I still occasionally buy things from bookstores, though not as much as in the past.

Borders refuses to pay publishers on time

When was the last time you were in a bookstore? Exactly. On-line books sales and electronic readers have replaced our primary need for going there. There are other reasons to go to a book store, to socialize, or see what new books are out, but they have little to do with actually buying a book.

And that's the conundrum facing the nation's second largest bookstore chain, Borders. Shares of Borders fell to below $1 after it announced that it couldn't afford to pay publishers for their books at this time and would have to delay payment.

That news followed an earlier report in which Borders said a third party had lowered the value of its inventory in the event it had to sell the company or go out of business. That hurt Borders' ability to borrow and forced it into talks with senior credit facilities to refinance its debt....

Actually, I buy a lot of books from Costco because their prices are so good.

I tend to buy most of my books from Amazon cos it is much cheaper than an actual book store but i still love to browse in book stores and do still buy a book when i am in there.

Funnily enough Borders UK went bust last year which was a shame cos the local borders to us was the best book shop i have ever been in

I guess I better use my Borders Gift Card soon.

Buying books online is cheaper, to be sure, but nothing beats walking into a Borders or Barnes & Noble, and being completely surrounded by thousands of books. It is nearly impossible for me to walk in to either one of those stores and not walk out with something.

The Barnes & Noble near me as an excellent bargain section. I just recently purchased the hardcover editions of THE GIVEN DAY by Dennis Lehane and CHILD 44 by Tom Rob Smith for $4.99 and $5.98, respectively.

I used to go to Borders just about every weekend but the combination of price and inventory makes me check for stuff on the internet more and more.

I do like the bargain section and have purchased a number of historical books or coffee table books for pretty low prices.

I had a chance to join this company about two years back. Now I'm glad I didn't.

Border's Layoffs

Borders Group Inc. laid off 45 employees today, including 40 at its Ann Arbor headquarters, as the nation's second largest traditional bookseller continues to deal with a cash crunch.

The other five jobs were cut from Borders' distribution centers. Last week, 310 employees were told they would be laid off with the closure of a distribution center near Nashville, Tenn. Borders will consolidate the processing and delivery of books, movies, music and other products at two distribution centers in Carlisle, Pa., and Mira Loma, Calif.

The laid-off workers in Ann Arbor and elsewhere will receive severance pay.

"This decision is a result of Borders' focus on reducing costs and re-adjusting its business model to improve profitability and cash flow," spokeswoman Mary Davis wrote in a statement.

"The realignment at (headquarters) encompasses nearly all business areas, including IT (information technology), human resources, finance and merchandising," the statement said....

Borders Group Inc. filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection this morning after five years of turnaround efforts failed to return the Ann Arbor-based bookseller to health.

The nation’s second-largest bookseller said it would close 30% of its stores, or about 194 in the coming weeks. There are 32 stores in Michigan.

It received $505 million in debtor in possession financing lead by GE Capital, Borders said in the filing in the U.S. Bankruptcy Court, Southern District of New York. That was the same court that handled the fast-track bankruptcies for General Motors and Chrysler.

Borders listed $1.27 billion in assets and $1.29 billion in liabilities in its Chapter 11 filing. It has fewer than 50 creditors, mostly publishers. The top creditor is Penguin Putnam, which is owed $41.1 million.

It's too bad for them but I hope to pick up a bunch of coffee table books at good prices tomorrow.

Liquidation sales start

Store closing sales at 200 Borders stores will begin Saturday at stores across 35 states as part of the bookseller’s bankruptcy process.

The liquidation of books, merchandise and even store fixtures is valued at $350 million, Hilco Merchant Resources said in a statement today.

Borders won approval from a U.S. bankruptcy judge on Thursday to begin the liquidation sales. The bookseller previously said the process would begin this weekend, but did not say what day.

Hilco is part of a group of companies appointed by the court to conduct store closing sales....

i like barns n noble better when it comes to a book store, and if i pass it by.

otherwise i order from amazon either in physical form or digital form.

I went by there this morning but most things were just 20% off. That's not a real store closing sale in my opinion. I can still get most things cheaper online. I picked up a few books that were already marked down.

Now we know the real reason why the girl from FAME's PRETTY FACE topic didn't want to bother promoting the bookstore's buyers club! She probably knew what was coming!


Seriously though, I think that one of the major problems with Borders is that they did not keep up with the electronic age and the changing times in order to stay competitive!

Amazon came out with the Kindle and Barnes and Noble came out with the Nook. I feel that Borders also needed to come up with a version of their own type of e-book in order to compete and survive. Unfortunately they did not and in my opinion it is now hurting them. And to make matters worse for companies like Borders you have places like Costco who immediately offer brand new debut books at such low discounted prices!

I never tried any of those e-readers but evidently they are quite the rage these days. Business needs to adapt or die.

I think I mentioned I had a chance to join Borders IT department a few years back and declined.
Maybe next weekend they will have what I consider a real store closing sale and have things 70% off.

I will be sorry to see them go as I spent many pleasant Sunday mornings there browsing and making lists of things worth having-which I would then price compare online.

if anything borders needs to follow what blockbuster did, and offer e-books at even lower costs.

I have an e0book - a Kindle. It is nice - so small but easy to read. I have mostly free books, things that are out of copyright like Dracula and many others. I also have games like chess, crossword puzzles and card games. I generally read books out from the library on my commute but I carry the Kindle to fill in when I dpn't have a book.

The Borders that is downtown in NYC has liquidation signs in the window this morning. I don't think there are any bookstores left in the downtown area after that one is gone.

