Borders book stores may be sold

[Lobster Martini]

(LM: Most of the small but cool bookshops nearby have closed their doors permanently, the used bookshops are gone and the two-story Barnes and Noble has closed. Please, god, don’t take away my Borders too. I need books!

‘Course I could go to the public library, but it’s so lonely in there…this is from AP.)

DETROIT - Borders, the nation's second-largest bookseller, said Thursday it may put itself up for sale and has lined up $42.5 million in financing to help the chain continue operations.

Borders has lost market share both to online companies and to Wal-Mart Stores Inc.

<snip>

Borders said it is reviewing a wide range of possibilities, including the sale of only part of the company or certain divisions.

<big snip>

"This will be a challenging year for retailers due to continued uncertainty in the economic environment," Jones said. "Looking forward to 2008 and beyond, the company determined that additional capital was required to execute our operating plan, and as a result we began to explore various financing options.

"The current credit environment has made many of these alternatives prohibitively expensive or entirely unavailable."

Borders group a year ago announced a restructuring that included a fresh face for its U.S. superstores and a jump back into online bookselling. Borders opened the first of its new concept stores last month near its headquarters, and has said its new Borders.com Web site was to make its debut shortly.

<another snip>

The company said it can give no assurances that a transaction of any kind will occur.

(Link: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080320/ap_on_bi_ge/borders_group_sale;_ylt=AnzIxVzoTErD7ZIXOOxT2NSs0NUE)

(LM: What exactly is a "concept store"? They sell books. Conceptual books? I am going to have to call Yoko Ono.)

[marmar]

1. Who buys books at Wal-Mart?

:shrug:

[Giant Robot]

2. People who missed the latest

installment in the Left Behind series.

[marmar]

4. LOL....

:P

[Giant Robot]

13. And to think my mama said I'd never be any good lol!

[Virginia Dare]

40. Or the Joel Osteen fans...n/t

[musette_sf]

53. interestingly enough

i had an email row going with Borders several months ago, over their shameless promotion of the basketball arena "church" run by the evil spawn of John "Ramrod Up @ss" Osteen. in their online promotions of Sonny Boy Osteen's latest Jesus Lite Sermonette feel-good book, they had graphic links to "watch our exclusive video interview and tour of Lakewood Church!!" and "Sunday at Lakewood!". i took great offense to this. i had no problem with their promotion of the latest idiot spew from Sonny Boy, it's a free country. but i was disgusted at their shameless promotion of religion and a specific church, when Sonny Boy clearly has enough tax-free dollars to spend on such promotion.

i got several snotty emails back from them saying "we're not promoting religion, we're just promoting the book". i sent several snotty emails back saying "oh yes you ARE promoting religion".

i'd say this ad pretty clearly promotes religion and a certain church:


one of the snotty emails from Borders contained this hypocritical blather:

"our stores and customer newsletters are highly regarded for featuring a very deep and diverse selection of titles in hundreds of subject areas--including politics--representing a wide range of thoughts and opinions as diverse as the customers we serve"

to which I responded with:

How in the world can your company say this, with a straight face, when it's obvious that the Borders way of dealing with REAL diversity is, in a word, censorship?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/news/archive/2006/03/29/national/a163611S00.DTL

So it's okay for Borders to offend free thinkers to promote a specific religion/church under the guise of some presumed "diversity" ethic, but it's NOT okay for Borders to sell material that might be offensive to some religious groups?

their response to this clear hypocricy was to put me on some super-special discount mailing list for Borders where I receive bigger and more discount offers than ever before!

my response has been to continue to refuse to shop there ever again.

[Virginia Dare]

59. You don't see the latest book by any Wiccan priestess..

get that kind of promo at Borders do you?...:evilgrin:

I don't get all the brou-ha-ha over Joel "used car salesmam" Osteen..:shrug:, but then again I'm a secular humanist, so I'm not exactly his audience.

[musette_sf]

77. yeah, i haven't seen the giant splash ad

for Z Budapest and the Susan B Anthony Coven in my Borders emails....

[susanna]

95. I switched to Barnes & Noble after the Buy Blue

campaign a few years ago. Haven't looked back. It's sad, because Borders started here in Michigan, if I'm not mistaken, and I like the whole "support local" thing. Actually, I noticed them going downhill for many years and just finally gave up.

