BOOKS WITHOUT BORDERS

Kevin Coolidge

New, used, or borrowed: I’ve always loved books. The smell and texture of a pulp era treasure, or the bright, glossy cover of a New York Times bestseller, I love books and I love the hunt – browsing shelves, finding an old favorite, a new title, or an interesting topic, in the dark corner of a second hand store, the bright aisle of a supermarket, or from a table made by throwing a board over two sawhorses. There are many places to buy books, but time flows differently in a bookstore. I love a good bookstore, but are bookstores going out of print?

Borders, the big box bookstore, has filed for bankruptcy. Does this mean the end of the bookstore? The story of Borders began in Ann Arbor, Michigan in the early 1970’s, founded by two brothers, Tom and Louis Borders. Borders started with just a meager supply of used books. In 1975, the brothers bought the stock of Wahr’s, a bookstore closing its doors after 80 years, at which point Borders moved to larger quarters, and a new chapter began.

As Borders spread nationwide, many smaller independent bookstores were closing. Borders offered more choices at better prices, and in the early 90’s was bought by Kmart, who owned the mall-based bookstore chain Waldenbooks. Kmart hoped that the senior management of Borders could help the floundering Waldenbooks, but many of the senior management left. Kmart, facing its own problems and pressure from stockholders, spun off a new structured stock selloff, forming the Borders-Walden Group, which later was renamed Borders Group.

Borders had grown from a cozy little independent into a cold, box store behemoth. No longer a community based bookseller, but a corporation that sold books, Borders became a corporation that sought to conquer the bookselling market, and yet failed to see where the market was going. What did Borders do wrong?

Borders expanded too quickly, and failed to adapt to the digital marketplace, but where it really failed was reading the writing on the wall. Certainly, there are more entertainment and education resources today than even two years ago. More movies, more DVDs, eBooks, iPads, ipods, eReaders, video streaming over the internet, and more books than any caffeinated consumer could ever hope to read. Really good books, books that keep you up at night turning pages, are not as quite as common as the publishers want you to think. Many bestselling books are rushed into print to take advantage of a literary trend. Publishers hope that if you buy one book on teenage vampires, that you will buy twenty, but all you really wanted was a really good story.

I don’t think the story of the bookstore is over, but I do think the era of the big box bookstore has come to a close. I don’t know what books without Borders is going to look like. Borders is seeking chapter 11, and owes millions to publishers. It doesn’t matter if you haven’t bought a book from Borders in years, if you are a book lover; you are going to feel this. This collapse of empire will affect the publishing landscape with a ripple effect that has yet to be felt.

Borders and big box stores belonged to an era when book retailing was a big enough business to dominate, but you have to sell a lot of books to keep the lights on, and there’s just not as much money in it anymore. The story of the book is not over, but maybe it’s time to go back to start a new chapter, shopping for books in stores that let cats wander through the store, and booksellers that know the community and their readers, and maybe they won’t even serve coffee…

Big Box Bookstores? Or Community minded booksellers? Drop me an email at from_my_shelf@yahoo.com and let me know. Miss a past column? Visit our blog at http://frommyshelf.blogspot.com and catch up on your reading. Hobo says a real bookstore has a personality, and preferably a cat. For a book with a personality, check out Hobo’s book, “Hobo Finds a Home”, a children’s book about a cat who wanted more out of life.