You still have three Barnes and Nobles downtown, DM. Union Square, Tribeca and Greenwich Village.

On a similar theme, our largest music stores, HMV, are now apparently facing difficulties and they are everywhere in the UK......

It sucks for publishing. Not that it was great before, with essentially two people--the buyer at Borders and the buyer at Barnes & Noble--controlling the entire industry, but now it's even worse.

Garrison Keillor wrote an essay where he said the future of publishing is millions of professional authors with an average readership of 5 making a $1.75 a year.

Hard not to see it that way, at least in the short term.

And that's a wrap..

Borders Group Inc. plans to liquidate, marking the culmination of a years-long decline for the nation’s second largest bookstore chain, which had fallen into disrepair four decades after it opened its first store in downtown Ann Arbor.

The liquidation, which Borders announced shortly after 4:10 p.m., means that the 10,700 people who still work for Borders — including about 400 at its Ann Arbor headquarters — will lose their jobs.

The Ann Arbor-based chain’s 399 remaining stores will be closed quickly, with liquidation sales starting as soon as Friday — although the company said in a court filing late today that 30 leases could still be sold off.

"It’s not news to me," said Jim McTevia, a turnaround consultant with Bingham Farms-based McTevia & Associates. "The handwriting was on the wall for this company two years ago."

Although Borders is a shadow of its former self — it once employed some 1,800 workers at its corporate headquarters — it’s still a profoundly disheartening development for the local workforce. And it’s the biggest gut punch for the local economy since Pfizer announced its departure from Ann Arbor four years ago...

Liquidation

Sadly, or not, it's a sign of the times. MP3's helped wipe out record stores and record companies, and now eBooks are wiping out bookstores. Bands and authors can release their materials electronically on their own now, and cheaply. Print and other physical media will one day come to an end, and so will all those related jobs.

Yup. I'll be down there this weekend with the rest of the vultures picking up stuff from the going out of business sale.

You can't place a monetary value on it but the downtown store really was a nice place to hang out. I don't know who will be the new tenant.

I've not gotten into the e-reader thing. Luddite, yes I know.

Then we wonder why so many people are out of work.

A real double edge sword. So many new things and ways to do them, but at what cost.

People still can't afford to use or buy them without working. And each card that falls seems to put more pressure on the next one. Till the house of cards colapses.

Most who lose their jobs in these business find it hard to shift into new areas.

That's the thing: These jobs are NEVER coming back.

The technology (as wonderful as it is) has made these jobs expendable. That's one of the main things slowing down the economic recovery. These poor folks certainly aren't going to find new jobs in other bookstores. Same goes for the people who worked in record stores. These retail stores have gone the way of the dodo bird.

And Lilo, you're not the only Luddite on the boards. I'm worse .

Gentlemen, I think I've got you both beat. I don't even own a cell phone, or a palm-whateveritis. Don't have a microwave, still have my semi-obsolete 1999 vintage ComputerSaurus and like nothing better than curling up with a real book or watching one of my hundreds of VHS tapes.

I could go on and on but I won't - except to say that talking pictures are just a novelty and will probably never catch on.

Signor V.

Sr. Vitelli just got indoor plumbing last year.

I love books and I love to read. However, my husband got me a Kindle for my birthday and I am a convert. It's wonderful, especially when I'm traveling. I can download tons of books, but it doesn't take up any more room in my carry-on. And I like the idea that you can sample books, too. They will send you the first chapter of any book you want free of charge.

As for retail, that's the way it goes. And the jobs are truly not a huge economic loss. They are mostly minimum wage and part-time, with a few exceptions. The retail industry normally sees vast employee turnover, so it's unusual that these would be loyal employees that have a lot of time and/or seniority with the company.

I'm sure if it was MY part-time job, I'd be more upset, though.

Hey, why not? I hear it's where a lot of people do their best reading!

Signor V.

Some could very well be the normal turnover, but I think you will find that those types of jobs may have been filled by many people who couldn't find any other jobs so had to work at that level or have no other skills so that had to take the work.

Many older workers have not found much luck finding jobs do to their age. Then lets think about all those single people who have no other income coming into their homes and will miss what income a job like that provided, almost 11,000 jobs out there gone and that is just one more company to add to the long list of companys that are now gone or have cut back.

Look around or talk to other workers and you will find that where there were 10 worker who have worked at a place have been taken down to five or six people. If there were 5 workers in a department you will see that there are only two or three doing the job.

Things take longer to get, or have things done and everyone seems to just take it with a grain of salt because they think that can not do anything about it and in most cases they don't, but just be happy that they still have their jobs.

Factor in the people who have taken a lower paying job just to keep working or who have stop looking for work and that 9% out of work number makes things a lot worst out there, but hind out there.

I don't know about the other stores outside of Michigan but per article about 400 people will be laid off at Ann Arbor HQ. Those were corporate jobs that mostly paid well over $45-55K. That doesn't count the two Washtenaw County stores that have maybe about 30-40 employees who earn less than the corporate folks.

I had a chance to work at Borders about 4 years prior and am obviously glad I didn't. Unemployment is lower than average in Washtenaw County b/c of U-M and EMU but even so this is gonna hurt.

The store in lower Manhattan on Broadway closed recently, leaving no bookstores in the downtown area. I was sorry to see it go, but I can see why it happened. I am an avid reader and most of the time I don't buy books, I take them out of the library. I bought gifts there from time to time, but have a hard time paying $20+ for a book that I will only read once. I joined the ebook craze with a Kindle, but still don't spend a lot on new books for it.