Thanks for that info re: Osteen. He seems (at least in my limited exposure to his "sermons") like he's part of that whole Prosperity Christianity schtick, and that is just repugnant to me. The founding guy of the religion was pretty poor - on purpose - and as far as I know, never lived in a McMansion.

Actually, one great thing I have here in Detroit is a place downtown called John King books. It's a huge 4-story warehouse filled with used books of all kinds. You can spend several days there and still not see everything they have. I go there instead of the "new" book stores when I'm looking for older prints. It's a book-lover's heaven. So I still buy local in some ways I guess. :-)

on edit: supporting info

[gilpo]

3. Apparently, there are a lot of books on subjects like self-dentistry and tractor repair... n/t

[marmar]

5. Teehee....

:spank:

[Lobster Martini]

Don't expect Wal-Mart to have much by Albert Camus, but to be honest, I haven't checked...(n/t)

Cheers.

:hi:

[MaryCeleste]

26. I have done alright there now and then

Best was reprints of classics for buck kind of thing. Helped stock my daughters library in MS ahd NS

[Fire Walk With Me]

72. Let's each and every one of us go and ask.

:evilgrin:

[KamaAina]

44. This guy?

[Dulcinea]

54. My local Wal-Mart has no decent books!

Just bodice-rippers, the Left Behind series, & a biography of Dubya. I swear.

I never go to Wal-Mart if I can help it, but I ended up with one of their shopping cards once, & that's what I found when I saw the book section. True story! I ended up buying cigarettes because there was absolutely nothing there that I wanted.

[cynatnite]

88. I have...

They'll do a massive sell-off of books at a discount price and since that's one of the most affordable ways I can buy books, I take advantage. Same with other book stores.

I LOVE discount books!

[jmowreader]

97. They have a full selection of Bibles

The independent Christian bookstores are just getting run into the ground by Wal-Mart--because they're closed on Sunday, when people are most likely to buy Christian literature, and Wal-Mart runs 24/7.

[Iris]

102. People who like some higher authority to cut out "all the bad parts" n/t

[skypilot]

6. I'm so glad I don't work there anymore.

I left Borders in 2000. That job literally got worse EVERY WEEK and after I left I stayed in contact with some of my former coworkers who'd keep me informed of the latests "changes". It would just get worse and worse. People in this city still seem to think that Borders is some kind of really cool place to work because of the laid-back atmosphere that it tries to foster. It was a nightmare, a nightmare that paid a criminally small amount of money for the work they squeezed out of us. They actually CUT our pay in the restructuring they did right before I quit.

[Norrin Radd]

25. Yep. I got demoted from SPO for no good reason during the

restructuring by that scummy, anti-union company, and then later fired on a bogus customer service complaint. I also remember the yearly raises that got fewer and far between.

[OnyxCollie]

33. I'm glad I don't work there anymore, either.

I was a multimedia supervisor, and every week there was be numerous mistakes on the master pricing list. I would complain often and would be told Ann Arbor is having trouble finding people to fill the position, and just give the new person some time to get used to the job. Either they couldn't find anyone to stay in the position or that person was just a moron because it never got better.

Then we got our hours cut to 33 hours a week. It stayed that way for nearly a year. (Not that there was anything less to do, just less time to do it in.) I asked the GM why we were working reduced hours. Lil' Dicktater said he was annoyed with the part-timers making demands for hours, so he had intentionally created a deficit during the Christmas holiday, so that when they got the new plan of hours to spend on payroll (based on sales), there would be few scraps for them to take. The new plan turned out to be much lower than he anticipated and he had to cut everyone's hours. I thought this was highly unethical and reported it to the district manager. When the GM was confronted, his story changed. After that, I had a target on my back. He made my life as difficult as possible. A few days before xmas, I paged a co-worker. I was really tired from working so hard and it sounded that way. The GM immediately called me saying, "I can hear the disgust you have for ___ in your voice." I hung up on him. Later, I sent a harassment complaint to the home office. (It ended up sitting on someone's desk because the contact sheet in the break room was out-of-date.) A week later (after xmas), he calls me into his office to tell me he's decided to write me up for that page. I couldn't stand it anymore. "FUCK YOU, YOU SICK, TWISTED FUCK." I stormed out. The home office finally called me, saying I was under suspension for a week. When I came back, I was fired by the district manager. The GM had called off for two days because he thought I was gonna kill him. Fucking maggot.

