Borders going out of business!- Page 3

[PalJoey]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 4:28pm

I was not being sarcastic. Ebooks devices are owned by people who used to say they love printed books, not by people who used to hate books and were only waiting for a better way to read them. (Those people don't exist.)

You may think you are the lone holdout, but everyone who reads ebooks used to think that too: "I will never switch to reading on a screen!" Never!"

To think that the people who profess allegiance to the touch and feel of a book will somehow stem the tide of a cultural shift is naive and laughable. Those people have proven to be fickle. They change their minds--180 degrees!--within moments of touching their new Kindle or iPad. The fall in love with their devices--with the same passion they used to say "I love the touch and feel of a book." Now they say "I LOVE my Kindle!"

Bookstores, including used bookstores will go out of business when people stop purchasing books in them. Printers and binderies will go out of business when publishers send fewer and fewer books to them. Publishers will publish fewer books as "p-books" and more books only as "e-books."

The only thing we know is that writers will continue to write and readers will continue to read them. How and in what form is anybody's guess.

Updated On: 7/19/11 at 04:28 PM

[dramamama611]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 4:40pm

I never said that. Really. But your point is valid. Most people with ebook readers are avid readers. My hold out was I hate reading documents on computers....I hate the back lighting. It wasnnt't until I saw a friends Kindle that I realized SOME ereaders totally different.


I love the feel of my kindle in my hands...sometimes in a cover sometimes naked. I often find "dead tree books" (what ereaders usually call traditional books) too cumbersome to read. My ereader feels the same in my hands weather I'm reading Abigails Pogrebin's essay on Merrily We Roll Along or War and Peace.

I don't miss books at all -- because I'm still reading them.

[best12bars]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 4:43pm

"The only thing we know is that writers will continue to write and readers will continue to read. The rest is anybody's guess."


That truly is the bottom line.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 4:58pm

Amoeba is doing really well in L.A. and S.F. Thriving, actually.

Uh, no they aren't. They are sitting on literally (I'm using it correctly there) millions and millions of dollars of inventory that will never sell. And like a Border's store a few years ago, an Amoeba store is filled with people talking to the staff, wandering around, reading magazines, looking at CDs. They are a privately held company so they don't release any data but my retail eye sees trouble.

[best12bars]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 5:07pm

Do you know they're not doing well, or are you just speculating?

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 6:08pm

I recently bought an iPad but have not bought a book for it yet. I keep thinking, come the collapse, when suddenly there is no electricity and Tina Turner is wandering the desert where Maine used to be, I will be like Burgess Meredith in The Twilight Zone before he broke his glasses: happy to escape the threat of marauding, looting and murdering gangs into the world of printed literature.

Eventually, when I become one of the billions no longer receiving a pay check and who therefore will not be able to afford to replace my shiny electric technology every few years as its planned obsolescence demands, when I have nothing left to toss onto the blocks of detritus that some future Wall-E will organize into dead plastic and metal sculpture tributes to a culture that once was, I will still have a few good books to read by daylight to take me back there, because there's no place to plug in a magic screen even if, by some miracle, they still work more than five years after they were purchased.

Of course, the escape into books will happen before I am murdered for having no useful skills to contribute to nomadic societies in the post-apocalyptic world. Maybe I'll die happy upon rereading Michael Cunningham, for instance, inside an abandoned tractor trailer, my very own home at the end of the world.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 6:10pm

Fin.

[best12bars]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 6:14pm

I gotta say ... bravo, Namo.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 6:16pm

It was pretty brilliant, Namo. You should write an ebook.

[best12bars]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 6:18pm

Can you put that in an eBook and sign it for me?

Wait, I gotta reboot ...

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 6:21pm

Will there be ebook signings?

[best12bars]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 6:24pm

eBook burnings?

[Dollypop]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 6:32pm

Heard an interesting piece on NPR this afternoon where several people admitted that they went to Borders only to check out books. They then went home and ordered those same books from Amazon at lower prices.

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 6:32pm

I think it'll just be a bunch of people gathering in an angry mob and deleting files. Kind of anticlimactic but at least it's safer.

[best12bars]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 6:45pm

"Heard an interesting piece on NPR this afternoon where several people admitted that they went to Borders only to check out books. They then went home and ordered those same books from Amazon at lower prices."

People on BWW have said as much about cast recordings at Virgin Megastore and Tower.

