Borders The Bookstore Claiming Bankruptcy!!!!!

I am not sure if this should go into this forum, if not MODS please move.
I think it is a result of global meltdown, it is definately going to be resulting in a personal meltdown on my part, lol.
I love their store nearby, I love their coffee. I can grab a book and peruse it while I drink a nice cappucino on a nice comfy leather chair. But, no longer, they are closing my beloved store. Not only that, in an already employment depressed area, more people are going to be losing their jobs. I hate to think how they must feel! AH!!! Will the madness ever end?

Bookseller Borders, which helped pioneer superstores that put countless mom-and-pop bookshops out of business, plans to close about 200 of its 642 stores over the next few weeks.
Borders Group Inc. filed for bankruptcy protection and said it would close about one-third of its bookstores, after years of shriveling sales that made it impossible to manage its crushing debt load

1/3 of it's stores, Holy moses!!!!!

Borders to close stores

I am deeply saddened by this news!!!!

their store here in the fox river mall closed about a month ago. they didn't have that varied of a selection. wasn't too impressed with the store overall.

My preference, is to support locally owned bookstores (very lucky that there is a HUGE independent bookstore here) which rivals any chain store and does it with local flair. I won't miss Borders if it goes away...

How can they compete with amazon.com? We don't have borders books here..but we do have barnes and noble and their books are too expensive..I just looked at a Mummy book for my daughter..(she is into mummies right now) they wanted 22.99 at bandn while amazon had it for 13.00 new.

This is sad, I hope the one close to me stays open I love that place. I just spent a few hours buying my niece some childrens books there.

I walked into a bookstore I think it was Barnes a month or so before Christmas to get my son a book on the planets and right there in the front was a giant display pushing the kindle. What did they think would happen when folks could just download the books instead of going to the store to buy em????

As an author with fifteen years in the publishing industry, this was NOT unexpected news. Borders has been suffering for years. Frankly, I'm surprised they lasted this long. On-line sales have taken a huge chunk of change from bricks-and-mortar stores. Used book sales do even more damage.

Mark my words, we'll be digital before too long. We'll be just like music. Download us once and you'll be done. That's the only way the publishing industry will survive.

If I could, I would buy every used copy of my books from Amazon.com. It kills me that people are reading MY words--my own blood, sweat and tears--and not paying me a dime. How would you like to go to work every day and not get paid?

Okay, okay...I'm done venting. Sorry to go off on a tangent.

Pamela Britton

reply to post by HoldTheBeans


I have a kindle and find the selection to be VERY slim not to mention everything in black and grey...I should have held off for the NOOK color!

I usually don't care for the big chain bookstores....Everything is banged up, people spread books all over the floor....and the worst.....I used to work at one of these places when I was a kid, you would be surprised how much stuff has been in the bathroom.....

Originally posted by PamelaBritton2U
As an author with fifteen years in the publishing industry, this was NOT unexpected news. Borders has been suffering for years. Frankly, I'm surprised they lasted this long. On-line sales have taken a huge chunk of change from bricks-and-mortar stores. Used book sales do even more damage.

Mark my words, we'll be digital before too long. We'll be just like music. Download us once and you'll be done. That's the only way the publishing industry will survive.

If I could, I would buy every used copy of my books from Amazon.com. It kills me that people are reading MY words--my own blood, sweat and tears--and not paying me a dime. How would you like to go to work every day and not get paid?

Okay, okay...I'm done venting.

Sorry to go off on a tangent.

Pamela Britton

edit on 16-2-2011 by PamelaBritton2U because: ...I'm an author that can't proof read.

And this is why I HATE AMAZON!!! If you are on FaceBook, I have a community called Amazon Sucks! I feel the same way you do, give me mortar and brick and hard copy books screw this digital SCAM!!!! ARRRG! x-(

Amazon is the Antichrist!

Originally posted by jetflock
I usually don't care for the big chain bookstores....Everything is banged up, people spread books all over the floor....and the worst.....I used to work at one of these places when I was a kid, you would be surprised how much stuff has been in the bathroom.....

OMG ours was pristine, it was great, and we have no small ma and pops bookstores thanks to walmarts and I agree, Barnes is a rip off. The best part I liked about Borders was the cafe coffee, it was Seattles Best and it was always perfect. Now I can buy the grinds from wal mart, but it never comes out the same at home as the store's cafe does.

None of these big ass media stores will survive.

All the little book/record shops got killed by these monster book/record stores and now mailorder is killing the big record/book stores.

Not once has one of these stores ever had the book I was looking for. Their reply to my question is always "we can order it for you." Well, I can do that. And save travel, gas, hassle, obnoxious music, pushy clerks, and all the typical things that make retail shopping such an unbearable hell.

They did it to themselves by being too big for their own good and too annoying for everybody else's own good.

Originally posted by thisguyrighthere
None of these big ass media stores will survive.

All the little book/record shops got killed by these monster book/record stores and now mailorder is killing the big record/book stores.

