is incredibly more convenient than carrying a book around with me, so i've embraced digital reading whole heartedly. i still have some hardcover books in my apartment... i just get more reading done when using the kindle app because i can bring it with me anywhere.


i'm also looking forward to a time when school text books, from elementary school through college, go digital. it's silly to have 10 year old history books in classrooms, and the cost of constantly reprinting new texts to meet an ever changing world is incredibly high. e-books would solve this issue.

 

[yolland]

I found that Borders in Australia initially were great, in that the range they had was when new really spectacular compared to what we were used to getting from A&R/Dymocks etc, and the way they kind of sold themselves, what they sold and how they sold it, was far superior. Of course Amazon then trumped it, and I don't know if it was directly related to that, or just that Borders in Australia changed hands (which it did), but it seemed to revert to becoming more of just a megastore - loads of stock, but pushing a comparably limited range to before, and pushing it in a tacky megastore-ish way.

Have you ever been to Kinokuniya in Galleries Victoria, on George St? Huge store, but incredible range and it still has a good vibe.

I loved all the Kinokuniyas I've been in. In fact they remind me a lot of what Borders was like before they made the mistake of trying to be all things to all people, which started happening roughly around 2000. Page One is another great E/SE Asia-based chain. Every Dymocks I've been in though was pretty much a joke, more like an airport bookstore in depth of inventory. But I've never been to Australia or New Zealand, unfortunately. Sometimes a chain can be surprisingly different from one country to the next.

 

[Jive Turkey]

i'm also looking forward to a time when school text books, from elementary school through college, go digital. it's silly to have 10 year old history books in classrooms, and the cost of constantly reprinting new texts to meet an ever changing world is incredibly high. e-books would solve this issue.

This I can get behind

 

[melon]

I pretty much buy all my books off of Amazon.com. And I despise e-books; physical books all the way!

 

[coolian2]

aww shit. i don't care either way about borders (but a lot of places are going to lose an anchor tenant here), but the news that this is possibly going fuck whitcoulls is a shame.

 

[KhanadaRhodes]

i'm also looking forward to a time when school text books, from elementary school through college, go digital. it's silly to have 10 year old history books in classrooms, and the cost of constantly reprinting new texts to meet an ever changing world is incredibly high. e-books would solve this issue.

that would be awesome, though you know they're still going to charge through the nose for them. i took a class last semester where i could get an etext, it was still $80 for the book, versus $100 for an actual book. ripoff.

aww shit. i don't care either way about borders (but a lot of places are going to lose an anchor tenant here), but the news that this is possibly going fuck whitcoulls is a shame.

yeah, though their new policy for gift cards is ridiculous. you have to spend twice as much as the card is worth to be able to redeem it. so if it's a $50 gift card, you have to spend $100 of your own money (for a total of $150) to be able to use it.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

that would be awesome, though you know they're still going to charge through the nose for them. i took a class last semester where i could get an etext, it was still $80 for the book, versus $100 for an actual book. ripoff

Hopefully when this hits more colleges some clever young lad develops bookster...

 

[Kieran McConville]

I don't quite see why history books, of all things, would be a problem. I get that perspectives on history change, but not that fast. And certainly not at the level delivered to school kids.

 

[Headache in a Suitcase]

I don't quite see why history books, of all things, would be a problem. I get that perspectives on history change, but not that fast. And certainly not at the level delivered to school kids.

are you serious?

take a look at the map in a high school text book. there are countries on it that no longer exist.

literature books, math books, even some basic science books? fine... but of all things, history books are the ones most in need of becoming more fluid. maybe some texts that are specifically aimed at a certain period in time don't need to be changed very often, but we're talking more about college courses at that point, not k-12.

 

[kramwest1]

aww shit. i don't care either way about borders (but a lot of places are going to lose an anchor tenant here)

This is my biggest issue with Borders shutting down stores. I am sick of seeing the empty hulks of chainstores that were thrown up all over the U.S. in the last decade.

Municipalities bend over and lube up to attract stores to their cities. They get some tax benefit and infrastructure development from it, but how do you qualify/quantify the damage to a neighborhood/city when these big box stores go empty for years?

