Yesterday’s post about Borders closing down its unprofitable CD and DVD sections prompted a tip from the owner of a small music label. He says his distributor has already cut off shipments to Borders once for nonpayment (in November 2008), and on Monday the distributor warned labels that they’ll have to agree not to hold him “liable on any future shipments to Borders in case they file for bankruptcy.” Borders’ CFO left in January, which is rarely a good sign for a troubled company. And this morning, the Detroit Free Press notes that the bookseller is facing being delisted from the New York Stock Exchange. We may not have to wait long to find out; CEO Ron Marshall is hosting a conference call with analysts and investors next week.
(Photo: doortoriver)
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No surprise here since they charge an arm and leg for their DVD sets. For example, a set of “Lost” in their stores, they want $60 when I can get it on Amazon.com for $45. Where do they get off charging $15 more?
But Borders is a great place to buy my Twilight books! I once went in there and I swear, half the store was covered in New Moon and Eclipse.
I would be disappointed if they closed, it was a good place to go and browse book, as well as buy books. I don’t think their prices are more in fact less then most stores i go to.
I don’t understand all the hate for the store. I think book stores are good for people like me who don’t like to buy something they have never seen before, a picture on a computer is not the same as holding a book and flipping through it before you buy it. Also when I buy a book it is because I wanted to read it not wait a week to read it.
As far as the print quality, I did not know that Borders had control over the publishers preferences on how a book will be made. That comment about the books being too glossy has nothing to do with the store.
Luckily, where I work in NYC, Strand is just a short walk from office. That place is awesome. And on Long Island, I like to go up to Book Revue in Huntington, nice big independent bookstore.
While I do like the convenience of buying online, you really can’t do what I love to do. Browse the bargain bin, and find a book that I have never heard of and thumb through, and then buy it.
The Border’s in the 3rd Street Promenade in Santa Monica closed a few months ago. This is still a heavily trafficked shopping area, so, yeah.
Oddly enough, I was told that the Borders near me in Northridge (somewhat far-flung L.A. suburb) is the highest grossing store of theirs in Southern CA. Seemed odd, but it doesn’t have “that” much competition. (we used to have a Barnes and Noble a few blocks down from Borders, but it closed a few years ago)
Closest other bookstore now is a $1 bookstore (a few of these have been popping up lately) which are the very tempting alternative. Libraries are good too, but ever since they cut the borrowing time from 3weeks to 2, it’s made things a little more difficult in finishing books before the due date (think they cut renewal dates too) Plus, the waiting list for something new/popular can go on for months…
Borders used to be my Sunday afternoon tradition with my dad. Go to the store, curl up with a good book on one of the chairs while Dad browsed and drank coffee, then (more often than not) head home with at least one new book.
Then I moved to Texas and discovered Half-Price Books, and later, half.com, Amazon and eBay. Haven’t stepped foot into a Borders in years.
There are a pretty good amount of bookstores near where I live, but B&N reigns supreme, and I actually really enjoy their selection. I’d rather browse in a musty used bookstore, but I’d rather sit down with a book in B&N.
I’ve been a B&N member for a long time, and I think the savings are spectacular. Also, the B&N is a lot nicer than the Borders here, and it’s not as far.
Never could figure out how some of these big box book stores stayed so long in business in some of the overserviced areas. Guess it was just a matter of time.
Please don’t tell congress or Obama. Borders doesn’t need a taxpayer funded welfare check to stay alive. Let it die.
Hm…is that gift card at home for Borders or Barnes and Noble? In any case, use it or lose it people.
I live in Southern California and there used to be tons of bookstores around here. There were small, independent ones, but many of the owners were idiots. I went looking for romances in one and the clerk had no idea the publisher Harlequin existed. But so many of the stores are closing. B&N closed its BookStar a few years ago and now the Borders Express at the mall has closed. That leaves only a couple of Borders nearby and a B&N about 12 miles away. My daughter and I go to the Borders a lot. I get the coupons and she buys manga. I used to buy tons of books, but now I get hardcovers and many paperbacks from the library. Sometimes I buy paperbacks to fill out my Amazon order. As for CDs, I buy more music now than I did when I was in a college, and I can’t remember the last time I bought a CD. I download from either iTunes or Amazon.
@all: Sorry, didn’t mean that to come off quite so narrowly-focused. “Indie” is actually quite a bit broader than you might think — hell, even Borders would’ve fit the bill once upon a time. Check out the Indie Store Finder if you’re curious — and indies can be chains too, just generally not more than regional. Northern Michigan has Horizon Books, the northwest has Powell’s, so on and so forth. Yes, some of the small-proprietor places have the faults that @KristinaBeana and @grumpymo bemoan, but many do not.
Just to add fuel to the fire. I was in the Beautiful Burbank Media Center this weekend and noticed that Borders Express was closing. After talking to the manager on duty we found out that all Borders Express (think Borders mall stores) are closing.
