I have been working seasonally at one of the Walden books/Calendar places this year and lack of technology is a huge problem. The database is dos based, the computers are running on windows 90 something and they don't even have a word processing system to create company documents with. I have been told the actual Borders stores have access to better technology but when a customer asks about a book featured in the local paper (and they dont' recall the title or author of course) and you can't get online to check, you've lost another sale. It's been proving to be a rather frustrating experience working there.

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Jesus, they still haven't fixed that shit?

Wow.

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I used to be a huge Borders customer. I'd go in there to buy a specific book and end up leaving with about a half-dozen or so, having spent well over $200 after planning to buy a $19.95 book. Because they had *everything*.

Then times got hard, cash was short, I stopped going to bookstores because while I could afford the occasional $19.95 or so there wasn't $100 in the book budget, let alone the $200 I was likely to spend. I started buying from Amazon because I would go there for a specific book and not be sidetracked by seeing and being able to pick up and examine all the other books I wanted to buy. I kept wish lists* so that I always had a few things I wanted so I could get my purchases over the free shipping limit without browsing and running up a huge bill.

These days, the only bookstores I frequent are second hand ones. And that's as much as anything for the treasure hunting aspect.


*There's a $600 book on my Amazon wish list right now -- one of these days I'll have the money for it. I have expensive tastes.

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This article from the New York Times places the blame on second-hand book buying. Yep: it's not the economy, it's not Borders' latest business strategies: it's us bad, bad bargain-hunters. The entire publishing industries woes are the fault of people buying online from each other, swapping books for cheap or free, or buying from a second-hand retail outlet.

While I'm sure that's a factor, I think the breast-beating, finger-pointing and extravagant blame-throwing is bullshit. I will happily give my money to authors and support the publishing industry so that I keep getting books, but I effectively have no money right now. If I happen to have a quarter in my pocket and I pass by a book I want that's being offered for that, I will scoop it up without a qualm. I am a very, very poor bibliophile and I refuse to be made to feel like crap for it.

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I have a hard time believing second-hand book buying is killing the publishing industry if Public Libraries haven't already done it. Why pay dirt cheap for a book at all when you can probably get it for effectively free (not including membership costs if any)?

Of course there are plenty of reasons to buy second-hand vs. using a library (including not being able to pay for a membership), but it's just a small point to say that this is really a smaller part of the problem than the publishers would like to make it out to be.

If they want to get pissy about second-hand buying then I want to get pissy about copyright extensions.

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For years I enjoyed purchasing from Borders. I generally read books that are already fairly popular, so of course Borders always had what I wanted in stock, and plus the store had a better dvd section than any big box store (just try finding Seven Samurai at Best Buy).

Then I decided to try Amazon. Naturally their selection was amazing. They had everything Borders had, and then some. Why should I drive half an hour to Borders when they might not have what I want? Sure, that was rarely the case, but it had happened one or two times before! Plus, Amazon's selection was always discounted. While I might occasionally get a 20% off coupon for Borders after a purchase, there were few books on Amazon.com that weren't already discounted by at least that amount. This problem was exasperated once Borders started offering e-mail coupons. While nice in theory, these coupons would range from 15-30% off, with the rare 40% discount. This made me hold off going to Borders whenever there was a coupon below 30%, which only made me put off purchasing from them, which subsequently drew me to Amazon more and more.

And don't even get me started on their recent internet sales venture.

I had no idea that Borders is doing so poorly, and to hear such is a disappointment. It really was a great store, but it's easy to see where it lost its ways.

Fine post, Ferrett.

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I knew we were in trouble when I did a test order from Amazon, and it arrived in two days and I went, "Oh, AWESOME! My book is here already?" And then I thought, "Oh. I shouldn't be that enthused about the competition."

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I used to like Borders better than B&N because it felt like Borders had a better selection. Not just for weird stuff I was looking for, but for browsing and discovering as well. That changed at some point -- the cost cutting you point out is probably why. The other problem is that Borders (at least the branch I frequented) changed its focus and turned almost half its floor space into CD racks. Since I buy books all the time but hardly ever buy music, this meant that in my mind Borders was now half the size of B&N.

These days I buy books mainly from Amazon, but I was slow to adopt it because I like browsing racks of books and flipping through them, and I like being able to read them right away once I buy them. I switched to Amazon out of logistical necessity when I went away to college. I didn't have a car, I lived a mile and a half from B&N, and Borders was clear on the other side of town from me. But Amazon would deliver to my door.