In the Twin Cities, we have plenty of these things sitting empty. We are just starting to see the closed Mervyns stores start to be reoccupied. It's been more than 5 years in some cases.

I hope this leads to more smaller stores and such. I don't use them, but I gladly welcome the Red Box DVD kiosks here and there versus the Blockbuster Video stores that are now going away.

 

[Liesje]

I agree with Headache re. textbooks going digital. My understanding (or at least what I was told from a prof who has co-written textbooks) is that textbooks require a new edition every 3(?) years. Sucks to be a college student with a bunch of texts that are on their last year before the new rev is published because you can't really sell them back unless you trick someone. It's so much easier and cost efficient to use e-books. I think several of our profs have switched over, and somehow have licensing figured out such that the students can access the material via the online course portal, so they don't even need to always purchase their own e-book.

 

[Irvine511]

This is my biggest issue with Borders shutting down stores. I am sick of seeing the empty hulks of chainstores that were thrown up all over the U.S. in the last decade.

let's bulldoze that shit and plant trees.

 

[Jive Turkey]

that would be awesome, though you know they're still going to charge through the nose for them. i took a class last semester where i could get an etext, it was still $80 for the book, versus $100 for an actual book. ripoff.

You've gotta remember though, you're paying for content, not the medium. You can buy a stack of paper the size of a book for a few dollars. You can buy a blank CD for less than a dollar. But that's not really what these people are selling. They're selling content and what went into creating that content. The view that "well, there's no physical product being sold, so you've got next to no costs" always seemed a little short sighted to me.

 

[kramwest1]

let's bulldoze that shit and plant trees.

Or lay down some hardwood inside and make them youth rec centers.

 

[KhanadaRhodes]

You've gotta remember though, you're paying for content, not the medium. You can buy a stack of paper the size of a book for a few dollars. You can buy a blank CD for less than a dollar. But that's not really what these people are selling. They're selling content and what went into creating that content. The view that "well, there's no physical product being sold, so you've got next to no costs" always seemed a little short sighted to me.

oh absolutely, it just sucks that there's not much savings. plus you can't even sell an etext (or whatever people call them) back. personally i think the whole college textbook thing needs a major overhaul, but that's for another thread.

 

[Kieran McConville]

are you serious?

take a look at the map in a high school text book. there are countries on it that no longer exist.

literature books, math books, even some basic science books? fine... but of all things, history books are the ones most in need of becoming more fluid. maybe some texts that are specifically aimed at a certain period in time don't need to be changed very often, but we're talking more about college courses at that point, not k-12.

Maybe we're talking at cross purposes but yes, I am serious, or I wouldn't have posted.

Sounds to me that you are talking about books that are a good deal more than five or ten years out of date. And indeed it really does depend what period of history you are talking about. I don't live in the US, but I'm picturing some grade-school-level social studies text giving the kids an overview of US, European, Asian and ancient history and I'm not seeing what is likely to change in a short timespan.

If the kids are still using texts that discuss the Eastern Bloc (and/or the Balkans; any other missing countries that I've neglected?), well, I stand corrected.

 

[HBK-79]

as for CDs? never heard of 'em.

To this day, I still buy actual CD's. I remain ignorant of how iTunes works. I've never touched it.

I prefer buying CD's over anything digital.

How else can you flip through the artwork/photo-laden booklet inside the jewel case?

 

[anitram]

Regarding textbooks being e-books - it is really hard on your eyes to stare at a computer screen for hours on end daily. If I had to read all my legal materials online, I'd probably have gone blind. And I think that it also encourages printing of paper in a wasteful way. So I am not entirely sure that a total switch is in order.

I also tried to read a book on my iPhone and couldn't handle it for more than 4 minutes.

 

[cobl04]

why anyone would chose to read textbooks or any kind of books on a computer is beyond me.

 

[Canadiens1131]

why anyone would chose to read textbooks or any kind of books on a computer is beyond me.

For the same reason you don't trudge to your local library to find out who the first political leader of Singapore was.

Electronic publication = easier access to information and a certain amount of levelling of the playing field.

Why are you posting on a band-specific message board thread about books when you could be organizing a group of U2 fans in your local area who are passionate about books and who also meet nightly to discuss them?

Let's just be clear here.

