I'm glad you liked it, because at one time, I had hopes for Borders as well. Unfortunately, it all comes down to the available workforce, and I started becoming exclusively a Mark Ziesing Books customer solely because I was sick and goddamn tired of the twits at all levels. (I don't have any hope for indie bookstores to pick up the slack, either, because the proprietors of Frumpy Fiftysomething's Used Books and Quiet Desperation Emporium ended up at Borders solely because they couldn't stand the thought of getting real jobs when their old store went under. They'll try to reopen Frumpy Fiftysomething's, but they'll make the same asinine mistakes and show the same arrogant attitude that drove them out of business in the first place.)

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"Borders Books and Music Online Employment Application"

The first question is:

Why do you want to work for Borders?

And the first possible answer is:

Borders drove my independent bookstore out of business

Yup, that's exactly what happened to my job at an independent bookstore in 1997. I then tried to get a job at Borders across the street, but no luck.

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As I noted, this was written based on experience. Unfortunately, I experienced far too much of the second answer: "Borders drove my incompetently run independent bookstore out of business, and I'm unfit for gainful work". Hell, I was married to that answer for seven years, and was lucky to get out alive. (When my ex and I moved to Portland, Oregon eleven years ago, she passed up a sure shot as a manager of a new Borders to man the phone lines at Powell's so she could "stay in the publishing business", and she quit that job for a minimum-wage position with a university press reseller. In a town where everyone jokes that "you know you're a Portlander when you make $50k a year and you still have to live with your parents," the fact that she threw away a decently paying job to remain a bottom-feeding grunt helps demonstrate why I have such contempt for English majors, because I see that sort of behavior from English Lit grads all of the time.)

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On the other hand, where I live, the independent bookstores weren't employing me and weren't catering to my tastes, so I haven't missed them...

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P.S. I thought the application was funny, but... "Samuel Clements?" The joke works better with an actual dead author's name...

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You neglected to point out one of the most poignant elements of the Borders story -- the fact that when I type http://borders.com, I get automatically redirected to the Borders store on Amazon.com now. And yes, it has what Borders really needed to leverage -- the capacity to reserve a book online and then go pick it up at your local brick and mortar, but when you buy a book online it comes from the Amazon warehouses.

For my money, the best thing either Borders or Barnes and Noble can do right now (and almost certainly this would have to be B&N, because Amazon would have little interest in doing this with Borders unless they got a cut of the action) would be to give in-store pickup as an option for special orders. So if you hit bn.com and ordered a book they didn't have in your nearest store, you could pay to have it shipped to you, or you could elect to have it shipped to your local store for free, along with the arrival date.

If you want to get really wild, you could include a pay on pickup policy, the same as if you were calling their store on the phone.

Why would they do this? Because this option forces a person to walk into their store, past their displays and things and increases geometrically the chance they'll shop a bit, maybe get a latte, and buy more than that special order.

Throw a regional print-on-demand cluster into the mix, and you get the ability to deliver essentially any licensed book (or for that matter any public domain book on Earth) to a Barnes and Noble within two days of ordering it, go in and browse once there, and pay for the book when you pick it up. And hey, are you a preferred club reader, sir? Twenty dollars gives you twenty percent off purchases for a year....

Borders could have done most of this in the 90's, and absolutely undercut Amazon outside the gate, because they'd have an experience and a familiar option for consumers that Amazon couldn't match.

Ah well. Hindsight, right?

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Ah well. Hindsight, right?

Many were suggesting that at the time.

That said, it doesn't work as well as you'd think, mainly because people don't like having to go to the store to pick it up. The thrill of "You've got mail!" is something that I know Amazon works overtime to deliver... And the additional overhead incurred in shipping a special order out to a store to have someone open it and call slows down the process.

Then there's the ugly debate: who gets the sale? Is it the online segment of the business or the physical store? If it's the physical store, then how do you track the profitability of the online segment? If it's the online store, then why the fuck would the physical store care?

Plus, then everything's down to the local store. The worst Borders were God-awful fuckups. At least in shipping directly, you can be responsible for it, but there are several nightmare scenarios where Toothless Jane in Incompetent Oakland Store #81 loses the book for several days, thus tainting the whole of the online experience for her.

