Here's the latest mortar-fire attack against good old-fashioned books....printed books, that is: Borders, the nation's #2 bookseller filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and announce that they will be closing 200 "under-performing" stores nationwide (4 of which are in Manhattan). Sad news. I used to go to the original Borders in Ann Arbor, Michigan to buy my college textbooks when I went to University of Michigan. Seems that during the 1990's, Borders bet their money on the wrong horse and initiated an explosive nationwide expansion of store/cafes, rather than staying more with the times and (like Barnes and Noble), expanding their web presence and developing their own electronic reader ( à la Kindle and Nook). The double-whammy of that, coupled with Amazon.com pulling the rug out from under all bookstores by selling books for far cheaper than could be found in actual "brick and mortar" stores. B&N, while hardly thriving at the moment, is indeed keeping their head above water, while closing stores by the dozen and aiming more toward being a competitor of Amazon as a "virtual store". It would be a great shame if we were to lose Borders--and bookstores, period. Are bookstores the next retail dinosaur, along with CD stores and video rental stores? Time will tell...and likely, it won't be a whole lot of time, either.
No comments:
Post a Comment