Not once has one of these stores ever had the book I was looking for. Their reply to my question is always "we can order it for you." Well, I can do that. And save travel, gas, hassle, obnoxious music, pushy clerks, and all the typical things that make retail shopping such an unbearable hell.

They did it to themselves by being too big for their own good and too annoying for everybody else's own good.

Well I have been dealing with Borders since 2001 and never found the music too loud (actually never noticed if they even had any) and the clerks were always very pleasant and never pushy in all the ones I have dealt with in Philly and down here in Florida. However, Everybody has a different experience, and I don't want digital books...blah!!! I need the hard copy and I need to get out of my house once in awhile lol, I have children I need an escape sometimes!

Yeah, this has been written on the wall for awhile now. Like others have mentioned, the proliferation of digital media has meant that the more traditional avenues of sales are going bye-bye. You no longer have a need for a brick and mortar store and Amazon has proven this beyond any doubt. Just take a look at an outfit like Tower Records: had stores all over the US and were popular in their time. But the coming of the digital audio age brought a lot of these brick and mortar stores to their knees and forced them to cave or adapt. I think this will only be the first of other book chain stores to go belly up or transition their biz model over to something a little more current with the times.

reply to post by ldyserenity


Aha It was the subject of a takeover, just as I thought.

The debt no doubt is due to the leveraged buyout feeding frenzy. This is a way for the Banksters to suck the life blood out of healthy American businesses and leave behind rotting husks. (Yes I do hate leveraged buyouts)

Kmart and Waldenbooks: Borders was acquired in 1992 by Kmart, which had acquired mall-based book chain Waldenbooks eight years earlier in 1984......

DEFINITION:

Leveraged buyouts involve an investor, financial sponsors or private equity firms making large acquisitions without committing all the capital required for the acquisition. To do this, a financial sponsor will raise acquisition debt which is ultimately secured upon the acquisition target... en.wikipedia.org...

In other words the investor is placing a mortgage on property he does not OWN!!!

This is not moral or ethical and given what happened during the Great Depression, I would be very surprised if laws were not enacted to prevent it. SO - Where the heck was CONGRESS. Where the heck were the COURTS when this was going on??? Where the HECK was Obama and the democrats??? If you want to do one single thing to help America get back on her feet OBAMA??? Then Declare Leveraged Buyouts ILLEGAL. They are certainly immoral and very destructive to the country.

If you want to know what the US government did about it...

...In January 1982, former US Secretary of the Treasury William Simon and a group of investors acquired Gibson Greetings, a producer of greeting cards, for $80 million, of which only $1 million was rumored to have been contributed by the investors. By mid-1983, just sixteen months after the original deal, Gibson completed a $290 million IPO and Simon made approximately $66 million. The success of the Gibson Greetings investment attracted the attention of the wider media to the nascent boom in leveraged buyouts.[10] Between 1979 and 1989, it was estimated that there were over 2,000 leveraged buyouts valued in excess of $250 billion... en.wikipedia.org...

The big question is WHO profited from "eating the seed corn"

Remember every single dollar the bankers loan out whether it is to the US Government, business, or home owner is created on the spot. In other words it is legalized COUNTERFEITING. The byproduct of all this money printing was the increase of the money supply from $60.5 billion in 1966 to $2016 billion in Dec 2010 AND it caused the minimum wage to rise from $1.00 to $7.25. (My Mom in the thirties was paid 25 cents an hour and that was considered a very generous wage for an office manager)

....These days, corporations seem to exist for the investment bankers.... In fact, investment banks are replacing the publicly held industrial corporations as the largest and most powerful economic institutions in America.... THERE ARE SIGNS THAT A VICIOUS spiral has begun, as each corporate player seeks to improve its standard of living at the expense of another's. Corporate raiders transfer to themselves, and other shareholders, part of the income of employees by forcing the latter to agree to lower wages. January 29, 1989 New York Times: LEVER AGED BUYOUTS: AMERICAN PAYS THE PRICE

Reagan - facilitate Leveraged buyouts/Hostile takeovers

....Both economic and regulatory factors combined to spur the explosion in large takeovers and, in turn, large LBOs. The three regulatory factors were the Reagan administration's relatively laissez-faire policies on antitrust and securities laws, which allowed mergers the government would have challenged in earlier years; the 1982 Supreme Court decision striking down state antitakeover laws (which were resurrected with great effectiveness in the late eighties); and deregulation of many industries, which prompted restructurings and mergers. The main economic factor was the development of the original-issue high-yield debt instrument. The so-called "junk bond" innovation, pioneered by Michael Milken of Drexel Burnham, provided many hostile bidders and LBO firms with the enormous amounts of capital needed to finance multi-billion-dollar deals.... www.econlib.org...

...In the 1980s during the great takeover boom and hollowing out of the industrial heartland, many states adopted amendments to their corporate codes that codified directors' fiduciary duties, so-called "constituency statutes". In general, these provisions made it clear that a director need not "maximize shareholder value." Rather, in complying with their fiduciary obligations, directors may take all sorts of things into consideration - the impact of their decisions on various constituencies, including employees, the community, the environment, the color of the sky, whatever...

