The Economist's take on Borders bankruptcy: So cold

What does the bankruptcy protection filing by the Borders bookstore chain look like to our friends across the pond? Kind of sad, according to a post at the Economist this week.

The magazine's blog Prospero attributes Borders' slide to e-commerce, e-books and pressure to lower prices. But, contrary to common perception that big-box booksellers were bad for book lovers, it maintains that Borders' bankruptcy is bad news for book culture. First, the blog quotes Shira Ovide, who wrote in the Wall Street Journal: "It's hard to imagine we'd be feeling nostalgic for Borders, which many small town booksellers believe was a killer for their businesses." The Economist responds:

So cold. We can spare a little thought for Borders. It has a particular relevance for American small towns and suburbs that isn't apparent in urban centres. In the latter, the chain bookstores are the impersonal monoliths that destroyed small independents by undercutting them on prices. But elsewhere, the arrival of a Borders would mean that a town was finally getting a bookstore, rather than a rack of paperbacks and Sudoku books at the supermarket. (Similarly, while Starbucks might have hurt local coffeeshops in, for example, New York, in rural America it has achieved its stated goal of creating a "third space".)

It's an interesting argument, but the only example the Economist provides is a counter: In Austin, Texas, longstanding indie BookPeople successfully prevented a Borders from moving in nearby. It's nice to think that Borders provided bookstoreless towns with their first bookstores, creating new community space around books -- but I'm not entirely sure that it's true.

-- Carolyn Kellogg 

Photo: A closed Borders in Farmington Hills, Mich. Credit: Jeff Kowalsky / Bloomberg News

Comments

[Lee]

My hometown of Columbia, Maryland, (about 30 minutes from Baltimore or D.C.) had a few very small, local bookstore chains which opened in the '80s and closed in the early '90s. But it wasn't until Borders moved in that we really got the expansive back-catalog of literature I'd always wanted access to: Murakami, Pynchon, Gaddis, Melville, Faulkner, Wharton, James, etc.

For years, my parents and I went to Borders every Friday night. I was often there every night after work, as well. The store was almost always packed. That's not to say I'll miss Borders (my current hometown has a vibrant, brilliant indie store), but for this burgeoning reading it was the kind of refuge the Economist describes.

[mac]

Whatever happened to libraries?

[pantherhare]

Libraries are also getting shut down and their hours slashed. But even before then, they weren't usually open past 8 pm, when it's those hours after 8 pm when a nice place where you could get a cup of coffee and chat with friends while browsing books was really nice to have.

[Tiffany Hawk]

I grew up in North San Diego County, and before Borders and Barnes and Noble came in the late 90s, we had to rely on tiny B. Daltons and Waldenbooks in the mall. When those big box sellers came, we book lovers were in heaven.