I feel like a war correspondent reportedly reporting from the front lines, but the war has already come and gone, the battle lost. What’s left now is just looting as thieves pick pocketwatches from corpses and steal high-priced TVs from shattered store windows. What’s left are bodies picked clean by crows and dogs and worms, scavengers fighting tooth-and-nail over a rib-bone here, a loop of intestine there. What’s left is an accounting of the dead. War’s over. The good guys got fucked by the bad guys. Now it’s the end of days. Or the end of books. Or, at least, the end of Borders.
* * *
I’m reminded of a scene on the news where a beached whale — dead, not dead, I don’t even know — is blanketed by squalling, complaining gulls. That’s Borders. Local store got the axe. Most of the Borders in the state are done, it seems. And now it’s a carcass on the beach besieged by those who smell a cheap pop culture meal.
I’ve never seen a bookstore that busy. You could hip-bump a hive of bees on its side and not get this kind of action. Everywhere, jostling bodies jockeying for books. The sci-fi and fantasy section is a parliament of owls: bespectacled readers hungrily looking for a genre fix. Mystery, too: a gaggle of detectives on the hunt for books about detectives. The children’s book section has, and this is no joke, no joke at all, three books left. Three nuggets of puckered meat clinging to otherwise bleached bones. One book about a wombat who is allowed, mysteriously, to play with a human infant. Children’s books can be very stupid.
The literature and fiction section is empty, though. Shelves, still full. One in a while, a lone reader wanders into the alcoves — not because it is where he wants to be but rather because he got lost, because he is the flotsam (or is it jetsam? are there any dictionaries left for purchase?) that washed up here from the churning chum-capped tides here in the bookstore. When he realizes where he is, he will shake his head as if clearing his mind of illusion and infection and then totter off again, buoyed by another belching current. Or driven by cheap prices the way a zombie is driven by his hunger for brains.
* * *
People still want books, it seems. They just don’t want to pay full price.
* * *
The prices are half-off and the shelves are half-empty and still I see books I’ve read and loved, books that I know to be popular, books by authors who I see on Twitter or even here at the blog, and for a moment I’m consumed by a dog-shelter moment. The Sarah McLachlan song cues in my mind. I see the books as sad pups and pooches: one with a scar on his brow, the other missing an eye, a third cowering in the corner equally afraid of me and desperate for my love. I want to sweep them all up in my arms and take them home and lather them with kisses and give them that thing they need most: my eyes to read them, my mind to process them, my mouth to share of their wealth. But then I remember that Borders is fucked, Borders isn’t paying out, and I don’t even know if the authors of these books will ever see what they’re owed from these sales. And I think, if I want to buy these books I should at least go home and buy them from Amazon. Of course, isn’t that what got us here in the first place? Is it? Isn’t it? I don’t even know.
* * *
Borders, of course, can’t pay publishers. It’s broke. Still wearing days-old diapers and a hat made of newspaper. And yet its hobo bindle must be heavy with secret hobo gold because Borders still intends to pay $8.3 million in executive bonuses. I’m sure I’m just naive in that I don’t understand economic realities, but it seems to me that someone should pay the writers via publishers first. Any executive looking for a hand-out should get one: and by “hand-out,” I mean “fist to the nuts.”
* * *
By the comic book shelf, a big pear-shaped dude is blocking the aisle while picking up one graphic novel after the next and reading them. Front to cover, from what I can tell. American Vampire. X-Men. Manga. Flip, flip, flip. Read, read, read. Eventually I see him gravitating toward the exit, no books in hand. Part of me wants to grab a magazine rack (on sale for $100 bucks, the whole fixture) and break it over his head. Or hurl a copy of a D&D book at his dumpy Baby Huey body as if it were the crazy shuriken from Krull. The other part of me thinks, eh, fuck it. Isn’t this what Borders always wanted? For us to hang out? Sit down? Read books and magazines? Sip a latte? Why spend money on books? Don’t we just want everything cheap and free now? Twelve dollar cappucino, hold the wordsmithy.
Words on a page like ants on snow. Poetic. And meaningless.
* * *
They’re selling everything. All the shelves. The racks. The end caps.
They’re even selling manila folders.
Two for a dollar.
Two used manila folders for one whole dollar.
One of the workers there, she’s snarkily telling a customer, “Would you pay that?”
He shakes his head. “No.”
She gives him a look like, Duh.
* * *
I can buy 100 manila folders new at Amazon for about ten bucks.
* * *
Three kids pinball between the sci-fi and fantasy shelves. Hoodies. Skull shirts. Mop-top hair. Kids today, with their hair and their clothes. “There’s nothing good here,” the one mewls, moans, whimpers, pules. I want to grab his face and drag it across the book spines the way you would a stick along a picket fence. I want to show him, “There’s so much good here.” But then I think, well, at least he’s in a bookstore.
At least he’s still looking at books.
* * *
One aisle down, a guy in his 20s is picking up a book. Hardback. Something pretty, but I can’t tell what. He says to his friend, “I think it’s a role-playing game.” He says this with some reverence, but also a kind of confusion, like he’s someone picking up something he’d heard of but never seen: a rotary phone, a Viewmaster, an honest Republican. He walks away with the book, planning to buy it.
* * *
I used to work at Borders.