[skypilot]

37. Jesus!!!

There used to be a Borders Union website. I used to check the message boards over there from time to time to see what conditions and practices the employees were complaining about. The boards were full of stories about reduced hours, increased workloads, dictatorial GMs and retaliation. Like I said in my first post on this thread, Borders was getting worse by the week when I was still there and apparently it just kept getting worse after I left. Frankly, I've always thought that some kind of cult mentality was being nurtured on the management side in that company--at least with the managers that stuck it out. We would say that they'd been BINCified. After a certain point there was simply no talking to them. My respect always shot way up for any manager who quit before the signs of BINCification manifested themselves.

[OnyxCollie]

39. BINCified. Lol!

The manager who hired me had been working for Borders for over five years. I had a lot of respect for him. He was promoted to GM to a store that was at least an hour away from his house. He worked there for about two years and was told he was being transferred. He refused, and worked as a shelver in the original store. He took a manager position in the store I ended up at, and worked there until he too was driven away by the GM.

He left Borders for a few months and then went back to the original Borders as a manager.

[riverdeep]

93. In listening to people talk about work for the last several years-

one of the commonalities I've found is that management tries to hire as few people as it can get away with and tries to squeeze as much work as they can out of them. This phenomenon stretches across many different fields and work environments. It's like they all read the same book.

[skypilot]

100. This twit I used to work with...

...put it quite succinctly. He was on the path to management and I once heard him say, quite blithely, that "as production goes up, labor cost should go down."

Yeah, whatever. Good luck with that.

[bdamomma]

7. the dumbing down of society continues.

very sad indeed.

[liberaldem4ever]

8. Hate to hear about this

Borders is where I get most of my art/craft books. There isn't another book store close to where I live and I refuse to shop at Walmart. Not that Walmart would carry what I buy anyway. I hope they work out something where they can stay open.

[liberal N proud]

9. Blaming Wal-Mart here seem a little extreme

Wal-Mart's book section is very minimal and they only sell books that will sell in mass quantities. If Wal-Mart selling a few dozen Harry Potter books at midnight it was released is killing Borders, they have bigger problems.

Wal-Mart can't be blamed for everything whereas bu$h pretty much can be blamed for all screw ups.

[DainBramaged]

21. The demise of Toys R Us was caused by the heavy discounting of toys by WalMart

Home Depot ruined so many small town hardware stores, so why shouldn't WalMart, who doesn't give a shit about what they do to the competition, target a segment that they can afford to lose money in.

[geardaddy]

64. And the demise of smaller local toystores

was caused by Toy R Us.

;)

[DainBramaged]

65. BUT, when my daughter was growing up you could get EVERYTHING

at Toys R Us, and it was fun going there once a week just to look around. Now, it just sucks. And so does WalMart. I can't believe TRU busted out the local toy stores. I couldn't FIND any in the 80's or 90's.

What I USED to find were wonderful hobby shops, which were done in by the computer and video game age. Blame Microsoft and Nintendo and Sony for that. When was the last time you heard of a kid wanting to build a model airplane or play with model trains???

[geardaddy]

70. I understand.

I just miss the smaller toy stores. They still may have been chains, but they weren't big box stores.

I TOTALLY miss hobby shops. I used to be a model fiend. It was always a great thing to buy for some kid's birthday. I think it's the glue that help bring about the end of that era for kids.

[liberal N proud]

80. Wal-Mart has a large toy department whereas the books

in 90% of the stores are one maybe two isles. Compared to the size of Borders, I don't think it compares.

The toy department in Wal-Mart is almost as large as some Toy-R-Us stores.

I am not defending Wal-Mart just the truth.

[bbgrunt]

105. not Walmart, more likely Amazon.

[SoCalDem]

10. Actually I see Borders/Waldenbooks etc as part of the problem

They drove out the small eclectic book stores when they came along, and now they are big bloated entities who are imploding under their own weight, and will "leave us"...leave us with what? closed up Mom & Pop bookstores that will NOT be re-opening...

Their prices had to be higher because of the huge rent they had to pay on all those thousands of sq. ft. of stores at malls, so of course book lovers looked for bargains online..and yes..even at wallyworld..

Each community only has so much available money to be spent on things, and when a market gets glutted by several stores selling the same thing, it will get ugly, and someone's gonna have to close

[skypilot]

12. When I worked at Borders....

...there was a Barnes and Noble a half a block away. That Borders store eventually moved about four or five blocks away but it still ended up across the street from what was then a Tower Records store (this particular Borders store also sold music). The Towers is now gone, replaced by an FYE store.

