Borders filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy today after several weeks of anticipation and speculation about the future of the floundering bookstore.
Under Chapter 11, Borders will be able to reorganize by closing down roughly 30% of their stores and renegotiate their debt with several publishers (some of whom have stopped shipping to Borders stores).
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Borders just can’t get a break. The latest misfortune to hit the bookseller came last Thursday, when the New York Stock Exchange threatened to delist Borders if they can’t get their stock price above $1 per share.
But don’t start feeling bad for Borders quite yet. A long series of missteps, poor management and lagging behind the rest of the industry is the cause of their current troubles. In fact, the roots of Borders’ problems can be traced as far back as the 1990s.
An article on Crain’s Detroit Business website chronicles the bad decisions Borders has made throughout the years. One of their earliest mistakes, according to the article, was concentrating on mall ’boutique’ stores when Barnes & Noble was moving to standalone superstores.
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Borders Book Group may have a second chance at life. The bookseller was able to secure $550 million in financing from GE Capital yesterday. While this is good news in the short term, Borders has still not ruled out bankruptcy.
The financing deal comes after the struggling bookseller made employee layoffs, stopped payment to some publishers and announced the closing of a distribution facility. In other words, GE gave Borders a stay of execution.
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I walked into my local Borders a few days ago and was shocked at what I saw. A store that had once been well laid out, friendly and fun to visit had turned into something else.
It was unorganized, with a lot of sales floor space being taken up by clearance bins and tables. The Customer Service desk was gone, replaced by a display of all the ebook readers they sell. Booksellers walk around with radios connected to little earpieces.
Borders also changed their membership program. They now offer a $20/year membership that gives customers bigger savings, up to 40% off hardcover bestsellers and free online shipping. There’s little doubt that they started selling a premium membership to increase revenue.
Borders is hurting and the news for the new year doesn’t look good.
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We’re not even a week into the new year and already 2011 is not being very nice to Borders. Publishers Weekly is reporting that some publishers have stopped book shipments to stores because Borders Group has suspended some payments. Also, 2 Borders executives, the CIO and General Counsel, have resigned.
None of these are good signs for the book retailer. So why is Borders in this predicament? What, or who, is to blame?
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Sony will be rolling out an eReader app for iPhones and Android-based phones. According to the Sony website, the app will be available this December. The new mobile app is nothing special, doing what all the other eReader apps can do. It will be able to:
I’m thinking with the release of this ebook app that those of us with the Sony eReader will soon be able to purchase and download our ebooks directly from their online ebookstore, rather than using their clunky, bug-riddled software.
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The holidays are upon us again and that means there are great deals to be found. And with eReaders skyrocketing in popularity, they are going to be one of the more top selling gifts this year.
That said, great deals and steals are already starting to leak out from large retailers.
Here’s a rundown:
How nice would it be to spend all your time traveling around buying used books and then selling them again on Amazon? You’d get to keep your finger on the pulse of literature, knowing what’s selling and for how much. The lifestyle isn’t easy, as the profit margin on used books can be very slim.
I’ve sold some of my old books on Amazon Marketplace. I think most books only brought in a few extra bucks – not even close to being able to make a living.
Some of my most vivid and pleasant childhood memories are from the books I read. I can easily remember characters, plot details and even the setting of a lot of books.
I think this has a lot do with the brain being actively engaged in the reading, therefore being “burned” into your memory bank forever. Television, on the other hand, is a passive activity where the use of your own imagination is severely limited.
Music is also a lot like reading. I associate different phases of my life with the music I listened to at the time. For example, my college years are painted with the gritty music of the Grateful Dead.
The biggest reason I hear people use for resisting ebooks is that they like real books. They like the feel of a real book when the hold it. They like turning the pages of a real book. They even like the smell of a real book.
All those reasons are very superficial.
Ebooks, just like printed books, are only the medium that the content reaches us. The story and characters do not change if you read a novel in ebook format as opposed to print. The only difference is that you’re reading on a screen rather than paper.
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