It was like belonging to a cult. And not in a good way. Not in a, “We all love each other and sing songs and eat granola under the caring eye of Mother Moon” way. But rather in a, “Drink the Flavor-Aid and if you don’t drink the goddamn Flavor-Aid I’m just going to shoot you in the head anyway.”
I quit after a couple weeks.
* * *
The mood here is wildly vacillating. It is the frenzy of fishes and sharks, eyes rolling back and jaws clamping on books never-before-read without thought or meaning, a kind of predatory bliss. But here too is the sadness of prey, and some folks are stumbling around, faces vacant as they stare at a nowhere-nothing point. They look like the shell-shocked victims after a bombing, an earthquake, a zombie apocalypse.
* * *
My pregnant wife comes up to me and she’s got tears in her eyes, and I think, is she sad about Borders? I know I’m sad about Borders. Maybe not enough to cry about it. But still, a little sad.
She instead hands me a children’s book. She says with a sniffle, “Read this.”
And I think, now I’m like that pear-shaped douche standing here reading a whole book from front to cover, but a cursory glimpse through the book tells me I’m going to be able to read it in about 30 seconds. Okay. Fine. I read it. It’s called Remembering Crystal. It’s about a bird — a duck, maybe? Who has a friend who is a turtle and the turtle is old and then the turtle dies and the duck continues to look around for the turtle even though the turtle is dead. Eventually the duck-like entity goes to sleep, sad about the turtle, and there the duck realizes that he/she/it has found the turtle after all, in the duck’s dreams, in the duck’s heart. The memory of the turtle named Crystal is how the turtle still lives. It is adorable. And also horribly sad.
The book is for pre-school to age two.
It choked me up. I’m not even a pregnant woman.
Part of me recast the book, though. I am the little duck. I’m wandering the ends of the earth looking not for a turtle but rather for a Borders bookstore. Or any bookstore. Or even a book.
And by the end, I realize the only place they still live is in my head.
* * *
We go to checkout. My wife has some books on child-rearing. I have Patton Oswalt’s book. Our checkout person looks dazed. Sad, even. She’s slow, methodical, peeling off prices with this red plastic price-peeler that looks like some kind of little lobster claw. She’s saying little to us. Part of me thinks she might cry.
Her cohort at the counter is the precise opposite. She’s young, bubbly, talking to everyone. The bookpocalypse hasn’t fazed this one. Her head is probably full of Facebook and Farmville. I envy her.
An old man stands at the counter next to us. The bubbly one attends to his check-out. He’s got a book on writing. The Art of Storytelling or something like that. She chirps, “Are you a writer?”
He laughs a dismissive laugh, and shakes his head no.
“I bet you have lots of stories to tell,” the bubbly one says. She doesn’t say, but we all hear: because you’re totally old. She confirms this by adding, “My grandfather has lots of stories to tell. He’s not a writer, but boy he can tell stories. You should be a writer.”
The old man offers another yeah, but no chuckle and shrugs in a way that suggests, “Why bother? Have you looked around? Do you know where you work? Don’t you see what’s happening? Be a writer. Sure. So my book can end up here. Unbought. In a mass grave. Squirrels nesting in its chest cavity. Maggots for eyes. My words serving as their own dirge, their own funerary incantation. I’ll get right on that, you empty-headed twit. Writer. Pfft. Pshhh. Pah!”
Then again, maybe that was all in my head, not in his.
Maybe he chuckled and shrugged the way babies do, and for the same reason. Maybe he just had gas.
* * *
The bubbly girl, finding no one behind the old man, talks to us as our own shell-shocked counter-jockey obsessively works to remove price stickers from our books.
“We’re efficient,” the girl says, proudly. “We get the job done.”
I can tell. Bureaucrat of the apocalypse. Again, the accounting of the dead.
Bubbly girl has another customer. She asks them, “Do you have your Borders Rewards card?”
Because such mighty rewards await us in the kingdom beyond.
* * *
On the way out, I say to my wife, it’s kind of sad, isn’t it? She agrees.
We get in the car and we leave, navigating the swarm of cars incoming and outgoing, book-hungry scavengers of the wordsmith’s wasteland, desperate for a taste, a taste at cut-rate game-over prices. They come only when they smell smoke. They come not for the meal but to pick the trash.
* * *
Now that my email is working, the remainder of this week will be guest bloggage by the Friends of Terribleminds. They’ll start tomorrow and will go into next week — note that regularly-scheduled Friday Flash Fiction challenges will continue, however. Keep your grapes peeled.
Anthony Elmore says:
I’ve been fighting the Devil and kneeling on rice kernels praying for strength. The urge to transfer a couple of Bens from savings and going on a book buying bender claws at my gut.
I’ve have the devil on the mat, for now.
For months, I had routine of writing 1-1.5 hours at a cozy Borders a click from my workplace. Get the work done, then go to my rent paying job. One day I arrived to see the coffee shop’s tables and chairs stacked in the corner. I read a sign that said the location was closing and all inventory will be sold.
New routine: I now write at a Dunkin Doughnuts. The coffee is caffeinated ambrosia and I can satisfy my occasional cruller jones. Border’s will be missed. Where will those poor living-at-home hipsters and professional grad students do now?
April 4, 2011 — 12:32 AM
Sparky says:
You made me cry about a bookstore. Well done Sir.