The 1980s LBO boom was a scourge for management. They used whatever tools at their disposal to prevent an acquisition... The Delaware courts stepped in... In short, the message from the courts was that boards did not have a free hand to put off all takeover attempts... [remember many firms are incorporated in delaware because of business friendly laws] lawprofessors.typepad.com...

Leveraged Buyouts are still going on

‘Whitewashed Windows and Vacant Stores’

As I drive around my town, I can’t get the lyrics or somber melody out of my head. It is like witnessing old friends drop dead one by one....

And, it isn’t just small enterprises. We lost a Circuit City, a Chevrolet dealership, tried-and-true franchises like Dairy Queen and Arby’s. Last week Sam’s Club announced it will close its local big box bulk store. Then came news that Wal-Mart, the parent company, intends to lay off 10,000 Sam’s Club Employees. Even the ubiquitous 99 cent stores have been cut in half....

So, the businesses that provided jobs are gone, the office and retail space sits vacant, likely in default. The windows get broken, the walls get tagged, the weeds grow, trash blows, and, with no one to stop it, nature begins the process of permanent destruction. The value of those businesses and real estate is now gone.

Once Wall Street realized that success can only be so profitable but failure has unlimited potential, the race was on to loan money and securitize the debt.

Just like sub-prime residential mortgages, commercial real estate financing and corporate raiding offer opportunities on many fronts. Private-equity groups bought up large retailers and buried them in debt. Leveraged buyouts, as their name implies, are exactly that, leveraged, in that most if not all of the purchase price is borrowed money. The buyer has little, if any, skin in the game.

You might be familiar with the mall-based, teen-focused, accessories chain, Claire’s Stores. It was taken over in 2007 by Apollo Management LP for $3.1 billion. At the time, the chain had over $245 million in cash on hand. Today, the cash is gone. Struggling under the weight of $2.3 billion in debt, sales continue to decline.

Underlying all of this are the same activities that led to losses in sub-prime residential equities. Money was looking for a home, and some investors saw that cash could be leveraged out of these enterprises by buying them with someone else’s money and looting the assets....

"There are two distinct classes of men. Those who pay taxes and those who receive and live upon taxes." - Thomas Paine

I dont think digital media is killing albums or books. It certainly isnt to blame for the end of these monster stores.

What's happening to real books and real albums is theyre getting more valuable. Not like a commodity or a stock but for the buyer there will be more thought in acquiring one which in turn creates more thought and care behind the creation of one.

The big conglomo book depository will be replaced by a small bookseller specializing in local and regional authors and hosting talks and appearances of local and regional authors. I see it here everyday. Nobody is getting rich but it's a living and they get to do what they enjoy doing and the consumer gets a more intimate and valuable experience. The same is happening with music.

We've gone full circle. From small, local and intimate to anonymous, sterile, homogenized and massive back to local and intimate.

It was a foolish experiment to begin with this whole massive commercial up-scaling thing. I hope I never see it again in my lifetime.

Originally posted by ldyserenity
Amazon is the Antichrist!

edit on 16-2-2011 by ldyserenity because: to add

They are, LOL. I can't stand them either.

And I am on Facebook here. I'll go search for your anti-Amazon FB page. Sounds great!

Pam

This was no big surprise to me either. In fact, I can't help but to think they contributed to their own demise in a way.

Honestly, I think the link between digitized books and the closing of various book chains is too much of a coincidence to overlook. Waldenbooks in my area closed down back in 2007-2008 and that was about 3 local mall stores. By the middle of 2009, the 4 Borders mall stores in my area closed as well.

Now, the closest book store I have to traverse to is about 40 miles away, which I do so willingly. Why? Because I love books. I love the smell of books. I love physically holding my books. I love knowing that if anything every happens to digital media, and you are a fool to think that it won't, I will still have my books to read, re-read, and pass down for generation after generation.

What hurt my inside the most, and what I feel is hurting the super bookstores, is the fact that immediately when you walk into any one of them, the first thing you see is a large advertisement for one or more of the many digital book readers, as if they were screaming for people to put them out of business. Worst of all, people never bought the book readers from them simply because they are cheaper elsewhere.

At the very least, Barnes and Noble is still around for me to carouse. Regardless of their prices, I can still respect that they are in the very least keeping the age old book industry alive, and for that, I would never turn my business away to a place like Amazon. Even though they are the Walmarts of the book industry, I feel they are the lesser of two evils when you compare them to the huge, multi-dimensional corporate conglomerates of the world.

RIP Borders and I must say as well -

LONG LIVE THE WRITTEN WORD!

One thing that has yet to be mentioned is that, with each passing generation, fewer and fewer people are even reading books. Couple that with rising online sales and the popularity of Kindle and other electronic formats, and of course it spells disaster for the traditional bookstore--no matter how large or small. Lack of demand and medium obsolescence.

Personally, I can't stand reading in a digital format. I have to have the real book in my hands. But that's just me.

Originally posted by ldyserenity
...I can grab a book and peruse it while...

dont suppose you actually bought any books?