I don't know if it will happen in my lifetime (or at all) but I like to think that at some point this whole chain/superstore thing will reverse itself and we can get back to something on a more human and intimate scale.

[SoCalDem]

15. We had a very nice Home Base store here and after 6 months

they built a HUGE Home Depot about 4 blocks away..& of course all the lemmings HAD to shop at the "new...oooh..shiny".. store and now we have had an empty buildins with 104K sq ft..for rent for 5 YEARS..and the theatre in that center closed, as did all the small businesses that were there.. so we have a big ole empty shopping center..

and a year later LOWE'S came in, so what did Home Depot do? They built ANOTHER big box across town..:eyes:

and this all at a time when there are for sale signs all over the place....and those big stores are laying people off right and left...

yet the tiny Ace Hardware on the main street is always jam-packed.. It has been there for decades..

[yardwork]

16. I love Ace Hardware! I recently discovered it.

The little Ace Hardware store in my town sells everything I need. I can wander around a big box store for hours looking for what I can pick up in fifteen minutes at the Ace Hardware.

[SoCalDem]

19. and the (usually) old guys there know exactly what you need

when you tell them you need the little "rubber thingie that goes on the swirly metal thingie".:rofl:

[susanna]

96. Anything I can buy at my local hardware I do.

It may be a bit pricier on some things, but our store's been here since 1943 and I'll support it as long as I can. I only go to the big box stores when the local shop doesn't have what I need. Believe it or not, it's not that often. The local hardware is my always my first resort. :-)

on edit: I ken speel.

[eppur_se_muova]

81. Ace and Western Auto! Always look in the phone book first ...

Anytime I move into a new area (every year for the last eight years) I browse the yellow pages to see what stores are in town. If I go to the places that are obvious from the street, that's just Home Depot, Lowe's, etc. A few minutes with the yellow pages and you can find all the used bookstores, locally owned restaurants/diners, and mom and pop stores on side streets that you'd never know to look for otherwise.

Of course, it's best if someone who knows the area shows you around, but you can't always get that. And if you *ask* it's surprising that people who have lived there for years often don't know the small, local stores ... they just go to the big box stores themselves.

[marmar]

18. It just might.....

The mega chains are beginning to fall. Tower and Virgin Records (although I don't know if the Virgin in NYC is still around - the rest have disappeared). CompUSA, Circuit City's on life support from what I hear, and I suspect one of those Lowes/Home Depot chains will bite it with the housing bust.
A return to local economies is probably going to be necessary, given the economic/energy turmoil that's underway.

[skypilot]

22. A return to local economies

That's my hope anyway. When I was still at Borders they trained me to audit and reconcile the cash registers. There were six of them, including the one in the cafe. The first day I was trained for this it hit me that all this money the store was taking in was going out of the city, probably to open up other stores in other cities. I had worked at a little mom and pop-owned gourmet food market before working at Borders so it was really a shock to the system to realize this.

[gauguin57]

87. Just today in my hometown paper, a Home Depot stopped construction 3 months into project.

http://articles.lancasteronline.com/local/4/218523

Lancaster New Era

It's a sign of the times — tough times. Three months into the construction of a $12 million store at Schaum's Corner near Brownstown, Home Depot has canceled the project, sources said today.

The unusual decision comes after the Atlanta-based chain reported poor 2007 profits and expectations of another rough year in 2008.

It also comes in the wake of Home Depot saying it wants a higher financial return from its new locations.

"That store was going to be marginal anyway, so they decided to cut their losses," one source said.

[Norrin Radd]

29. Half-Price books is a non-evil chain, though. The only one that deserves to survive.

[skypilot]

32. I'd never heard of them.

I just looked them up after reading your post. They don't have any stores near me.

[geardaddy]

78. I love Half-Price books.

Also, check out this bookstore: http://magersandquinn.com/

[bushmeister0]

46. I always go the FYE on Chestnut because I hate Borders so much

I work for Borders when they were independent and then one day sat us all down on a Sunday night and made us watch a video from that scary man-woman person who told us all "we've moved the cheese."

Well, they moved the cheese a few times, merging two jobs into four with less hours and holidays/sick days and then one day, everybody who cared about the company just sort of left. Bastards, you're not getting my hard earned money.

Isn't it odd, btw, that no matter where you go, if you run into a fellow former employee they've got one horror story after another about that place.