April 4, 2011 — 1:56 AM
Natalie says:
While not in any way defending them, I heard an interesting justification for paying the $8.3 million bonuses. It is the only way they can get the executives to stay on and wind things up, and it would cost the company a lot more to hire new people who didn’t have the inside knowledge on what was going on and who would have to spend time getting up to speed. And no one wants to be part of that anyway. So they are desperately clinging to whoever they can get to stay and process the death, whatever that involves.
April 4, 2011 — 2:19 AM
Natalie says:
Oh, and I never liked Borders. My local Dymocks has a much much bigger and better fantasy section. And I hate the smell of coffee, so the whole store smelled yuck to me.
April 4, 2011 — 2:21 AM
Naithin says:
I haven’t dared venture into the local Borders in town, for fear of such sights. Here in New Zealand, Borders is majority owner in an older local chain called Whitcoulls. I have ventured into one of those.
Today in fact.
Similar scenes. People shuffling around now mostly vacant shelving. Eyeing the last of the specials. Red dot items going for just $1. Warnings plastered everywhere that gift cards can currently only be used when cash of equal value is involved in the sale. If you don’t like or are unable to take this route then you may either hold onto them against the chances of Whitcoulls recovering at a later date, or, you may talk to the stony faced manager behind the counter, to register yourself as an unsecured debtor to the value of the cards.
Horrifying experience. Also? A remarkably squeamish one as I walked about clutching my recently-purchased Kindle. I know.
Only thing making me feel even marginally better about that fact being the knowledge I have a box of books I still haven’t finished yet totalling a value of $200 which I bought over Christmas… With uh… Gift cards. *cough*
April 4, 2011 — 3:59 AM
Tony Lane says:
I personally feel physical bookshops are going to struggle more and more unless they can find a way to access the e-book market on-site. The UK branches of Borders shut ages ago, and I remember at the time saying to people that it was terrible. All I got in return was a shrug and a look of bewilderment.
The only bookshop I have ever seen that is genuinely busy whenever I have been in there is Barter Books in Alnwick (just outside Newcastle in the UK). It buys and sells second hand books and has lots of places to sit and read whilst having tea and biscuits (or a bacon butty). It is a truly magical place where I always seem to find some bizarre book that I have never heard of, and that Amazon tells me is out of print when I get home.
April 4, 2011 — 6:28 AM
terribleminds says:
@Tony:
Your job, right now, is to tell me what a “bacon butty” is.
Because, y’know. Bacon.
— c.
April 4, 2011 — 6:31 AM
Alic says:
A bacon butty: http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2009/4/11/1239464428400/Bacon-butty-001.jpg
April 4, 2011 — 6:36 AM
AlicE says:
With an E.
April 4, 2011 — 6:37 AM
im_not_a_lizard says:
You know I’ve always preferred Waterstones over Borders but something in me dies a little everytime a book shop, independent or chain, goes into receivership.
April 4, 2011 — 6:37 AM
Alice says:
A bacon butty: http://static.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2009/4/11/1239464428400/Bacon-butty-001.jpg
Your blog or you deleted this post after I posted it 🙁 Probably because it thought I was spamming?
Anyway, my previous post made sense because the original one was posted as Alic, and…*incoherent noises*
April 4, 2011 — 6:39 AM
Alice says:
I’m…I’m…what? WHAT? I seem to be failing at posting comments this morning. I’m going to go away and sulk, and maybe I can regain some dignity by not drowning in my breakfast cuppa.
Sod it all.
April 4, 2011 — 6:42 AM
Albert Berg says:
There seems to be this kneejerk “Borders is closing because people don’t want to buy physical books anymore” reaction, and I’m not sure it’s true.
I think Borders is likely closing for two reasons.
1. We’re living in a kind of crappy economy right now and every business is struggling to stay afloat.
2. Borders just wasn’t as good at doing business as their competitors.
Physical media is not dead. Especially not physical books. We think they are because we’re all “Internet People” and all our friends are Internet People, and since none of us are buying physical books, NO ONE must be buying physical books. This simply isn’t true.
It’s the economy, stupid. People can’t buy stuff they can’t afford. Chuck was right about people wanting cheap books. I love physical books, but I unless there’s a book out by an author that I truly LOVE I’m not buying it new at full price. It’s not that I’m a stingy person who hates to see authors get paid, but I simply don’t HAVE twenty plus dollars free to spend on my weekly book fix.
Just because Circuit City went out of business that does not mean we’re going to see the end big box electronics stores. Ditto Borders.
I could go on, but I don’t want to turn this into a blog post of my own.
Or maybe I do. Hmmm.
April 4, 2011 — 7:49 AM
terribleminds says:
@Albert:
I think you’re partly right — physical books still account for a big portion of book sales. But that number *is* dwindling and is likely to dwindle even further. Books, in essence, are just a storage device, and a heavy and inefficient one at that — same way that CDs, albums, VHS tapes, DVDs, etc are all going not the way of the dodo, but certainly the way of a “protected species.” Books seem to be naturally following that course.
If it was just Borders, I’d be inclined to agree entirely — but from what I read, B&N’s stock is way down. And certainly “indie” bookstores are a lot harder to find these days.