The brick-and-mortar stores became "browsing centers' rather than retail outlets. People would say, "Oh, cool, I've gotta have that!" Then go home and buy it online.

[Unknown User]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 6:47pm

Yes Dolly I heard that too. I am glad they reported it. I would say 15 of the people I helped at Borders (and 99% of the really demanding ones) wrote down information and went home to order the book I helped them to find.

And as for Amoeba I know they have significantly cut back staff. I know their stock is stagnant. I know they have had periodic cash crunches. That is not good.

[best12bars]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 6:52pm

I still think used bookstores will be the last to go.

But go, they will. Eventually.

[Reginald Tresilian]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 7:47pm

Namo, can I buy pot from you?

[Jordan Catalano]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 8:08pm

epot

[uncageg]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 8:56pm

Since an iPad is nowhere in my near future and I have tried reading on a Kindle and didn't like it, I will be reading actual books for a while to come. I doubt if I will ever get an ereader. I held off on a cell phone until I had to get one in January. I had no choice. I just started texting a month ago because I needed it for work. I do not have a data package on my phone and don't really see the need for one.

[FindingNamo]

Posted: 7/19/11 at 9:46pm

It's kinda sorta karmic because for a long time B.A. people would browse indie bookstores that charged list price for books by necessity and then went to the super chains for their discounts. What goes around comes around, and we get what we pay for and all that.

Speaking of The Strand, I read or heard somewhere recently that they no longer buy used fiction. Can anybody confirm or refute?

[broadwayguy2]

Posted: 7/20/11 at 12:25am

I've shopped at Borders in Columbus Circle since 2005. I ALWAYS find myself there and I find the staff there MUCH more friendly than Barnes and Noble Union Sq, so I am sad to see it go. I wish I could say that it takes me by surprise, but it doesn't. The selection used to be FAR better and I would purchase often, but for the past couple years, the selection - particularly in theatre (which I usually purchase from Drama Bookshop, admittedly) and gay non-fiction. gay non-fic used to be an entire bookcase, lately it has been down to one or two shelves.. and they ALWAYS rearrange the location of sections and don't always change the visible signs for them in a timely manner. I LOVE the selection of close out cookbooks and I've purchased a good number of them, but it is ALWAYS the same selection... and they started to cut back on discounts in store some too, which was off putting for many...

[redmustang]

Posted: 7/20/11 at 4:28pm

More cruising went on in the Borders in my town than in any gay bar. (and the guys were well-read)

[eponine88]

Posted: 7/20/11 at 7:03pm

To the poster who asked about long-term effects of prolonged reading on a screen- I suffer from moderate to severe ophthalmic migraines (visual symptoms, visual triggers) and am utterly incapable of reading on a computer screen for more than 15 minutes at a time. If I try to do it any longer than that I wind up with a migraine headache, muscle spasms, and sensory hallucinations (not pleasant). It is quite inconvenient, as it means all of my online readings for grad school need to be printed off the computer, even though most of them are 200 pages in length or more. So the movement from paper books to online/digital books is one that I'm not particularly looking forward to.

That being said, the Kindle (the only ereader I've tried) does do a good job of minimizing those effects. I've been able to read on a Kindle for up to half an hour without any adverse effects (so double the time I can spend on a computer screen). It is definitely easier on the eyes than a traditional screen or anything that uses a backlight, but for those who are sensitive to these type of things it still isn't the best option. Even though I'll grab my Kindle to take on the subway with me when my purse won't fit a book, I've only ever gotten public domain books on it. Any book I buy I still buy in paper format.

[everythingtaboo]

Posted: 7/20/11 at 9:58pm

I personally rarely set foot in a Borders or B&N anymore. I don't know about other cities, but the ones in midtown I used to frequent, at least in recent years, are just makeshift libraries. You ever go to Borders at the Time Warner Center? I literally have to walk over people who've camped out for the day in a chair or on the floor because there's no room to browse. Once I was so angry at the 5th Ave B&N I took pictures of literally dozens of people just sitting there on windowsills and floors getting their grubby hands all over books I may have wanted to read.

You people that actually browse and buy once in a while, claps to you. If even half the people there actually bought something, then perhaps the bookstore could stand a chance.

But buying a coffee and reading $50 worth of magazines over three hours before leaving empty-handed is not supporting the publishing industry.