Borders bookseller faces bankruptcy

http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/2011/0213/Borders-bookseller-faces-bankruptcy

http://money.cnn.com/2011/02/17/news/companies/borders_store_closing_sale/

http://www.freep.com/article/20110216/COL06/110216052

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110217/BUSINESS06/110216064&template=artinteractive

I almost never buy books. I feel I already pay enough for my internet connection. People in Europe pay a third what we pay for internet and their speeds are a lot faster. If I want to read about something or lookup something, I usually turn to the internet and that usually more than satisfies what I wanted to read. In the last 5 years the internet has really gotten diverse enough to feed most people's reading needs. It still is nice to have a book to read in bed though.

When I go into bookstores I always just take the books/magazines/newspapers I am interested in and read them there and then put them back when I'm done. That's usually the only time I have to read them anyways. When I get home I usually forget about them so it really doesn't pay for me to buy them. I like my local Barns & Noble a little bit better than my local Borders. I haven't gone to either of them very much in the past few years, but I used to go to a Barns & Noble after school almost every day. I had a hard time finding particular titles at both Borders and Barns & Noble. Even if I did find something I liked, I would rarely buy it there because bookstores sell at premium retail prices and even with discounts are still cheaper online. But sometimes I did buy things here just to feel like I was supporting them for all the times I went in to sit and enjoy their environment and not buy something.

I don't know if my local Borders is closing, but I think I will go to there tomorrow and see if it is closing and see if there are good closeout buys and then try to flip them on ebay for a higher price.

It's a good thing you left.  It kept you from wasting time making new thre--

Wait, what?

Zigfried Sucks Ghostbusters Is As Fun As Janskeet.

With wild green hairy lipped squid.

On the positive side, Sarah Palin is thrilled they have closed the borders.*

*Joke stolen from Jimmy Fallon

*Give it back.

this is not a good sign that a major book seller could be bankrupt.     These damn ereaders are going to cause the death of books.     An electronic book and real book are not the same thing. 

I don't know.

The big bookshops like Borders initially made it impossible for many of the small bookshops to stay open, supermarkets selling best sellers cut price cut into the big shops market, sites like Amazon etc cut into the markets of both large and small shops.

E-Readers aren't really an issue, the economic downturn the increased costs in keeping large buildings open, maintaining and transporting stock and staffing them coupled with the uptake in internet sales are more key (it has the same effect on DVDs, music and games).

With the large bookshops out of the way maybe the smaller shops will have a better chance to provide something different than just best sellers.

People still like the physical shopping experience and still like physical books and small shops are cheaper to run especially on the now largely abandoned high streets of where I'm living.

Don't encourage Ghostskeet by discussing his topic!  Remember?  He wants our help in helping him leave the forum....hmmm, maybe I should PM Moth3r after all.

Although I have to assume he's read one of Ghostskeet's threads at this point and is just letting the show go on for a while...

I was responding to Warb's post and Warb certainly isn't Ghostfaced.

If he get's banned he get's banned so long as the thread isn't in of itself offensive I can't see why it would be locked and it is a subject of possible interest.

I was just making light of GS's supposed attempts to leave the forum, Bingo.  Figured I didn't need a winky...*

People in Europe pay a third what we pay for internet and their speeds are a lot faster.

Really? When I lived in Europe I paid a little more for it than I do now (a lot more if you divide up the $160 installation cost I had to pay over the time period I had it), and the speed was painful. I know not every European country will be the same, but in general, is it really cheaper and faster? Bingo? YIYF? Leonardo? Adywan? Anyone else from Europe that I left out, you guys care to confirm this?

I pay $35 a month for a supposedly "up to 10mbps" connection (usually clocks at about 3 -7mbps when I test it). If what Janskeet is saying is true, then that means you guys pay little more than $10 a month for a faster than 10mbps connection. I find that hard to swallow.