[skypilot]

49. Who Moved My Cheese?

Either you are talking about the same restructuring period that happened in 2000 right before I left OR they reference "Who Moved My Cheese?" every time they are about to screw their employees over. During my last months at Borders I noticed that copies of that book were flying out of the store AND that lots of companies that had accounts with Borders were ordering large quantities of it. I didn't pay too much attention at the time. I figured it was just another one of those books that seems to catch fire until the next one comes along. After we all sat through THAT video (also on a Sunday night) I sort of realized what the book was all about. I started telling people that if their bosses started handing out copies of that book that they were probably about to get fucked.

[bushmeister0]

51. Yes, that's what I'm talking about.

I think they actually went public in 96? My brain isn't what it used to be after they exploited it for all those years. I was one of only three people left from our sort when I'd finally had enough. It was grafitying to know that my buddy Joe Gable thought the place had gone down the toilet as well before I left.

[skypilot]

52. I started working there in November of 1997

I didn't know it at the time but there was something of a mass exodus taking place. A lot of controversy over trying to form a union had just taken place and many employees were fed up. At first, I thought that a lot of them just weren't very friendly but I realized that many of them were on their way out so they weren't bothering to get to know the new employees like myself. The funny thing is, I was exactly the same way right before I left. It took me several months to start feeling human again after I left that place.

[bushmeister0]

55. I started in Feb of '95

Back then, after a 12 hour day at the sort, all of us would go out, managers, trainers and employees and get drunk. It was a blast. We all used to be part of the same team. Managers actually were hired for their book knowledge. Imagine. When I left they were hiring people like the guy who asked me where to find "Shakespeare by Julius Caesar." No joke.

Trainers used to be a major part of the whole thing, they ran the store basically and the managers stayed out of the day to day merchandising stuff. Then the union thing came along, shortly after going public, and then the trainers became a problem, because they were leading the unionizing thing. Then they made trainers members of management and that was the deathnell.

Book knowledge, merchandising skills all went out the window and it was all about memorizing the stupid sales pitch when anwsering the phone and pushing tie-ins at the POP. The all mighty tie-in!

[skypilot]

57. The all mighty tie-in...

...and asking every customer for their email address so that we could send them Borders' online newsletter. Ugh. Not good days. I swore that at any minute they were going to start making us wear ties and little Borders visors. They didn't, but the store had definitely taken on that feel.

[bushmeister0]

58. Thye used to encourage us to make our own namebadges.

Everyone had their own unique name tag and anything went as long as "Borders" was on there somewhere. Then came the moving of the cheese and we were all handed these tags with the neck thing and we all became faceless automotons. That made the investors more comfortable, nice and ordely.

[skypilot]

60. One of my few funny memories of Borders.

The cafe employees used to be able to make up their own little signs to put on the baked goods and other cafe items. I don't know how much you remember about the more sordid details of the Clinton/Lewinsky affair, but someone made up a little sign for the apple cake that had a picture of Bill Clinton saying simply, "It tastes good". I had to laugh even then.

[bushmeister0]

62. When that whole thing was going on

I made a display on one of my history section endcaps featuring books on the more sordid lives of the Founding Fathers, who were supossedly so much more Chrisitan than Bubbah. Ben Franklin's "Fart Proudly" got a good response, never failed.

[skypilot]

68. Good Lord!!

"Fart Proudly" by Ben Franklin? How did I ever miss that one? I just looked it up in the catalogue here in the library where I work. We don't seem to have it. It must be in a collection of his other writings. I'll have to look for that one.

[bushmeister0]

69. Here it is:

You've prbably already located one, but . . .

http://www.beheard.com/cgi-bin/beheard/13515

[skypilot]

71. Thanks.

I actually haven't been able to find it here. Funny thing is, our online catalogue is actually called the Franklin Catalogue (yes, after Ben Franklin). I guess they didn't want the word "fart" anywhere in it.

[bushmeister0]

75. Obviously, they never fart.

[riverdeep]

90. If peak oil is real, it will.

Not that the transition will be pretty. But local is all that will work.

[Liberal In Texas]

11. This isn't good. They rearranged the inside of the store I patronize

and I didn't think much of it. Not only did it make it harder to find what I was looking for, the feeling was more auto parts store than book store.

The clerk said I'd get used to it. No I won't.

[ellie]

14. This is my fault

I stopped buying books because I couldn't afford it anymore.