But we could have at least tried. You know?

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Hmm, B&N's started doing something kinda like that, or at least getting books shipped in pre-paid and stuff, but I don't think it's from online, I think it's just a different kind of in-store orders. Maybe testing the water for something like that, I don't know. Nobody tells us anything, and frankly I can't even care any more. I really need a new job, working regular retail at B&N is miserable and the most dead-end job I've had.

And honestly? I'm not sure B&N is in much better shape. Oh, there's the online store and stuff, and it might just be my store, but when the store had to run all last year on a skeleton crew to make the arbitrary "sales per hour" numbers, which we managed, barely, and then to reward us, they raised the SPH for this year, I don't know. When the employees are getting "raises" that are less than inflation, and hours are getting cut, while the stockholders are getting tens of millions in dividends, I'm not sure if that's a sign of Bad Things, or just Business as Usual.

Or I could just be bitter and probably a commie. But when a company can't or won't pay clueful people enough to make it worth them staying, and won't assign extra hours for training the next batch of newbies (half who leave inside a month), it doesn't seem like they're setting themselves up to keep customers happy.

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Ok, look, you have this whole novel writing ambition thing, right? And the problem for you seems ot be that your initial hook isn't fast and engrossing enough to make sure that the first paragraph compels people to read the entirety of your work.

Except you totally have that ability. We all see you use it every day.

And I know that people have suggested that instead of writing a novel, which I understand is the thing and other things just won't do, you write a book of essays. And OK, fine, I understand that essay books are not the goal.

So what about a novel in which the main character writes essays? What if the lead-in to the whole book is one of these kick-ass killer essays. You know, like the ones that you write, and everyone loves them. What about that hmmm?

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So what about a novel in which the main character writes essays? What if the lead-in to the whole book is one of these kick-ass killer essays. You know, like the ones that you write, and everyone loves them. What about that hmmm?

Cory Doctorow's already got that niche covered.

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I'd say that I was picking up the distress calls from an entire corporation over the aether, and filtering them into my dreams.

It was as if a million voices cried out, and were suddenly silenced.

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I stopped going to Borders when they started demanding my email address. I don't mean asking, I mean demanding.

I have also known a good number of poorly run and arrogant independent bookstores. However, it was not until I found a truly amazing bookstore that I really knew what the others were missing. You might get sympathy with crying about how the big boxes are driving you out of business, but it won't get you business.

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You don't even get sympathy, except from those who want something from you. I'm always amazed at the quality of the individuals who cry about the latest poorly run and maintained indie bookstore going under, because they're almost always frustrated wannabe writers who see that their job of "breaking through" just got a little harder. Oh, sure, they'll cry and mope about how "corporate America" just killed "the little guy", and I presume there's another reason why their garbage can out back is full of Amazon boxes.

(One point where I have to give Borders credit is on how well the chain has moved on setting up a section for graphic novels. Taking advantage of the crowd of potential readers who are intrigued at some of the GNs they hear mentioned, but can't bring themselves to walk into the local comic shop and deal with the Cat Piss Men on both sides of the counter...it's not enough to save them, but it gave some of us hope.)

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I've had good experiences at Borders. The one in Milpitas has, in the past, carried imported Pratchett books - including the Maps and the Plays. Granted, they were at import prices, but surely someone would buy them (*shuffles feet nervously*).

But this only applies to the large stores. Shopping at a mini-Borders (they should rename them "Border Crossings") is like breathing with only one nostril.

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More of us underestimated the power of 'net shopping that got it.

I remember thinking online bookstores would rock, but that probably clothing wouldn't fly. Oops.

I was, however, right about pets.com! :P

It's funny, isn't it, how you can look back and think "Arrrgh!! Why didn't they listen??" and realize that if you'd had capital to work with at some point, you'd be hangin' with Jeff Bezos and the like... but instead you were working for the 'brick and mortar will triumph' guys.

Kira went to school with the offspring of the founders of trip.com - interesting insight into how the struggle to get investors to see the concept goes...