Ultimately, right now, I don’t think it’s about people wanting NO books, I think they want physical books, but as noted, they want them cheap. Looking back at CDs, they were always too expensive — though one could argue they’re now that digital albums are too cheap, too — and so most of your CD stores went away. I saw an FYE the other day and it was like seeing a comet.
People want cheaper books in whatever format they can get. Amazon has taught us that full price is something we should never pay, for better or for worse. Border and B&N alike repeatedly send me these “coupons” that sometimes don’t even match the standard steady discount Amazon offers.
So, to me, it’s less about physical books vs. e-books, yeah. It’s more about cheap books vs. full-price-books.
Once we learn we can pay less, there exists an erosive quality to how we value things. That’s good in some ways, bad in others. It’s why I’m cautious (note gentle word, “cautious,” not full of vitriol lest anybody get their back up) about the $0.99 price point. There exists a buyer and consumer psychology that some writers don’t really want to grok, I think, because it is perhaps “too businessy.”
But I’m off on a different tangent, there, so I’ll stop.
— c.
April 4, 2011 — 8:00 AM
Albert Berg says:
@Chuck
I hadn’t heard that about B&N. I guess I shouldn’t be surprised, although it’s possible they’re getting splashover from investor’s jitters about Borders. Stock prices are not always an accurate snapshot of a businesses viability.
April 4, 2011 — 8:06 AM
terribleminds says:
http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2011/03/16/barnes-noble-stock-hits-new-low/?mod=google_news_blog
Link to B&N stock woes. Recent news shows a continuing downtrend.
Thing is, maybe B&N will stay around.
But you know what I don’t see much of? Blockbusters. Or any video store. You know what’s empty every time I go in there? Best Buy. Places that sell media — or, really, media containers — ain’t looking so hot in the 21st century.
— c.
April 4, 2011 — 8:14 AM
Albert Berg says:
@Chuck
At least B&N is trying to keep up with the ebook trend. They put the Nook out because they saw where the business was going, and they didn’t want to get left behind.
Blockbuster basically stuck their head in the sand when Netflix came along and didn’t try to catch up until way too late.
Not sure if the Nook will help save B&N or not, but at least they’ve got the right idea.
April 4, 2011 — 8:18 AM
Maggie Carroll says:
I can’t remember the last time I was in a bookstore. I think it was back in December, honestly, when we’d gotten some early Christmas money from Rick’s mom. I went in, picked up a new copy of Goodnight Moon (which the kids are really hard on), and a copy of Plato’s The Republic and Nietzsche’s Beyond Good and Evil for myself.
I’ve gotten books since. Loaded them onto my Sony eReader, browsed and perused and lounged where I saw fit. Handy booklight on the side of the case. So booklike I caught myself trying to turn pages from time to time. It fits into my purse.
Five hundred books, one device roughly the size of Jughead’s Double Digest. Why I would need five hundred books, I do not know. But I read roughly one to three complete books, depending on length, in the run of a day or so when I’m motivated to do so.
Most of my gaming books are PDFs. They, too, fit onto my eReader. I am not so happy about this fact, because it’s a pain in the ass while gaming if I need to reference something in a e-book. For gaming, I prefer hardcopy.
I love books. The feel, the smell, the words. The soft whisper of turning pages. But it’s becoming more and more convenient to simply not buy them. PDFs or epubs are generally cheaper, easily duplicated so you can save a copy somewhere (or in the case of Kindle, saved to your profile for downloading) and can be crowded into memory so you can take a veritable library with you where’er you go.
This is one of the death knells of the traditional bookstore. I love electronic media: I have no problem sitting and researching on a computer, or reading a book on my phone or eReader. But I think that the ever-growing reliance on digital copy, on cheap-to-produce-because-we’re-not-making-physical-product products and the surging importance of an internet presence means that bookstores, book nooks with coffee shops, and book signings, will become a thing of the past.
We’ve got half a dozen used bookstores in town. Only three commercial/retail though. One in one Mall, one in the other Mall, and a giant one on the highway out of town. All three are Chapters, or Chapters affiliates (Coles). Indigo rules with a fist of iron.
The book signings and release events at the individu-store are all for local authors. They have a Starbucks, which is to date the only one I’ve ever seen in my city. (Too much competition with Tim Horton’s; you can find a Timmy’s approximately every 10 feet.) They have local music groups perform there sometimes. Story events for kids. It’s more like a community center. Maybe it’s because we’re a bit isolated — a half-barren rock in the middle of the Atlantic doesn’t sound like a very great travel destination.
But there’s enough business still here to support three bookstores in a city of 100k people, and a host of public libraries and used bookstores. Even some specialty bookstores. I don’t think Indigo Chapters will be going out of business any time soon, but even though I don’t often go there, as it’s easier, cheaper and better on space in my small apartment to buy digital, I’d be very sad to see it disappear.
April 4, 2011 — 8:40 AM
Tony Lane says:
As Alice showed in her image a butty is like a sandwich or a roll but with a hot filling. Chip butty or bacon butty being the most popular in my part of the world. White crusty rolls that shatter upon impact with teeth seem to have been replaced by tissue paper strength baps these days.
April 4, 2011 — 9:02 AM
Josh says:
The missus and I went to a Borders this weekend. There was a simple sign posted on the door.
“Our landlord is awesome.