Well I just joined the Borders company almost a year ago. They opened a few brand new concept stores across the US with hopes of opening more (I haven’t heard how those ideas are going). I work in one of them. Our store sales haven’t been doing so well and I’ve feared this happening, even though our bookstore is the only one within a 20mile radius. It really is kind of sad. I’ll be upset if I do indeed lose my job.
Things have been going downhill there steadily for over a year. My girlfriend is currently employed at one and they have been constantly cutting down members of staff and working hours. The corporate higher ups have been in jumbles too for a long time and it seems that every few months a new desperate initiative is started to try to boost sales. Another problem they have is theft. People walk into the store, take a rack of CD’s / DVD’s and walk right out with the alarms going off. No one is allowed to stop them. Oh, and as a bonus to that, the guy who was on staff as anti theft was robbing the company blind with his corporate credit card and eventually got canned for it. Same thing is going on right now with one of the managers but she hasn’t been caught yet. It seems like utter incompetence up and down the line with no clear direction. They’re doomed.
The one time Borders was good for me was when HP: Half Blood Prince came out, they were giving out a 25% off any other item in the store coupon so I used it to buy a rather expensive DVD set.
I’ve found that one of the nice things about Borders (vs. the B&N down the street from it) is that they have outlets *and* power strips in their cafe. How many seems to vary by store, but all of the ones I’ve actually looked in at least have outlets. B&N on the other hand generally has none, or possibly one – generally in a location that’s away from tables/chairs.
I’m not coughing up for the T-Mobile wifi anymore, but sometimes it’s good to be able to sit and code or sit and write with no temptation to get online and waste time with former-gawker sites.
I hope they don’t go out of business. I’m in a small city that has one Borders and one B&N, and that’s it for bookstores. (Well, apart from a wonderful little used bookstore downtown – but they don’t generally carry books I’m interested in. I’d rather not wait for someone else to get bored/done with a book before I can buy it, unless I am looking for something OOP.)
Seriously, my wife and I head down to Borders usually once a week or so to browse, drink some coffee or tea, and maybe buy a book or two.
I would be horribly sad if it goes under! The Borders Cafe in my town has great drinks, plus the staff is awesome- way better than any Starbucks-type place. We go there 2-4 times a week for coffee, browsing, and a chat with the baristas. Please save the Pleasanton, CA Borders!
I used to do the reports for my store about what bills were and weren’t paid. It was a monthly report that showed which invoices were just being processed.
I also did the orders from different sellers who would refuse to sell to Borders without payment up front, or minimum amounts of orders, or just outright wouldn’t sell to our store.
I’ll just say that Borders not paying their bills is not news to me, at all. It’s really not a new situation for them, I stopped working there almost two years ago.
I’m trying to be sad to see them go, but after they also refused to pay me the vacation payout that they owed me until I was talking about calling a lawyer, I can’t say that I’m so upset over it. Not to mention that everything that I loved about their store and disliked about B&N went out the window before I quit.
When there’s only three major chains in the book industry (Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Amazon), it’s not good for the consumer to see any of them go out of business.
It means fewer choices for the consumer and it means that the remaining two book chains will be able to dictate draconian terms that favor them, because the publishers won’t have a choice: either sell to them on their terms, or don’t sell at all.
Imagine if you only had three restaurants in town, and one goes out of business: the remaining two could jack up the prices or dictate terms to local suppliers or … you get the picture. And it’s a grim one.
Fewer choices for the consumer, in the end, hurts all of us.
Aw man! That sucks! I like Borders. They have a better selection than Barnes & Noble and I don’t have to smell the nasty stench of coffee.
E-books FTW.
Borders is only downsizing CDs & DVDs in under-performing stores. The stores in the worst categories will only carry 100 titles. Those in the next category may have up to 1000 titles and the best stores will not see any cuts. The situation is not a bleak as some paint it.
Our city has B&N, Borders and lots of other booksellers (mostly used, some new). The new ones tend not to have what I’m looking for, though.
My favorite is a used bookstore in a strip mall on the corner of a big busy street that is like a large closet, has no windows and only takes cash. Every time I go in there I find a ton of stuff.
I’m not sure how I feel about this. I don’t dislike Borders, and there are several close to me. But we still have a couple of B&N’s, Books A Million, and Half Price Books.
That would be a shame, and a big blow to the genre I read – manga. Borders has always gone after that market, as did Waldenbooks. B&N is okay but they’re super-slow about getting anything. Indies won’t carry manga unless it’s a huge indie, and don’t get me started on the direct market (comic book shops) – very hit or miss, and more miss than anything these days. Yeah, I can shop online, and I do for 80% of what I buy monthly.
But when I’ve been waiting for the next volume forever of a favorite series… I want it NOW and will track it on Border’s online site to find which store has my book.
I won’t miss the manga cows; I will miss being able to get most anything I want when I want it.
My friend who works for Borders warned me of this at the beginning of the semester. It seems like their store has been having meetings about “what might happen” every week now.
I actually *do* kind of feel crappy about Borders going under. I hope they survive as a leaner, fitter entity. So far as big chains go they’ve always been pretty reliable to me, and not horribly priced. I’ve been in a few crappy ones – the “express” ones in malls are terrible – but I’ve also been in some really good ones with selection I just can’t get anywhere else but online.