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Yep, it's just so much more convenient for me to order online and have it shipped to me. The closest Borders is about 25 minutes away from me. By the time I would drive there, I was exhausted from fighting traffic. Fuck that. I find it much more convenient to just buy a lot of stuff online, for that matter.

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I worked at a WaldenBooks, too, albeit only for a year and never as anything more than a register monkey.

This post saddens me, 'cause I have always strongly preferred Borders, not least for their vastly superior graphic novels section.

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If it isn't printed backwards, it isn't stocked at my local Borders. Well, okay, there might be one copy, in the back, under something, possibly with minor damage, provided it was published 5-10 years ago (just that range, apparently) and never sold.

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Borders never bothered to open a store in my city. B&N, otoh, opened two stores, and Books-A-Million was less than a mile from their north store.

BAM is still open. And Barns-n-Yarns is still doing land-office business.

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Your point about the fund-cutting brings up why I don't shop at Borders anymore. Here in Davis, CA, we already had three independent bookstores in town, two mostly focused on used, when Borders went in. At some point, I wander into Borders looking for a book, which they don't have, so I order it. Then I wait, and wait, and wait. After a month or so, I give up on them and order it from one of the independent stores - their response: "It'll be here Thursday." Me: "Wow, it's already Tuesday." Sure enough, they called me when it came in - as for Borders, I never did hear from them. I suppose I could have been proactive and called Borders to find out what was up with the book I ordered, but really, if they couldn't handle a task as simple as calling me when it came in, I wasn't interested in patronizing them.

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I used to love Borders and it's still the store I will go to if given a choice. Though the Borders in the malls are, ironically, not much better than Waldenbooks.

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Most of the mall Borders - Borders Express - are Waldenbooks. Borders relabeled most of them in an attempt to be more visible, which I think backfired because people's opinion of Borders as "all encompassing" was further eroded.

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I think the bigger issue is how the publishing (and probably by extension bookselling businesses) were forced to transform over night and conform with the rest of the American big business empire and mentality.

For most of America's history, publishing was allowed to be a lazy backwater. A place where modest but steady returns were expected and okay. It was better to have something that would sell a steady amount every year than be a blockbuster and soon fade from cultural memory. People who went into publishing and selling books were people who really wanted to be tastemakers and did not care about making maddening profits. It helped that a lot of publishers and editors were independently wealthy and viewed their houses as kind of pet projects.

However this changed sometime in the 1980s probably when a lot of publishing houses began being snapped up by major media conglomerates. Now the model for books is more like Hollywood. There is a lot of pressure to find the next Harry Potter or Twilight or Da Vinci Code which will make hundreds of millions of dollars and get franchise and spin-off deals. Authors are not really given the time and patience they used to get which would allow them to improve their art and hone their skills.

The publishing industry does not support writers like John Williams anymore, He published three novels through out his entire career but each was a masterpiece with moderate but not amazing sales. His last novel did win the National Book Award though.


Publishing also seems to have been infected by that odd American disease wherein everyone needs to be good looking. I've noticed there has been a trend towards finding authors with TV-pretty levels of looks. The woman who wrote Adventures in Calamity Physics is a good example.

And then there is the Philip Roth thesis. Roth believes that there are only 120,000 "serious" readers in the United States. Though that is a debatable number and I'm sure he has a very different definition of a "serious" reader than you do.

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Authors are not really given the time and patience they used to get which would allow them to improve their art and hone their skills.

I got to attend a John Irving reading a few years ago, and he said he'd pushed his agent (I think it was his agent) to begrudgingly admit that his first novel wouldn't be published if he tried to sell it today.

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Nice post. I just linked to it, and offered my own example.

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...and obviously, opening a branch of Borders in Cambridge, UK, which has two big bookstores is such a recipe for success...

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That's a whole other thing. They were really restricted by English laws, and had to partner up to get into the UK, and as such they didn't have the control they wanted. I know that some of the stores weren't their ideal locations.

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Erg. When I started working for Borders, we were the cool bookstore. We had a large staff with amazing knowledge of the product. By the time I left, it was horrifying to me what they'd become. I had one employee ask me who wrote the Harry Potter books.

More than once, I had to run the entire store with five employees. A music clerk, a book clerk, a cafe clerk, a cashier, and me as supervisor. Answer the phone within three rings, greet every customer within ten feet of the door, walk every single customer to their book or cd, don't let more than three customers stand in line, and if it gets slow, send someone home. By the way, no customer complaints about how few employees there are to help, and you'd better hit sales numbers and the email collection percentages (who cares that not one customer who walks through that door isn't a regular) or you're on discipline.

