May 19 2008

Borders Books Problems Become Our Problems

Published by auria cortes at 4:50 pm under industry interviews

Borders Books is having financial difficulty. This is not good news for writers and readers. Borders Books is known to purchase more Sci-Fi, Fantasy, and quirky books than Barnes and Noble. With Borders in danger, this can negatively impact many writers.

In addition, Barnes and Noble has only one nonfiction book buyer. Meaning they employ one person who purchases nonfiction books for all its stores. If Borders collapses, this means that nonfiction writers and publishers will depend on ONE. Yes, ONE person to say yeah or nay to their books being placed in a major bookstore.

Needless to say, Linda isn’t very happy about this development.

For now, Borders is up for sale. The company is rocky - recently high level executives were laid off.

As a reader, I’m concerned because I spend many days at Borders. Where would I go to people watch and read books for free? Oh, yeah…the library.

5 Responses to “Borders Books Problems Become Our Problems”

  1. # Steve Davison 19 May 2008 at 7:19 pm

    Wow that is really bad news. Whenever I visit the States I always visit Borders, I hate B&N.

    Keep us posted.
    Steve

  2. # Doug Robertsonon 20 May 2008 at 1:36 am

    I prefer Borders to B&N without question, but truth be told I rather resent them both for bowling over and running out of business all of the independent and much cooler booksellers that we used to have running shop around here. Nothing like a good old-fashioned hole-in-the-wall bookstore.

  3. # Jordanon 21 May 2008 at 9:37 am

    Or maybe the collapse of Borders would lead to a second resurgence of the cool, community-friendly independent bookstores that got driven out of business when Borders/B&N began proliferating.

  4. # Joeon 27 May 2008 at 3:58 pm

    The latest post on this blog has some thoughts on how Borders could innovate in the marketplace if they chose to do so:
    http://howtowritebusinessplan.blogspot.com/

    It looks like Borders plans on just rolling over and dying.

  5. # auria corteson 27 May 2008 at 7:37 pm

    Joe,

    I’m unable to post on your blog because I don’t have a blogger account. Please consider opening your blog to all users.

    The following is what I tried to post on your blog.

    Thank you for commenting on my blog. For some reason your post was marked as inappropriate, but now it’s fixed. Sorry about that.

    Thanks for commenting and please come back again.

    Aaron,

    “The idea of them becoming independent publishers”

    Borders has formed a relationship with LuLu. Though LuLu is a POD, I can see Borders making the transition to independent publishing.

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