[SoCalDem]

20. aaw.. ellie

:hug:

[GTurck]

17. Where I live..

in a few months a Barnes & Noble will open but until then we have only a Borders Express in the mall and a Hastings further away. Borders is a joke since it sells mostly right-wing pieces. I can find the latest Ann Coulter, Bill O'Reilly, Newt Gingrich close to the entrance stacked at least 5 deep but must hunt for John Dean, Al Franken, et al in the stacks and may only see 1 copy of any of the liberal writers. Could not find anything by D.H. Lawrence either. I thought I would buy and re-read (1st in 1957) "Lady Chatterley's Lover" but it was nowhere in either their fiction or "literature" stacks. Isn't this censorship?
Why are they sinking? Could it be that even corporate owned bookstores need to carry books and magazines for all Americans in order to make money? Could it be that liberals/progressives are the readers in this land?
NAH!!!

[JitterbugPerfume]

23. by necessity

I buy most of my books online . I also buy at Goodwill and Salvation Army stores , and I find a lot of treasures there.

but--- nothing replaces the feel and smell of an old fashioned book store.

I am a relic of an age gone by.


dammit

[Proud Liberal Dem]

24. I love "window shopping" at Borders, Barnes, etc.

But when I actually want to buy a book, which is nowadays usually only on CD (audiobook), I end up buying from Amazon.com because of their vastly more reasonable prices. I sometimes also download eBooks to read on my computer. The only time that I actually buy something from Borders, Barnes, etc. is when I get a gift card for the store. I do like the laid back atmosphere of Borders, Barnes, etc. and enjoy spending a few hours every now and then just "window shopping" at Borders and sampling books I might want to read and/or buy in the future. If there are books that I may not want to purchase but do want to read in more depth, I usually just check them out of the library though. Despite the fact that I purchase very little from Borders, Barnes, etc., I would hate to see them go out of business because they're generally pleasant places to just hang around at. Also, where I live, Borders, Barnes, etc. are pretty much the only safe, comfortable places to hang out at that are open past 9 pm on the weekends. As to Wal-Mart, I've never seen any kind of sizable selection of books there so I highly doubt that they could be part of the problem. Usually, the selection of books at Wal-Mart is very sparse and I don't think that I've ever gone there actually looking for a book.

[Blue_Tires]

27. i don't get it...

every borders i've gone to the past few years has been PACKED with people...one of the reasons i hardly go anymore

[marmar]

28. I think they browse, park in the chairs, read..maybe buy a cup of that sugar coma-inducing coffee...

..... And leave without buying books or music.

[Blue_Tires]

31. lol

you forgot the part where they dogear pages, wrinkle up the magazines and crack book spines....(not to mention all the noise)

I admit I complained when borders and the other big stores transfromed themselves into a quasi-library/coffee shop/hangout joint...but the side benefit of that was all these people going to borders over the years eventually left our excellent library system relatively empty...of course, now our anchor branch has opened up its own indoor coffee shop:argh: :grr: i guess i'm too much of a purist

[tomreedtoon]

30. They deserve to be sold. Ever been IN a Borders?

It's glossy crap. Everything is atmosphere. You have to hunt forever to find something besides the big best-sellers or the foo-foo recipe books. That's assuming they have it on the shelves, which they usually don't.

I don't care for coffee drinks or poetry reading or Pokemon leagues or the other nonsense these stores have. I want books. Very specific books. Books that aren't necessarily topical but are highly recommended. And I don't want the crappy feel-good books on the Oprah Book Club list.

But I don't want to buy on-line exclusively, either. I might need a book quicker than the mail can get it, and I might want to evaluate the book before spending my food budget for the week on it, rather than get taken. So yes, I will go to book stores (and surprise, there's an institution called a LIBRARY too!). But every time I have ever entered Borders, a teetering monument to the pretentious would-be intellectual, I have always been disappointed.

[OmahaBlueDog]

35. Lighten up, Francis

[DainBramaged]

66. "Lighten up, Francis"

My ex used to say that to me, what a hoot! Where the hell does that come from????

:applause: :rofl:

[OmahaBlueDog]

74. "Stripes"

Funny Harold Ramis/Bill Murray movie. Highly worth renting or picking up for $5

[DainBramaged]

85. Ahhhhhhhhhhhhh

Thank you, I don't remember the line. And I used to run a video store in the 80's.