We were becoming the big box and it showed so, so badly.

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Oi. That would drive me mad. Also, as a bookstore customer, I don't want to be greeted within ten feet of the door and I'd rather they didn't bug me unless I have a question, in which case I'll ask. I'd rather they put the clerks up front so I can check out quickly when the time comes. I guess that's just me, though. :)

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you left out:
BAD IDEA - Let's try to emulate other successful companies (ie Coca-Cola, Jewel/Osco, etc) by bringing in their top people to run our company. The fact that their companies are completely different from ours in both product & marketing strategy has nothing to do with it.

Yes, I'm still a little bitter, even after 3 years.......

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Let us not forget the infamous 'manager shuffle', where the managers who were hired from those other companies drove stores into the ground, then, instead of being fired, were shuffled into new stores.

One assistant manager that was sent to our store had been a manager at three now out-of-business stores. After about three shifts of her working with us, our team collectively decided to get her fired. After succeeding, we discovered that she'd originally been a manager at a JC Penny's.

Which had also been closed.

Ugh.

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You can't ignore, either, that people just aren't buying books. Amazon kills everyone because they sell everything, they're the Wal-mart of the internet without the bad lighting. But book sales themselves are way, way down. I moved maybe half the inventory this year that I have in previous years, and I'm a microcosm. Economy bites, people cut luxuries.

As far as the turnover, Borders pissed off a lot of publishers with their massive returns last year. Bookstores always overorder and return mass quantities, but Borders turned it into an art form, to the point where some publishers simply stopped taking their orders. I felt the latter to be an overreaction, but it can't have helped Borders either. I do know Borders returns damn near killed me last year.

What I don't understand is how B&N is doing well. Yes, all of your post is true, but bottom line: B&N is more expensive than Borders. I rarely buy there because a $25 BN book costs $19 at Borders and $17.50 on Amazon, and their customer loyalty program requires you to PAY, which is wrong on many levels. Why isn't B&N hurting the way, oh, everyone else from Borders to independents to New York publishing to small press to lowly authors are?

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Oh, book sales are way down, but the point is that Borders dug this hole long before. They've been struggling for three years, minimum.

And Borders was always terrible with returns. I'd like to share some stories about what it was like in the software business with them, but I shan't. I was of the opinion that you need to buy some up-front to make some cash, but Amazon changed those rules.

B&N isn't hurting because... okay, I have no theories.

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Ah. See, here in St. Louis, we already had a couple of Barnes & Nobles before we got our first Borders, and I have never understood what the fuss was about: to me, Borders has always sucked. Borders was always a "bookstore" the same size as Barnes & Noble, only with half of the rack space dedicated to music CDs for pop bands I had no interest in. Who goes to a bookstore to buy music, anyway? And what company expands its music department at a time when the sales trend in pop music is relentlessly negative? What was the thinking on that? But yeah, for as long as I've ever even known there was a bookstore chain called Borders, Barnes & Noble has had better selection than them. More comfortable stores, too.

Come to think of it, all of my friends who were Borders fans are from smaller towns, who moved here. I wonder if this is like other people's reaction to my fondness for the Mexican(ish) chain restaurant Chevy's -- a taste I honed when I was eating at their original restaurant back in San Fran when I went there on business once a year, before they franchised it. It took me longer than it should have to realize that it wasn't just the occasional off night for the chef, that Chevy's had really wrecked the menu by cheaping out on ingredients, because I remembered when it was good. I wonder how many of my friends took embarrassingly long to notice that Borders sucks because they imprinted on it back when it didn't suck?

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Chevy's sucks to me, so I think the theory stands. But by the time we got into the music biz, the Massive Expansion had started - so you saw them later.

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All we have here is Borders, and a small local bookstore. I like the local one because I don't have to go all the way to the mall, and deal with the parking lot. And if they don't have it, they get it. Prices are the same. There are a bunch of coffeeshops around there, too. My town got some award for redesigning their downtown and the local bookstore jumped right in on it and found a niche.

Borders is great when I need something right away. (But even then, the weird shit I need is hard to find -- school stuff.) I like it, I just hate the whole big parking lot ordeal, something I didn't often deal with in NYC.

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I still live in Ann Arbor and remember the original (take no substitutes) Borders store before it went all corporate at all. It was a marvellous store. It really was. And our local Borders are usually pretty well-stocked, or WERE, I should say, before this last six months or so. Now, I am sad to say, it seems like I can't find a THING I want to read there at least half the time I go in. Even with my handydandy 40% off coupons. And I have a To Be Bought list as long as your arm.