Less than 20 years ago, people were sitting in their bedrooms, spending hours listening to the radio for specific songs to then perfectly record in duplicate onto bands of plastic, in an extremely specific order, to give to cherished friends or lovers. Do you know how ridiculous that sounds in today's context?

 

[cobl04]

Looking for Singapore's first leader and reading a novel are two very different things.

 

[Canadiens1131]

Looking for Singapore's first leader and reading a novel are two very different things.

Let's say you're reading Shakespeare or a Victorian novel and a couple of words on a page pop up you don't recognize. In several taps and about a minute elapsed you could understand them in context, or you could spend 10 minutes elapsed looking them all up in a dictionary.

I understand e-readers are a bit clunky at the moment, but looking at technology, I wouldn't find it unreasonable in 15 years to purchase one that resembles a paper book with blank pages, and whatever publication you're reading downloads itself wirelessly and conforms to the size of the device you hold in your hand.

 

[yolland]

We've found when using e-textbooks as part of a pilot program here that about 45% of the students in the pilot wound up printing out most or all of the readings (which the e-text reader we're testing allows at no extra cost), as opposed to primarily using their laptop, tablet or desktop. And the more advanced the course level, the higher that percentage was. Still, the e-text is a moneysaver when the entire class uses it--each student pays a materials fee, typically ~60% of the print-textbook price, then gets unlimited access to the text until they graduate--and a majority of the students (around 60%) indicated that price is ultimately their top priority when choosing a textbook format, so that only around a quarter of them felt they'd rather have had the print-textbook despite its higher price.

 

[Canadiens1131]

That's very interesting insight, Yolland.

2011 is going to see the market flooded with tablets. The way we live, work, and relax is going to be very different. Your doctor will be doing the rounds with a tablet, your professor will be reading notes from a tablet during a lecture, and your auto mechanic will be checking off boxes on an Android tablet as he does your inspection.

I have a feeling many of those with a distaste for backlit LCD screens will get used to it, and e-ink will continue to evolve so that your Kindle looks much more like a paper book.

Even 4 years ago, my 50-something mother thought flatscreen monitors were flickery and caused eyestrain, now she's thrown out her CRT screen and has a laptop she loves.

 

[KhanadaRhodes]

it's funny you mention doctors, canadiens. back home, my doctor does use a tablet and has for a while now (at least a couple years, though i forget exactly how long). it is so convenient. the nurse comes in, records my vitals on a laptop, then my doctor reads it off her tablet. plus it's a convenient way to see things about prescriptions, for example. i've got chronic migraines and have been on several things to try to fix it. so she can easily see what i've already taken so i don't take something again i already know doesn't work. a couple taps later she's looking up side effects for a new one, making sure it doesn't clash with anything else i'm taking, etc. no having to leave the room for 15 minutes asking other doctors if they know anything about some medication, thumbing through books, or going back to her office to use google. hell, she was also then able to tell me how much said medication would cost at the leading pharmacies.

 

[yolland]

Here's the list of all the Borders stores closing:

Borders Stores Closing - The Wall Street Journal Online - Interactive Graphics

I just talked to a friend of mine who works at a Borders and he said that because of the legal requirements of bankruptcy, the company wasn't able to inform the managers of the closing stores until Wednesday--the same morning the story broke. So there were numerous incidents of soon-to-be-ex-managers finding out in the form of a local reporter who'd just read articles like the one above, calling them bright and early to ask, "Hey, do you have any comment on your store closing?" Then when corporate did contact the managers, they said, "...and please refer any media inquiries to headquarters--don't speak to them yourselves." I'm sure many of those managers were well aware there was a high likelihood their stores would close, but still...ouch. Talk about an unpleasant reminder of the impersonality of chain retailing.

 

[MrsSpringsteen]

E-ink is much easier on your eyes than a computer or LCD screen. I can read for hours on a Nook and it doesn't bother me at all.

 

[ShipOfFools]

This really irritates me.

At a time when none of the local music stores were carrying the PG-era Genesis boxset, Borders had it. Same with the Movie box.

They had things that other stores didn't have, and now who's going to carry those things? Will I have to do all my shopping on Amazon? What if I actually want to walk into a physical store and buy copies, rather than order online?

This is so irritating.