If I want to read about something or lookup something, I usually turn to the internet and that usually more than satisfies what I wanted to read. In the last 5 years the internet has really gotten diverse enough to feed most people's reading needs. It still is nice to have a book to read in bed though.

For information maybe, but you will still find more solid sources in real books, and literature is an entirely different matter. Unless you are stealing them, you still have to pay to read John Grisham's latest masterpiece in repetitive, meaningless story telling, or J. K. Rowling's latest hacked together piece of tripe. Sure, I can wiki "Christopher Hitchens" and read all about his life for free, but if I really want that deep insight into his life and mind that I could get from reading his autobiography, then I'd need to pay for an ebook copy of Hitch-22 or purchase a hard copy or check one out from the local library. Not sure if that really qualifies as serving "most people's reading needs"... unless of course you are talking about people buying books from amazon, then I'd probably have to concur.

Even if I did find something I liked, I would rarely buy it there because bookstores sell at premium retail prices and even with discounts are still cheaper online.

And that is exactly why Border's is going under. I do the same. I love spending time in B&N, Borders, Books-A-Million, and just about any other brick and mortar bookseller. I love books, and I love being able to pick them up and thumb through them, read a few pages, and decide whether it is worth my time and effort to purchase and read. Sadly for those bookstores, everybody loves a bargain... which to me personally usually equates to the brick and mortar store helping me make my decision by presenting the books to me tangibly and allowing me to spend some time reading it in a comfortable chair, just so I can return it to a shelf, go home, and log onto an online retailer and buy it for usually no more than 20-40% off the cover price.

Times they are A-changing, and sadly bookstores look as if they will be a casualty of this. Overhead costs are just too high to have a massive store filled with enough books to cover a broad range of interests and still be able to compete with something like amazon, which allows users to buy new, used, just released to out of print and anything that falls in between, and just about any book they could possible want in just about any language it has ever been published in.

Still sad to see them having trouble.

ricardo said:

While we are at it, lets close down Walmart, too.

Hells yeah! Free markets be DAMNED!!! WOoOOOOOOoOOOO!!!

Wal-Mart sucks ass! I absolutely HATE getting things cheaper and being able to have my oil changed while I wait for a prescription while I shop for groceries, a new pair of work boots, shampoo, tools, light bulbs, the latest DVD I wanted to buy, and anything else I might need all in one stop. Saves way too much time! Who the hell wants to get an entire days worth of errands done in the course of an hour giving them more time to spend doing what they want with their extra free time while wasting less increasingly expensive gas driving all over town in the process? Ridiculous! Lets close that bitch DOWN! YEAH!

I think my sarcasm detector just exploded.

adywan said:

I was paying £25 per month for an up to 8mb connection when it was supposed to be an unlimited usage connection until they changed it. You can get up to 24mb broadband now for around £6.99 per month if you take the providers phone package too, but you only get the cheaper faster service if you phone exchange has been enabled. If it hasn't then you are stuck with the slower more expensive providors

Thanks, Adywan.

Okay, so with the current exchange rate, 25 quid is $40.61 in US dollars. Six pounds ninety-nine would actually be just about exactly one third of what I pay, and 24mb is definitely faster. So looks like Ghostbuster is not only right, but spot on with the one third thing, at least for some parts of the UK.

On a radio show I was listening to (The Tom Hartmann Show) they were talking about the differences between France and other European countries internet compared to Americas. They said what we pay $100 for in America they are paying $30 for in Europe. I think they excluded the UK from this. But it looks like Adywan is paying a little less than what the states pay. Is this cable, DSL, or wifi Adywan? I also heard their cell phone providers don't have 2 year contracts and if you are not happy with your provider you can just swap the SIM card for a different provider and their cell phone plans are better too.  

How do you guys reply to multiple quotes at once? I'm only familiar with replying to one quote at a time and I delete text from the quote if I want to focus in on a particular thing they said. Is there a better way to do this?