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It wasn't even that we underestimated the power of Internet shopping: it was that most of us were scared off by the idiots who made the whole concept look ridiculous.

For instance, let me bring up an example from the end of 1995. A local used bookstore owner heard about Amazon when Amazon was first getting going, and figured "Hey, I can do this, too." He promptly set up a Web site and bragged about all of the money that was going to roll into the store. His problem was that he set up a URL and online company name ("Lucky Dog Books") that didn't even come close to matching that of his brick-and-mortar store, and his idea of making those millions was by posting the phone number of the B&M store on the one Web page. His crack plan was to have customers call up on their land lines, ask for a book, and then the employees would rush down the aisles, look for it, and then tell the customer whether or not they had it. In itself, this might have worked if the owner didn't work under the psychosis that books in every section but Science Fiction didn't need to be sorted by author name, because he wanted customers to spend more time in browsing. (He then got really pissed when he discovered that customers didn't spend their time browsing: they gave up and went to the Half Price Books down the way.) Oh, and after they'd asked for the book, the customer was supposed to mail a check or money order to the store to pay for it and the shipping.

It doesn't take a Phi Kappa Delta to figure out that this scheme didn't fly, especially since the employees would answer the phones with the B&M store name and the customers would hang up thinking that they'd reached a wrong number. Of course, it wasn't because the owner was a dipshit, or that lazy and arrogant business plans failed online as often as they failed in real life. Oh, no: this just proved that "the Internet was nothing but a fad" and that "nobody was going to buy books online." I give him another five years before he shuts everything down, and that's only because his workforce consists of refugees of other incompetently run bookstores that "want to stay in the publishing business" and therefore work for minimum wage.

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I worked at Waldenbooks for two years, over 3 Christmas seasons, before my manager and I had a falling out over expectations and so forth, and I left before I could be fired.

In that time, I watched Waldenbooks (a part of Borders) go through many changes, flailing wildly as it tried to conform to the corporate plans of MAKE MORE MONEY NOW DAMMIT. It was kind of depressing.

In the time since I left (a year and a half) all of the Waldenbooks in my general area have gone away, and two Barnes and Nobles have taken up their territory. I don't think there's an actual Waldens or Borders in any direction for at least a couple of hours now. Go figure.

(If you ask me, when they tanked the Preferred Reader card and switched over to the awkward and ungainly Borders Rewards cards, that was a definite sign of panic and stupidity.)

First thing I bought with my last Waldenbooks paycheck was a B&N customer card. :>

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Amazons greatest strength is their incredible supply and distribution network (including Amazon Marketplace just makes it insanely amazing). Other strengths include their recommendation engine, list applications of various sorts, and vast number of random features.

They still have one weakness, though, their web design is crap. Every page is incredibly cluttered, organization is poor and inconsistent, wish lists aren't searchable, URLs are incredibly verbose, they use tables for layout, there's no place to give feedback (it's clear from related searches that many people type in "help" or "contact" or "feedback" but get nothing they're looking for), they don't name their elements so people can't use custom CSS (okay, so that last one only annoys nerds like me)... look at the code (HTML, etc.; I don't know about the server-side stuff) and it's incredibly clear that the whole thing is a collection of kludges held together with the digital equivalent of duct tape and super glue. It's a wonder the site works at all (although I did recall one point when it regularly crashed Firefox, a bug which Mozilla eventually thwarted).

If I was running Amazon, I'd have a team of people working on a completely refactored, better designed interface for the site, Amazon 2.0 or some such. They could roll it out in beta once minimal features were in place, leaving the original store up until it was finished. But maybe the project is just too big now for that sort of refactoring...

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Indeed, Amazon used to be considered the yardstick for good web design, and many prominent web usability experts swore by it. Then it expanded to fifty different categories, and what initally was a good, clean design became incredibly cluttered. I'm not sure they want to the fix this structural problem at this point, since it demands a redesign of the entire site.

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I remember when Borders was my local Ann Arbor bookstore, and how much pride I took in it. When every employee had to pass a ridiculous test, so you knew that anyone you talked to KNEW KNEW KNEW books and could give you excellent recommendations.