[OmahaBlueDog]

34. Borders missed the boat on on-line marketing

...as did Books-a-Million.

Barnes & Noble made two smart decisions. One was with their alliance with Starbucks, and the other was creation of a robust marketing website.

The logical buyer for Borders would be Amazon.

I love Borders, but before our hearts bleed for them, remember that B & N, Amazon, and Borders (collectively) put a bunch of small, mom & pop book stores out of business, and pretty much wiped out the WaldenBooks and B Daltons of the world.

[GreenPartyVoter]

36. I thought Borders and Amazon were already tied together somehow?

[OnyxCollie]

41. Amazon runs the Borders website. nt

[GreenPartyVoter]

43. Aha, so I wasn't crazy. Thanks

[gauguin57]

38. The guy at my Borders told me they were planning to EXPAND into the space next door ...

... as soon as the FYE's lease is up, Borders is (allegedly) going to move into their space to sell music (ours isn't a Books & Music yet). This, after already having expanded into the jewelry store space next to them LAST year.

The guy also told me this eventual Borders Music will open an on-site downloading station, where you'll be able to come in, pick the music you want, and they'll download it for you. Huh?

Well, I wonder whether all those plans have now gone kerflooey!

[OnyxCollie]

42. The on-site downloading station has been something they've been

working on for about four years now.

Given their past success with multimedia kiosks, they should have most of the bugs worked out by 2019.

On edit: It'll be broken in days when some kid spills his Snapple on it.

[bushmeister0]

48. Remember Billy Bass the singing fish?

I seem to recall at one point back in the day, one season, Borders buying about a million Billy Bass singing fishes and moving all the books at the front of the store further back to make room for all the stupid singing fish. He kept singing "take me down to to the river" every time you walked past him, and we were all like "what the hell is this all about? What does this have to do with selling books?"

ut, you know, we were just lowly employees, how could we be smart enough to understand the complexities of the market and moving cheese that our betters, the management, knew?

Well, Borderswound up being taken down to the bathtub and drowned on that little adventure.

[OnyxCollie]

101. Ha ha. Billy Bass the singing fish.

I remember when my coworker pulled that out of the shipment. His response was, "What the fuck? Why are we carrying this crap?" I mentioned that it was a sure sign of the coming apocalypse.

It didn't take long for those to be marked down.

[BlooInBloo]

45. (shrug) Fluff books. Who cares?

[HughBeaumont]

47. What did I say about Mal Wart a couple of years ago?

"Wait until this thing starts consuming your Best Buys, Home Depots and others."

Yeah, let's just all go to one big fucking Republican-Murkin store, kill the environment, kill small businesses, turn the landscape into a giant messy shoe store, give all of our money to four Arkansas Republicant sons and daughter of privilege and sport yer Dubya/Support Yer Troops sticker on your land yacht when you drive in, dear wage slave. That's the kinda country I want to live in!

[anitar1]

50. The Big bookstores managed to shut down most of our

excellent bookstores here in Eugene. I suppose Amazon also played a part. I stopped buying books except online from Powell's in Portland. They have everything. Also buy used books instead of new, and use the local library for the newest books. Works fine. Powell's is great.Can't afford to buy many books these days.

[eppur_se_muova]

82. I wish Powell's Web page didn't crash my browser. nt

[ellisonz]

99. Powell's rules.

I miss Portland.

[Dulcinea]

56. I buy used books for the most part.

There are still used bookstores in the Atlanta metro area--the Book Nook.

I also buy them on eBay or Amazon. New books cost too much, and I usually can't find what I'm looking for except online, esp. for my kids.

[Malikshah]

61. Ah...the days of the original Borders on State Street, Ann Arbor...

Then it moved into the Old Jacobson's place...and grew...and grew.

Sometimes I miss the early 90s in A2.. :)

[LoZoccolo]

63. I remember the move to Jacobson's!

I was going to U of M at the time. I thought it was like the biggest book store I'd ever seen.

[marmar]

67. And the funny thing about it is that despite being headquarters to Borders....

.... and home to one of its biggest stores, Ann Arbor still has lots of independent bookstores, even as they've died in many places.

[Malikshah]

84. So true-- Dawn Treader, Shaman Drum... and SKR Classical across the street

A2 got a bit much after eight years, but I do miss it.