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And you know, I just remembered something that I had forgotten about Barnes and Noble. While I, like everyone else, loves discount books, the opening of B/N in Norwalk and Westport brought about the deaths of "Norwalk Book Shop" and "The Remarkable Book Store" which were around forever.

That being said I still refuse to shop at Wal Mart and patronize every mom and pop place that I can even, if their prices are higher. 8.00 pellet gel at Wal Mart? Well its 10.95 at Fireplaces, Etc and the guy who owns it always will start a conversation with you and is generally glad for the business. Wal Mart you get a possible mumbled thanks. Enough said.

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I'm sad to hear that Borders, like so many merchants, may be headed for the drainpipe. Even if they made bad management decisions it's still sad.

I worked for a candy store that tried to take on Sees. They're not in business anymore.

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I should add that I am one of those annoying urbanites who buys books all the times but tries to avoid chain stores for political and cultural reasons. The romantic in me loves browsing small and independent bookstores and I am lucky enough to love in a city filled with them.

I personally find that independent stores have much more personality and charm than big chain stores. The Barnes and Nobel in Union Square (NY) was nice but the Strand's chaos had much more allure.

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I'm divided.

The romantic in me loves browsing small indie bookstores, especially the used bookstores.

The jaded Bostonian side has been in the used bookstores in immediate walking distance, and they're full of "Sf? Feh!" literary snottiness, and God forbid you should want a romance novel, and thus they can go to hell. Give me a used bookstore like in my youth, or like I still encounter in smaller towns sometimes, with miles of three-buck Mercedes Lackey paperbacks, and I'll spend oodles of cash there, but I do not want to waste my money pandering to some ex-film-major's idea of Quality Literature.

/surl

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I still have a soft spot for Borders because that's where they ordered, without any prompting, a bunch of UK-only Terry Pratchett stuff. Granted, it sold at import prices, but those Discworld Maps were going to be expensive in any way, shape or form.

There isn't a really convenient Borders near where I am, but next time I'm in that neck of the woods, I may stop in and check...

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That happened because the buyer at the time loved Pratchett, and made a big fucking push to make him big in America. Admittedly, the publisher helped, but it shows what one man's love can do.

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You left out the change in coffee; Borders went from having some of the best coffee around, to a brand that's just as burnt tasting as Starbucks. I used to make a longer trip to borders just for the coffee; now I have 5 borders within minutes of my house and I rarely bother.

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The sole reason I like Borders over B&N is because Borders also carries DVDs and CDs. Last I checked (a few months back), the B&N in my town didn't. If they changed that, I'd probably never go back to Borders, because both of the outlets in my area are mostly staffed with incredibly rude people who seem to think you're imposing on them if you ask them to do their job.

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The B&N in my area does and was built just a few years ago; yours might be an old-school model. The website carries DVDs/CDs though.

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B&N has their classics. $5 - $7 for a book I need, will need, want to read, or just want to have because I read it once when I was younger and I thought was awesome, is amazing. And as a member (my mother actually), I get them for less than that. One day, when I have money, I will have beautiful, expensive books to stock my future library, some of which I hope to bind myself. Until then, cheap books are the best! (I gobble up books at an alarming rate, I think it's an addiction)

In the New Orleans area, B&N has always been favorable to Borders; that's how we are here. We have things we like and we are adamant about it (walgreens over cvs). We also add the letter "s" to the ends of things (ie Barnes and Nobles), so don't be surprised if you are corrected for proper pronunciation around here. B&N has always had the better selection, but it also was already a staple in our picky little hearts.

Borders did just open a huge new store, in a great location, that will probably do well. Other than local (expensive & small) stores, it is the only bookstore in the area where most people don't drive (they tend to shop in a small radius and prefer local), it is near two large college campuses (with a huge campus life since they practically share a campus), and it is in an area where people have money and lots of it, college kid and resident alike.

Borders never really had a chance in the Greater NO area, but they may have a fighting chance in our small, hip, somewhat exclusive uptown district in the heart of the city - they got there first!
Of course if they do go bankrupt, I'm am positive B&N will swoop in for the kill.

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Why would they swoop in for the kill? Let's see, you pick up a bunch of dead inventory, a ton of real estate leases that are now in competition with your store, and an angry and inefficient management chain to integrate into yours.

I wouldn't touch Borders with a ten-foot pole if I were B&N.

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