Book by Book

Borders Books heading out?

March

I’ve written about small independent bookstores closing down in the lower Hudson Valley, like Merritt Bookstore in Cold Spring and Good Yarns in Hastings, but now I hear that Borders, the publicly-traded bookstore conglomerate is talking about major overhauls to cut its costs.

Borders Books, it seems is really looking to shut down some stores and work on e-commerce. What ever happened to flipping through the pages of a book and finding a great read because the book jacket just drew you in?

Reuters says that Borders suspended dividends today and its stock shares fell 30 percent. Clearly, foot traffic to get books along with the selection of music, cards and sidelines isn’t what it used to be.

According to its Web site Borders has more than 1,100 stores around the world under the name plates of Borders, Borders International and Waldenbooks/Brentano’s. Stores in Mt. Kisco, Rye Ridge, Scarsdale besides ones ones in Manhattan, Paramus (NJ), Danbury (Conn) and Dutchess County that draw customers from the lower Hudson Valley. Wondering what will happen to these.

Who has some good Borders finds to talk about?

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 11:56 am by Barbara Nackman.
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2 Responses to “Borders Books heading out?”

Jonathan Salem Baskin March 26th, 2008 at 7:47 am
Hi Barbara, I agree with you, and I think that the various aspects of geophysical reality when it comes to books—tactile experience of covers, flipping pages, the smells, visual display, yadda yadda—cannot be replaced by Internet retailing. So why hasn’t Borders (or other book retailers) figured out how to exploit these un-copy-able attributes? Doing better e-commerce was never the key to succeeeding…

Anyway, I’ve riffed a bit about what those possibilities could have been at DIM BULB, if you’re interested: http://dimbulb.typepad.com/my_weblog/2008/03/borders-reprint.html
barbara nackman March 26th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
And what will happen to Border’s Books in White Plains? It is such a neat spot and I love how open the store feels.

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