[Dukkha]

73. I usually only go to Half Price Books myself

I highly doubt Wal Mart had much of an impact of Borders sales since most of their customers prefer shit like Maxim, Stuff, or NASCAR mags because books are "too wordy"

[bushmeister0]

76. The problem with Borders is they're always trying to become more like

their competition. They thought the way to beat B&N was to become more like B&N. I guess Billy Bass was an attempt to be more like Wal-Mart. Everything that used to be so appealing about Borders is long gone, just another souless bigbox.

[MasonJar]

79. Why would anyone go to Walmart for anything? I boycott them as

enthusiastically as Exxon Mobile (well almost as enthusiastically.) I shop for my books at a delightful local bookseller, who unabashedly sells anti-Bush items. They have two stores and are apparently quite successful and happy. My policy is to help the little guy by shopping at his store, even if I pay a little more.

[DainBramaged]

86. I buy my gas at Citgo

Fuck Exxon-Mobil and Shell. And FUCK WalMart.

[riverdeep]

91. A lot of places don't have local bookstores anymore..

That's like asking for a full-service gas station-there aren't any. Around me, the only independent bookstores are psychotic Christian bookstores- no thanks. I don't go Wal-Mart, not in a million years. I buy online, or when I travel, I'll check out a real bookstore and buy from there.

[PVnRT]

83. Fucking Wal-Mart? For BOOKS???

Wahfuck?

Great. We have two main bookstores in town, WaldenBooks (owned by Borders) and Books-A-Million. There's a used bookstore, but they sell primarily romance and sci-fi, and isn't really good.

And with Indiana's property tax "reform" passed, the libraries start losing money. Lovely.

[cynatnite]

89. I don't care for Books-A-Million....

I don't think it's a very good store. The selection isn't that impressive to me. I prefer Barnes and Noble. We've got a decent used bookstore similar to what you have, but I love it because the scifi selection can't be beat. They've also improved their fiction genres to more than just romance.

It's sad to say, though, our libraries are just plain bad. Very little selection and they are very rigid in their policies as to who gets and doesn't get a library card.

[riverdeep]

92. I'm not really that surprised by this.

I looked at their CD section-they usually go for sixteen to eighteen bucks! That's nuts.

They do have a really good magazine section, though.

[fujiyama]

94. If Borders goes the way of Wal Mart then the stores will really suck

Wal Mart is notorious for not stocking books that don't conform to their RW ideology. They also don't carry any titles they find "obscene", including various magazines.

[bedazzled]

98. book lovers can check out the hamilton bargain books paper catalogue

i think they have a website, too. i can't afford new books. buy most of them at goodwill stores, but i love to browse the hamilton catalogue and highlight books that might interest me. then i check the local library for their availability. if they don't have them, hamilton has a great shipping policy - i think it's about $4.00 to ship as many books as you buy in one order.

it's also fun to see how many political books are remaindered. they'll charge $16.00 for al franken's latest book, and $7.00 for ann coulter's! it's a riot.

overstock is good, too. i've bought a lot of helpful books on autism there, and some books on cd.

[hyphenate]

103. I love my bookstores, too

because I can find new writers there, and start reading their work. I like to be able to sit down, have a drink, and begin to read a magazine or book that I enjoy.

There are, however, some reservations I have about them.

One) They shouldn't be selling DVDs. They charge full price for them, and unless it's some sort of collector's item, it can easily be found online and usually at a discounted price that makes it worthwhile to order from the 'net.

Two) They don't have discounts on books. I know it's not completely "right" but I often will check out books at the bookstore, and then check them against the online prices. In actuality, this sometimes works in the favor of the brick and mortar store, because shipping prices online often kill a multi-item transaction.

For those of us old enough to have decent memories of before the PC generation, bookstores are a sanctuary, not an obligation. In the old days, the bookstore was the first place in the mall I would hit, and everyone knew where to find me if I didn't show up where I was supposed to be.

I just wish brick and mortar stores could emulate their online competitors more and find new ways to entice us into the stores. DVDs and books, without a discount, aren't exactly the best way to do it.

[knitter4democracy]

104. They used to be good.

I remember the original one in A-Squared (went there once in high school after a Forensics meet at UofM). Great store. Then they opened up a huge one in Novi, and we'd actually drive over there from Mason (south of Lansing). Then they opened up a Schuler's by our mall in Okemos, and that was my main bookstore until college.

Whenever I go into Borders now, I miss a good Schulers or my (now closed) indie store in K'Zoo. At least our BN is a good one in Battle Creek.