“We’re not going anywhere.”
Things are on sale all over the place, but it didn’t have an EVERYTHING MUST GO! feel to it. Not yet, at least.
April 4, 2011 — 9:03 AM
terribleminds says:
@Josh:
Which Borders did you go to? If you went to your local one, Montgomeryville, I don’t think they’re actually closing. Warrington is, I believe?
— c.
April 4, 2011 — 9:09 AM
Todd Ritter says:
I got choked up just reading about you reading that damn duck and turtle book. And I’m not a pregnant woman, either. Thanks a lot, Wendig.
Seriously, though, I agree with you on the people-want-cheap-books reason why Borders is going under. Amazon has really fucked up the pricing expectations for almost everything. The rest of the industry is just trying to figure out how to deal with it.
April 4, 2011 — 9:06 AM
terribleminds says:
@Todd: Seriously, yeah, it’s totally weepy. It’s got this duck hugging this cabbage because the goddamn cabbage looks like the goddamn turtle BUT THE TURTLE IS DEAD. Who is reading this to their pre-schooler?!
@Don: Certainly cheaper books are and perhaps have been the answer, though I’m not ready to call publishers liars and fools. It’s just, the thing is, as with any big company you get in this position where the bigger you are, the harder it is to change course when that’s what is demanded. Smaller publishers can do this more easily. Bigger pubs have their own gravity, their own weather systems.
— c.
April 4, 2011 — 9:14 AM
Don Whittington says:
I work at a Half Priced Books store in Texas. We are that busy almost every single day. In the shopping strip where we are located our parked customers more than double all the other fifteen stores in the center put together, including a Family Dollar and a Party City. You are exactly correct in that people want to read books. Publishing keeps pricing them out.
Every year I can remember, publishers go to the ABA convention and say “What do you want?” and the bookstores say “Reasonably priced books.” Publishers shrug and say “costs, man. Costs are too much.” Baloney. Why are YA titles of similar page count priced twice as much as adult novels? Why did publishing decide to answer a slump in PB sales by *increasing* page count and size in paperbacks. The average novel from the sixties had no fewer words, but had half to a third as many pages. Publishers are liars and fools. They have driven their own audience away and they should all be ashamed of themselves. They tell us that average Americans don’t want to read, that they aren’t very smart. Look around at your circle of friends, people. Do they all strike you as idiots and illiterates? No? Then someone must be lying to you, because those are the average Americans they keep talking about.
I have little sympathy for big bookstore chains either. They have the least investment in inventory of any retailing business, and guaranteed returns for merchandise that doesn’t sell. They are part of the over-all rapacious wave of corporate hogging that keeps restricting our choices; the literary midlist has never been smaller.
As has been noted before: publishing is the only business on earth that brags about the fact it isn’t run like a business.
Not that I have any opinions on the matter.
April 4, 2011 — 9:07 AM
Don Whittington says:
That should have been “half” as much. YA titles priced “half” as much, not twice. If you find any other sloppy errors like that, please address them to me under my real name, Albert Berg. Sorry.
April 4, 2011 — 9:16 AM
Kate Haggard says:
Our Borders is full of the bubbly young cashiers – all grad students or former English majors that couldn’t find any other job after graduating (since, you know, this is a college town). There’s a whole “If I don’t laugh, I’m gonna cry” feel at the check out. Or there was. I went when things were still hovering around 40% and the fixtures weren’t on sale. Can’t bring myself to go back. The giant yellow sign you can see a mile down the road just looks too much like the final shindig thrown for a human sacrifice. Ticker tape before the burnt offering. It’s just too sad.
April 4, 2011 — 9:18 AM
Kate Haggard says:
@ Don:
YA prices VS. Adult prices – While page counts are similar, YA books often (though this is changing) often have smaller word counts. The accepted norm is in the 50K-75K range. So often the type is bigger and there are less words per page. Not to mention, YAs are priced to appeal to teenagers. I can’t think of a single 16 year old that’d spend 30 bucks on a new hardcover.
It’s not a case of publishers lying. It’s a case of publishers knowing their markets. And YA publishers are savvy about how to work theirs.
April 4, 2011 — 9:26 AM
Dave Brookshaw says:
@ Tony: Alnwick books? The Aladdin’s cave of second hand stores with the miniature railway suspended from the ceiling?
I’ve never failed to find something in there. Always worth a visit when passing by those parts.
April 4, 2011 — 9:31 AM
Josh says:
@Chuck –
Yeah. It’s in the same strip as Best Buy, Old Navy and a couple other stores, right across from the Montgomery Mall.
April 4, 2011 — 9:41 AM
Dan O'Shea says:
Some of the Borders around here are closing, some aren’t. In Chicago, one of the Borders on the north side, Lincoln Park or thereabouts, got the ax. Tony neighborhood, the kind of place where they don’t like folks wondering in just to use the john – might encourage the homeless to hang about, don’t you know. The sign in their window during the Bookpocalypse? “No Public Washroom – Try Amazon.”
Don’t know what that means exactly (I know it means I can’t just wander in and piss without buying a manila folder, but whether it has some portent beyond that, I can’t say), But it did get them five seconds on the ironic smirking hipster segment of the local news.