I remember how angry I was five years later when I heard a lady exclaim to her husband, "Oh LOOK! They have a Border's here!"

And I said, "We do not have A Borders here. We have the Borders here."

I am sad to hear it is not doing well. Don't you wish you could go to those people who "pooh poohed" you and remind them of what you said and what their response was?

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Agreed. I remember making trips down to Ann Arbor where I'd go to do whatever it was planning on (school trips or museum runs) and there would always be at least an hour spent in Border's.

Now I'm on the left coast and make similar plans for Powell's.

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as someone who is anxiously counting down the days to their last day (9/27) after 9 years employment I can assure you that you don't want to go back. The Borders from when you worked there is long long gone. It's an entirely different company that is now leaking people.

Borders is, however, taking control of the borders.com website next year once the contract with Amazon runs out. A little late to the game but I believe the plan is to essentially piggyback off of Ingram's warehouses etc and outsource most of the operations.

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Good post.

Sometimes, I don't have anything to say for awhile, but I just want you to know that I'm reading and think your shit is good, so I post this.

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My first job was at Borders, and when I showed up with a book I'd ordered off amazon.fr my manager told me "You bought from them? They're totally going bankrupt." He was convinced that Amazon would crash and burn like so many startups had.

I should've thought back to that when they had the meeting where they told us stock expectations hadn't been reached and the whole retail structure was being reworked, so instead of everyone being a bookseller and moving between working on sections, info, and the registers, we'd be segregated into those jobs and paid accordingly.

I never dream about working at Borders again, that I can recall, but I frequently dream about working at Starbucks again. What can I say, it's their mind control chip at work.

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I wish they had a decent online bookstore in Australia. Still to this day, no amazon.com.au. Leading Edge have an online section, but it doesnt give you proper descriptions of the books - just its name and author, thats about it. So you go to Amazon.com first to find out what it is, and half of the time reailse it's cheaper to order it from the US.

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ah, borders. i've worked there for two and a half years now and watched it slowly decline while trying to pretend it's not.

i do special orders, and i wish i could keep a tally for how many people tell me they just ordered the stupid thing off of amazon when i call them to tell them their book is in. or when people complain that 5-7 days is way too long. if this weren't just a temporary thing while i'm still going to school, i'd probably be distraught over how little job security i have - why special order a book with borders when you can just go home and buy it online, and have it shipped right to your door? oh sure, borders started a new thing where they'll have any special order that's in ingram or baker and taylor's warehouse shipped free to your house, but it takes TEN DAYS, because it gets sent media mail.

really, the biggest problem borders is having is that they can't even manage having good brick and mortar stores, either. they keep cutting payroll down so low that we're so short staffed that customers often just leave in frustration because there's no one there to help them - the most important part of going to a real store. not to mention, our inventory programs are so shitty at keeping an accurate inventory that half the time, we won't even have the book the customer is looking for in the first place.

all i have to say is really, it's interesting watching the sinking ship, and i won't miss it much when i head off into the Real World in a year's time.

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I almost always go to B&N. During the summer, B&N is downright chilly, Borders however, is about 80 degrees. The opposite is true in winter. If I am browsing, I'm going to be there for a while, and I want to be comfy. Speaking of browsing, B&N has a HUGE sale section. I can go months without finding something genius in it, but sometimes I find a hardcover book I've been meaning to buy for a long time in there for $4. And I STILL get 10% off. Almost all my friends enjoy B&N more because of this too, if one is browsing.

The rewards card at Borders is useless. I get coupons like 'Buy one Business book, get a second one half off between 9/12-9/15.' Even if I have a coupon I like, I forget to use it because there are only three days where its valid. And often its a week later than when I received it...

Also, I get HUGE savings with my B&N membership on new books. Borders gets my business when I'm looking for a specific book that I think might be a bit uncommon. They DO have a bigger selection than most B&N locations. But other than that... I just don't get much enjoyment from being in a Borders. So I don't go.

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With the postage increase, web-based sales in the USA may be dropping.

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