I buy books from amazon a lot, but browsing online just isn’t as fulfilling as going out to a real store, holding real books, sitting down and paging through them with a tasty beverage at hand and “previewing” as much as you damn well please without DRM restrictions and weird software and crappy interfaces and… blaaah.
I would never have found quite a few books that I really, really like without a big store with the financial backing to stock stuff that The Masses aren’t going to purchase in the great swaths that look good on monthly ledgers. The Emeryville, CA store, for example, provided me with some of the best non-fiction and academic texts that I just can’t find elsewhere.
There’s a reason that lots of indy stores go down – they tend to stock crap that sells quick. Their selection is limited and often uninspired – unless they deal in used books, in which case they can be real goldmines.
Borders, meanwhile, seems to let stores have a little play with their choices to keep them matched to local tastes. Even if they don’t sell out the shelves, people will keep coming back and finding new and interesting stuff a piece at a time, in a manner that a small shop just can’t afford to devote shelf space to.
B&N, on the other hand… is boring and repetitive. Ugh.
I’m on their mailing list and I just got a flyer advertising CD & DVD clearance. There is a list of exceptions but looking at it, I am guessing it is stores that are small and don’t carry much of those products to begin with. I’m in Ann Arbor, work near the “main/original” Borders, and none of the 3 locations in town are excluded from this clearance. One of those 3 locations is a special “media” oriented store, too.
I would miss Borders if they go under. I have both B&N and Borders within 10 minutes of my house and as an avid reader, I spend a lot of time at both. Sure we can order books online, but there’s nothing like spending some time in a bookstore just browsing and then finding that special book.
Borders going under will also suck for Sumner Redstone who owns National Amusements (Showcase Cinema) and interest in Viacom. Redstone’s National Amusement headquarters is here in Dedham, MA and they knocked down their movie theater and are putting a upscale shopping center called Legacy Place and new offices at the location. One of the anchor stores is Borders! 80% of the Borders building is built, at least the outside and is suppose to open this summer. Would suck to open a new upscale place and have a giant store empty!
Nooo. I <3 Borders very much and I’d be sad to see them go.
I miss Waldens.
I would spend a lot of time there studying (and therefore a lot of money on coffee) if their wifi was free. They could make probably $12 a visit off me just in coffee (I stay a while, to be honest) if they were willing to front the maybe $30 (or so) a month they spend on cable. I think this might be true for a lot of college students.
I work at a Borders Store (I am not a manager) and I can tell you that some of the customers are taking advantage of the book chain and will not realize how much they miss it until they are gone. Instant gratification is what most customers want so when a person wants or NEEDS a book right away I guess you’ll have to wait until the Fed Ex or UPS person delivers your package. Remember, not everyone has a computer or wants to order online for security reasons.
Also, we get paid very little yet are expected to satisy every customers personal need. Right now they are drastically cutting our hours and we cannot possibly help each customer personally. So next time you want 40% off a book you can get THAT DAY and then complain that no one was there to escort you to the exact location think about how you’ll never experience a bookstore again when/if Borders closes. I guess you’ll have to pay extra for speedy shipping or try get on a waiting list at the library.
We try our best everyday but people don’t realize what they’ve got until it’s gone. Oh, and EVERYTHING is cheaper online because you are not paying for overhead. Durr! So when a ton of us are out of work don’t expect us to come to your places of employment and buy anything because we will be broke. Then where will your job go?
Borders is also trying to screw its 700 recenlty fired employees out of their pitifully small slice of the Stimulus Package which provides a 65% discount on cobra payments for those fired during the economic crisis. Sweet!
But Borders is claiming (falsely) that ALL 700 “voluntarily resigned” so they can’t get Stimulus help. Nice job, Borders! Kick any puppies lately?
This has been going on with Border’s for some time. Their financial troubles have long been recent business-section fare in Michigan, to the best of my recollection.
Please, federal government, do not bail Border’s out. If I wanted them to succeed I’d shop there.
Here in Levitown N.Y, we had a Waldenbooks open in 1985. Boarders came to Levitown around 1990. Since Borders and Waldenbooks were owned by the same company, They closed Waldenbooks and became the only bookstore in town. 6 years later Boarders moved out and we were left with no bookstores, because the store wasn’t big enough the sell Dvd’s and Cd’s It’s payback that Boarders might be closing. I now shop on Amazon
In general I think books are still way too expensive, I guess it could be compared to a lot of people who think it’s too expensive to rent movies. But in my case I can easily go through a few books a week, and at anywhere from $10-$15 each, it adds up really fast, thats why more and more people are going to the library for books now rather then to Barnes and Noble and Borders. Not to mention both stores CD and DVD’s are hugely marked up, even with the 20% off they give you your still paying more then you would at a store like Best Buy or Walmart or any other retail store. It’s also a reason a lot of FYE stores are closing. They are great for finding things you need like rare music and movies, but everything else is way overpriced, and no one can afford it anymore.