April 4, 2011 — 9:50 AM
terribleminds says:
@Dan —
Yeah, I’ve seen the TRY AMAZON bathroom sign at several stores — er, not personally, but online I’ve seen a number of Twitpics that clearly weren’t at the same store. Certainly a funny, ironic sign. Though, a little late, and certainly bitter. 🙂
— c.
April 4, 2011 — 9:53 AM
KayAnna Kirby says:
Very well done. I enjoyed reading it. I don’t know how much sympathy I fell for Borders. They were the same ones in their beginning put tons of small independent bookstores out of business. That is what they wanted to do and that’s what they did, not it’s there turn to kick the bucket.
I think small bookstores should come back. Small bookstores with low overhead and a local flavor would work again where the Borders are closing.
April 4, 2011 — 10:10 AM
Will Hindmarch says:
The “dog-shelter” moment. YES. I went to Borders on Friday to see what was left (it was both a fact-finding expedition and a panning-for-gold expedition), and was, of course, able to feel the cracks forming on my heart. I tried to be positive with the staff, but of course they didn’t want to be happy. I was smiling at the wake for their store. I was buying half-price books from the estate sale they were holding days before their death. We were at odds.
Got some great books for half-off, though, so I feel two ways about what happened. Borders may be seeing that selling DVDs for $30 apiece (I bought a movie for $4.99 on DVD earlier that morning) turned people off. Selling books for 30% less, in many ways, turned people on.
Seriously, they should have left the cafes open, ’cause the number of people who went in there and then went in search of coffee? Holy shit.
So, yes, it is a very sad thing to see all these Borders closing. I trust that something will replace some (many?) of those stores, though. I’m holding out hope. Maybe it’s Amazon that has completely rewired the notion of What A Book Is Worth… maybe it’s the economy, stupid… maybe it’s something we said. But, yeah, things are changing in ways that are sad, and that hurt, but that are not only sad and do not only hurt. Onward, I guess.
April 4, 2011 — 10:30 AM
Alice says:
I came back from the sulk corner without having drowned in my tea, ego wounded but intact, especially as my previous comments led someone to go have a look at my blog (???). (Thank you, mysterious clicker.)
@Kate, .r.e. “It’s not a case of publishers lying. It’s a case of publishers knowing their markets. And YA publishers are savvy about how to work theirs.”
I’m fairly certain all of this dramatic folderol and tra-la-la is a result of publishers NOT knowing their markets.
@Don (Albert?)
I love that store. We may have unwittingly crossed paths many a time. But the thing about second-hand bookstores like Half Price is that they appeal for TWO reasons:
1) Books are reasonably priced.
2) People know they’re getting a good deal because the price is half the cover price or less on things that aren’t collector’s items.
This means that, well, if you guys didn’t first have the cover price printed right there on the back of the book, people wouldn’t know what kind of deal they were getting, and they wouldn’t pat themselves on the back for it, either.
I’m buying a lot more new books these days because I want to support the authors. I mostly go to HPB when I want to get my hands on a big stack of thick, dog-eared and slightly yellowing 70s and 80s SFF paperback bricks (yummmmmmm yum yum).
April 4, 2011 — 10:39 AM
Clay Morgan says:
Brilliant. Too good to even add anything this time. I’m conflicted as many are. You paint the scene so well. I’m kind of like the blank-stared guy standing amidst the carnage, not sure which direction I should be moving. Better to report on the crowd than follow them for sure.
April 4, 2011 — 11:03 AM
Albert Berg says:
@Don
“Look around at your circle of friends, people. Do they all strike you as idiots and illiterates?”
Um….yes?
I’m talking real-life friends here not internet friends. It might have something to do with the fact that I live right on the border with Alabama. It’s rather depressing.
April 4, 2011 — 11:43 AM
Hilary Clark says:
I love books. The smell of them. The texture of the cover and the pages in between. I love new books for their pristine beauty and crispy crackly spines. I hit the book aisle at Target, the grocery store, and any other place that has books for sale, every time I’m in a store. I love entering a Borders or a B&N or an indie bookstore for the rich, storied atmosphere of possibilities. I want to pick up a book and hold it, caress it, read the back cover blurb and flip through the pages before hugging it to my chest and carrying it tenderly to the counter for purchase.
The Borders’ bankruptcy and the resultant store closures are maddening, Their business plan stunk. The media is doing their usual spout-doomsday-no one reads “real” books anymore-propaganda and the public laps it up like a thirsty dog. Well, I do read real books and I’m gonna keep reading real books until they have to rip the pages from my aged, mottled, clenched fist, whether they’re overpriced, underpriced, or just-right priced. Books are my indulgence and my addiction.
April 4, 2011 — 11:52 AM
Hillary Monahan says:
What a sad read. Le sigh.
God I wish I could find this now, but I read an article by some Harvard economist ripping Border’s business plan apart and explaining WHY the stores did so poorly (the 8 million dollar bonuses might have been added to the list had it come out earlier). Of course I’m a tool and can’t seem to find it now, so bear with my half-assed regurgitation. The main reason they cited was not eBooks or even Amazon, but how much floor space and investment Borders made in the music side of business. They were buying these huge stores (costly, especially with leases considered) with enormous lay outs to accommodate six trillion CDs. When the music industry went tits up, it dragged the stores down, so profits made from book sales couldn’t overcome the other half that was tanking. They were apparently depending on multimedia sales way too much.
