The Demise of Borders

Last week, bookselling giant Borders announced that they would be closing their remaining stores, forever.  

And that's it.  The end.  Borders, Inc. is no more.  The remaining stock will be liquidated, the stores will be closed, the big red lights reading "BORDERS" will turn off forever (and probably be sold off, like the bookshelves and the furniture).  The only giants left in the bookselling world are Amazon.com and Barnes&Noble -- tellingly, the two chains with the most popular e-readers (the Kindle and the Nook, respectively).  It is anyone's guess whether or not Barnes&Noble will be able to survive as a brick-and-mortar institution, if they will completely go over to online retailing (a la Amazon), or if they too will slowly roll over into obscurity, bankruptcy, and ultimate liquidation.

I write to you as a longtime patron of Borders and Amazon, who never really felt a tear in the loyalties of either.  I bought my books from Borders, but I received a Kindle for Christmas from my husband and if I could find cheap books on Kindle, I would buy them.  Still, I loved seeing the Borders coupons in my email, and barely a week would go by before I would be in Borders at my local mall, buying something for 30 or 40% off.  I was never a Barnes&Noble fan, so the news that Borders would be closing, though I knew it to be inevitable, hit me pretty hard.

My best friend, Leni, was a bookseller at Borders for years until her store was closed in the mass culling this past March.  She wrote about her reaction to the final liquidation on her blog, The Girl Is In:

"As a former employee of the chain, with many friends still employed by the company, the news was devestating. While I understand why physical book stores are on the verge of extinction, as a writing student and book-lover, it is terrifying." 

Several of my friends sent me text messages or FB messages about going to Borders to the final liquidation sale.  People talked about the fabled "40% off" books.  The idea of going to Borders and scouring the aisles for the cheap books seemed to me like the actions of a vulture picking at the dying carcass.  I said that I wouldn't go on Friday, and I didn't.  But on Sunday afternoon, boredom and curiosity got the best of me, and I got in my car and drove to my local mall.

The parking lot should have indicated what I was in for.  While the parking lot outside of the Borders store has always been about half-full, it was absolutely mobbed on Sunday afternoon, a mere two hours before the mall was scheduled to close.  I could see the bright red-and-yellow "EVERYTHING MUST GO" signs from my parking space towards the back of the lot.  

When I went into the store, I was greeted with mass chaos.  Books were falling off the shelves, spilling everywhere, some of them even on the floor.  The harried Borders booksellers couldn't keep  up with the mess; some of them were even being accosted by patrons asking them "where the best deals were".  There were boxes of "bargain books" (mostly old stock that really didn't have a chance of being sold off otherwise.  Patrons walked through with armloads of books, looking more like looters at a riot.

I managed to squeeze my way into the fiction section; I had a mental list of the books that I've been thinking of reading and purchasing, and I thought that I would see if any of them were on sale.  Of course, everything in the store was on sale.  But the "sales" were deceptive.  The best books -- the fiction, the biographies, the YA fiction, even the arts and crafts books -- were all labeled "10% off".  I must have looked as puzzled as I felt.  For a store that used to hand out coupons for 30 - 40% off, plus the occasional 25% off your entire purchase, 10% was really not that much at all.  And in its heyday, you didn't even have to pay any money to get those weekly coupons.  You only had to have a Borders Rewards card -- which was free if you went the basic route, and only $20 per year if you wanted the Rewards Plus (which included 40% off hardcover bestsellers and 10% off almost everything else in the store, any day).  Why were all these people thinking that this was such a deal?  Even at Borders.com you could get a better deal than that.

I watched the mass chaos around me and I just felt sick.  KatieLeigh from Cakes, Tea, and Dreams wrote about her experience back in March at the Borders Closing Sale, and she said exactly what I was thinking on Sunday afternoon:

"On my most recent visit, I scored three trade paperbacks for $23. This was after picking through shelves of disorganized books, shoved into crooked lines under scribbled-over signs with discounts larger than the section names. And though I was glad to score a deal, I felt a little like a vulture, picking over the remains of a carcass...seeing the unruly shelves and the crossed-out discounts (replaced by higher discounts) and the empty space on the second floor, cordoned off like a crime scene with yellow Caution tape, really got to me. It felt like taking part in the dismantling of the store, though I know Borders’ problems go well beyond my ken. Nevertheless, I won’t be going back there."

I will not judge any of my friends for going to the sale, if they are looking for deals (as I said, I don't think that they are such "deals" right now, though they might be in a few weeks).  It's a personal choice.  I do know that as for me, I don't think I can go back and pick over the shelves any more.  Borders was a special store for me, and for a lot of other people who said that it was like "home" for them, a place to peruse the shelves, to sit and read, and to relax with a good book.  I don't want to be there to witness its death throes.  

RIP, Borders.  I'll miss you.