WSJ -
Borders is preparing for a costly and time-consuming trip through bankruptcy court, where it will seek to close about a third of its 674 Borders and Waldenbooks stores, the people familiar with the matter said. Borders also would cut swathes of its 19,500 staff as it attempts to reinvent itself to compete with Amazon and its hot-selling Kindle reader, and Barnes & Noble Inc., the nation's largest bookstore chain and maker of the Nook e-reader..
Whether it can restructure and emerge as a stand-alone company is unclear. Many Wall Street bankers and lawyers who have studied the chain believe it may not be able to avoid liquidation
5 comments:
I think it's inevitable. Book stores will go the way of record stores. There will still be a few and hardcopy stores and books will still be available online, but the physical distribution network will be seriously curtailed a la Tower Records.
I, for one, will never buy a Kindle! Nothing can compete with the good old-fashioned book. Long live el libro!
The Lihue store (#95) is on their list of closures:
http://blogs.wsj.com/deals/2011/02/16/is-borders-closing-a-store-near-you-heres-the-full-list/
Books will continue to exist for a long time, but it will be more and more of a niche or specialty market. Of course, this closure will hurt Kaua'i, as the biggest place devoted to books. But in general, I will not miss the Borders practice of selling plastic toys as books and tempting you with chocolate at the checkout.
I enjoy standing around the stacks and the magazine racks sometimes, so I'll miss the Borders, but any more almost all my book purchases are electronic (I love my Kindle).
Kindle rocks.
Who needs $25 hardbacks? Especially when you can wait a few weeks and get used copies off of Amazon for cheap.
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