Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Borders now closing 275 Bookstores

Borders will close further bookstores.

"It said its recent job cuts and debt restructuring couldn’t make up for lost market share against online competitors.

Read more: Report: Borders will close 75 more stores | Charlotte Business Journal "


Maybe the NYTimes should wake up and realize how fast the change is coming down the pipeline and rank Indie authors? Naaa... They'll wait until buyers only look at the ebook sellers lists...

BTW, I'm very sad to see bookstores closing. I wonder if one of these additional 75 will be the other local Borders. At some point their distribution becomes un-economical and they lose a huge part of the advantage that allowed Borders to keep open bookstores far larger than the competition.

Intense readers, those that buy 70% of the books tend to like variety. Without Borders, the B&N business case becomes far weaker. I think bookstores will survive... but then again, I thought that POD machines would be far more common by now...

Got Popcorn?
Neil

Late edit: There are only 686 Borders stores! Or more precisely 511 'superstores' and 175 Waldenbooks. This means that Borders is closing 40% of their stores. Note: It will be far less than a 40% reduction in sales as they are obviously closing poor performing stores as well as preferentially closing the small Waldenbooks stores.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Borders_Books

B&N has 1637 stores (711+637 college)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barnes_and_noble


The Borders closing represent ~3% of US book sales. With ebooks at 10% of the book market, I suspect another 400 bookstores nees to close for economic reasons in 2011. :(

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