Of course, the “never joining the eBook train” didn’t help matters, nor did the store’s focus on mid-list authors (which was why the publishing houses loved them – Border’s pitched people that weren’t James Patterson). That last part, btw, was why I kinda dug them, but . . . perfect example of a Border’s problem. Girlfriend of mine went to buy a book a Border’s. It’s a lay-down date book (which means for those who might not know (A) it’s got buzz enough to require the stores to sign off that they will not release this book to the public til X date and (B) people must really want it to insist that stores not release it til said date.). She went into the store on her lunch hour, no sign of book. Not in the fantasy section, new fiction, or elsewhere. She walked up to the little information desk about to ask, when the person three bodies up asked the girl behind the counter for the same book. The woman in between that person and my friend? Raised her hand and said she was there for the same. So there’s three of them there for the same book. None of the employees had any clue who this author was, or what this book was. Come to find out they had the books in the back and /hadn’t unpacked them yet/. I’ve had experiences like that myself in Borders which I never had in a B&N and especially not in an Indie. It always just seemed so . . . FUCK IT ALL there. Slap a cap on a 17 year old and tell them not to steal the candy!
And to Chuck’s earlier comment about trying to find indie bookstores, http://www.indiebound.org/. If I don’t link that, that same Border’s story friend will come back from her work conference and kill the fuck out of me.
April 4, 2011 — 12:10 PM
Austin Wulf says:
Last month I got a depressing email saying that the Borders in Philadelphia was closing. It struck me as sad because it’s such a huge store–it takes up like half a block and it’s three stories. It was my bookstore of choice back there.
April 4, 2011 — 12:46 PM
Erasmusinwv says:
Borders had it coming. They got into the online game too late, into the discount game too late, and generally management had their heads up their asses. When the Borders near me closes (45 miles away here in rural West-dumb-as-shit-Virginia) the nearest bookstore will be 65 miles away unless I want to go to the one of the two in Elkins (one is all about trains and the Civil War and nothing else and the other is a college bookstore in the 200 T-shirts to a book type). So thank you corporate douchebags, and hello Amazon Prime membership!
April 4, 2011 — 1:06 PM
Alice says:
Whoa, whoa, hang a bit…I love ordering books online too, and I use Amazon a lot, but…how exactly is it not a corporate d-bag?
There’s a lot wrong with Amazon. For starters, their review system: http://maybeandthewolf.wordpress.com/2011/03/31/why-amazons-review-system-needs-to-change/
Secondly, Amazon has made life very difficult for my (overseas) publisher in ways I won’t discuss — and these days you cannot afford to avoid Amazon distribution.
April 4, 2011 — 2:19 PM
TheRestuvus says:
Now for the rest of the story. For those of us working at or below minimum wage, a $30.00 book is absolutely out of the question. We live without TV, in order to have computer hookup. It strikes me that all this clamoring about ppl not wanting to pay “full price” for books, comes from the Hipster Faction of the world. The overpaid and well-fed. Oh, I hear writers boo hoo about how hard their lives are. But most of them simply WON’T do the work the rest of us do. Not can’t, won’t. I won’t scrub toilets for 3 hours just to read a book, when I can go to the used bookstore or Amazon and get it for four bucks, including the shipping. Y’all go right on whinin’. Books are a luxury. Goodwills are full of ’em. If we go for a couple years with no new books, only the people with soft hands will ever notice. Maybe y’all should remember whose backs the world is built on. Not banks, not corporations, but blue collar workers. We’re all hurting like hell. Funny, you’re more concerned about BOOKS than your fellow Americans. That’s okay, they came for us and you did nothing. They’ll come for you, in time.
April 4, 2011 — 3:35 PM
terribleminds says:
@Restuvus:
Suuuuuuuure.
— c.
April 4, 2011 — 4:12 PM
Marty says:
Fundamental flaw: Books are not a luxury. Books are a goddamn necessity.
April 4, 2011 — 4:23 PM
Alice says:
” We live without TV, in order to have computer hookup.”
OH NO NOT THE TELLY WHAT WILL YOU EVER DO
“Funny, you’re more concerned about BOOKS than your fellow Americans.”
Funny, you assume we’re all Americans.
April 4, 2011 — 4:31 PM
Chris says:
@Restuvus:
Nice straw man, there… Of course, most writers I know have worked all those lovely little toilet-scrubbing jobs you “won’t” do to get a book. I’ve worked in kitchens and waited tables, been a ridiculous costumed character at an amusement park in sub-tropical temperatures… I’ve worked in a warehouse manufacturing apparel.
Most writers don’t work full-time as writers and if they do, they don’t have basic benefits like health care. Sorry to burst your bubble, but there’s no writer’s ivory tower we gather in to look out over the huddled masses and hide from the Red Death.
Don’t get me wrong though, I am sorry to hear about your First World Problems, and I do hope you eventually earn enough money to pay for both internet and cable. As for books, I suggest a library.
April 4, 2011 — 4:31 PM
Marko Kloos says:
Maybe the fact that you consider books an unnecessary luxury has a little bit to do with the fact that you’re working “at or below minimum wage.”
April 4, 2011 — 4:37 PM
Stephen Blackmoore says:
*sniff* *sniff* You smell that?
Smells like troll.
April 4, 2011 — 4:50 PM
terribleminds says:
I smell meth and urine.
Then again, I always smell meth and urine. That’s because I made my house into a meth lab. And I pee myself a lot.
— c.
April 4, 2011 — 4:51 PM
AmyLikesToDraw says:
@ Restuvus:
There are exceptions to every generalization, but most writers I know work one, two even THREE other jobs to pay their bills while writing at night. I know award-winning writers that also work at Starbucks (where, yes, they clean toilets sometimes), work thankless temp jobs, and work in situations that fall squarely into the category of minimum wage.
Your thinking here is uninformed or ignorant, and you’re obviously very angry. But please, before you channel your anger at the wrong people, look into it a little more.
As a side note, most of the hipsters I know are dirt poor and also work thankless jobs. They have no cable TV, they have no cars and live in crappy sections of the city, partly because they can only afford bikes. They work, and they work hard. This is the ENTIRE reason Pabst Blue Ribbon became “cool to drink” again – because it’s what hipsters could afford. No microbrews and soft hands there, chief. Ease up.
April 4, 2011 — 5:00 PM
Neliza Drew says:
@albert berg
“@Don
“Look around at your circle of friends, people. Do they all strike you as idiots and illiterates?”
Um….yes?
I’m talking real-life friends here not internet friends. It might have something to do with the fact that I live right on the border with Alabama. It’s rather depressing”
Pretty much, yeah, my offline friends are mostly illiterates and idiots. I’ve tried to find better, but South Florida has a lot of illiterates and idiots. Bunch of club-hopping, pot-smoking ditzes in shiny hot pants. I will say my book club rocks, but they’re about the only people I know who can finish a book in under a year.
This sounds a lot like my final trip into the local Borders. I was in there on my birthday and the parking lot was practically empty. Three days later, after the CLOSING signs went up, the place was crawling with people who didn’t look capable of sounding out the word “closing.” Makes me want to punch a bubblehead.
April 4, 2011 — 5:16 PM
Erasmusinwv says:
I’d say Restuvus is the reason Snookie got a book deal and why there are three shelves of books at B&N in Morgantown just on Professional Wrestling and NASCAR. Anyhow, I hate to see another bookstore of any kind go, but they all have to realize they have to change to compete. I really worry for the independent stores. Morgantown, WV home of West Virginia University (granted not the most high brow of schools) had 8 indy bookstores in the 1990s. Now there are two, maybe three if they are open that day. There’s also a Barnes & Noble and a Books-a-Million. So four/five total in a college town of 30,000 students and 60,000 people total. And if the Borders in Clarksburg closes they will be the only bookstores for A HUNDRED MILES.
April 4, 2011 — 5:46 PM
Gareth says:
“You elites with yer book-larnin’. Feh! I say Feh! I’m ah-gin’ it!”
True book hipsters wouldn’t settle for less than each of their volumes lovingly hand-bound in the tanned skin of a struggling blue-color worker, with pages crafted from bleached, uncirculated 100-dollar bills.
April 4, 2011 — 5:51 PM
Brad Rowland says:
@ Restuvus
After you’ve finished you hater-aide with a side of bitters, tell me about your crappy jobs. I bet you I can match you job for job. Broken dreams, battered body and all. I am one of the ones you claim to be, poser. What have you lost? What have you sacrificed?
If you’re truly working a minimum wage shit job then I have a suggestion for you; stop bitching about how crappy your situation is and change it. Try reading a book that might teach you a skill that would get you a better job. It worked for me.
I love books, every night I open one with my calloused, stained, nine fingered hands and read it. When I can afford new books I buy them. When I can’t there are used bookstores and the Public Library, perhaps even a friend or two who will loan me a book. Your statement that no one would notice if there were no new books would be laughable if it weren’t so bloody pathetic. I
April 4, 2011 — 6:01 PM
Brad Rowland says:
@ Chuck
Damned good stuff man
April 4, 2011 — 6:02 PM
Amber J. Gardner says:
I was just going to skim through this post. I was just going to see what it was about, then go and do something I should be doing. Like writing.
But the story about the teenagers at the fantasy aisle caught me. Then then one about the man buying the roleplaying game book.
And that was it. I went back tot he beginning of the post and read the entire thing, I couldn’t stop until I finished it.
I love your writing! I can’t get enough of it!
That’s all I wanted to say.
And though bookstores may be dying, people are still reading. As long as people read and want to read, there is hope that they’ll pay for it at a fair price when they can.
April 4, 2011 — 7:35 PM
Coyote Southbridge says:
I can certainly relate to the shell-shocked clerk. I worked at Montgomery Wards when they went belly up. The scavengers descended before we even had gotten a phone call from corporate (because they decided to release the news to the media before calling the stores). Bastards systematically destroyed everything on a daily basis so that we would have to stay til 1am trying to set everything into some semblance of order before they destroyed it the next day. I refuse to set foot within 10 feet of a place that is “going-out-of-business.”
On the ebook topic, I love my Kindle with every fiber of my arthritic hands that don’t have to hold open to a certain page or heft a 1500 page monster. Publishers and commercial bookstores aside, the ebook revolution is a godsend for anyone who loves reading but hates hand cramps.
April 4, 2011 — 9:47 PM