OT - End of an era Borders Closes

[kaleun]

They already have a system for renting textbooks in amazon.

[Bullwinkle58]

ORIGINAL: Nikademus

There will always be a niche market for classic publications, even if they get a parraell eFormat. A friend of mine just recently bought an entire 14 book original land of Oz collection printed in the early 1900's from a local used book store here in Seattle. She was so exstatic it was infectious. While i'm not a fan of the works, i appreciated the antiquity of said books.....they were in remarkably good condition for being so old. No highlighters for these! [:D]

The e-book my wife d/led at the McDs in Bismark was "The Wizard of Oz." Not a classic hold-in-your-hand volume with the smell of a century, but OTOH it was free, and took less than a minute to acquire from the booth while eating fries.

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Mynok


I love the ebooks for reference materials and the cheap, read-once-and-pitch kind of stuff that's great for airplane trips. But I also have a nice leatherbound collection of the classics that they will pry from my cold dead hands.

Like at the the beginning of Young Frankenstein? [:D]

[Mynok]

I wouldn't know. [:'(]

[warspite1]

ORIGINAL: crsutton

But I still want to get up in the morning and read the paper at the table while ignoring my wife's conversation.

Warspite1
[:D]

[witpqs]

ORIGINAL: Mynok


I wouldn't know. [:'(]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sPTqn66I0M

About 4mins 15sec in. [:D]

[ilovestrategy]

ORIGINAL: crsutton

But I still want to get up in the morning and read the paper at the table while ignoring my wife's conversation.

This is me while reading PC Gamer. [&o]

[zuluhour]

Every book will be a collectors item. It took all night to burn a couple a thousand editions in Germany one night, wait till someone can do it with a keystroke.

[usersatch]

Gonna check them out tomorrow. Hopefully, I can help them clean out their WW2 section at a discount [:)]

[BrucePowers]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

I'd be surprised if there isn't always a place for "real" books.  A certain percentage of the population puts a premium on honest-to-goodness print publications, so you'll always find them - newspapers, magazines and books.

It might be the same thing with games.  They've gone predominantly electronic, but companies still sell alot of the old-fashioned kind - from Monopoly to Trivail Pursuit to Scruples.

The "old-fashioned" might become a niche market, but I think it will be a sizeable niche.  I'll be one of the people populating the niche.  I still read all three the old-fashioned way and will do so as long as they are available.

I was in a game shop last week. I remember back in the 90's hearing that the computer would be the death of the board game. WEll I saw more titles than I can mention. The Settler's of Catalan, a dozen Axis and Allied variants, railroad empire building games, a high quality WWI air combat game, airline building games, and some very complex wargames from all eras.[:)]

[Ketza]

I will miss my days at the Borders in Columbia, Maryland. I would play hookey from work, grab a bunch of military history magazines from the rack, get a piece of carrot cake and an orange soda and settle in one of those big cumfy leather chairs and read without a care in the world for hours. I did this once a month or so for over 5 years.

When I heard they were closing I went down there on Thursday and as fate would have it, I BOUGHT THE VERY LAST PIECE OF CARROT CAKE TO EVER BE SOLD AT THAT BORDERS.

My girl behind the counter who had so ably served me for years was just about in tears. They were running out of stuff in the coffee bar and there was never going to be a resupply. The little case that had always held so many delicious baked goods was almost empty.

I suppose I will get over it and head to the Barnes and Noble which is a few miles further away.

[Chijohnaok2]

ORIGINAL: CV 2

Actually, the beginning of the end of Boarders began when they were bought out by K Mart back in the early 90s.

I know Im in the minority on this, but I would rarely if ever buy a book on line. If I want a book, I want it now. I also want to be able to leaf through it to make sure it is really what I want.

I have a Barnes & Noble Nook (the older, 3G version). You can walk into any B&N bookstore and spend up to an hour per visit reading any book (even ones you have not purchased). This should allow you enough time to determine if you wish to purchase or not.

[Nikademus]

Amazon also lets you download "samples" of it's books online before you purchase. One thing i'm liking about the e-versions, they tend to be far cheaper.

[Mynok]

Yes. Except when there's no ebook version. [:'(]

[Canoerebel]

Edited as a quality-control measure.

[tblersch]

Little known fact: Borders was the first into the e-reader market, partnering with Sony and selling Sony's e-readers.

Why is this a little-known fact? Because, aside from Sony's early e-readers being crap, Borders had positively no clue how to market them (they were usually placed in a revolving wire rack in some corner near the registers - as though a $300 device is an impulse buy for most people), and even if they did they had no internet presence to leverage them, seeing how they handed over their entire internet presence to Amazon very early on.

That, in a nutshell, demonstrates just how poorly managed Borders was at the strategic level. I'm going to miss the stores (every one around me had a very good military history section with excellent variety - also not a good business model in a mass-sales, thin-margin business), but the company was so badly managed it deserves to be liquidated.

[Nikademus]

ORIGINAL: Mynok


Yes. Except when there's no ebook version. [:'(]

point.....you can imagine how much of late i've been bugging Amazon's servers by continually pressing the button for "LET THE PUBLISHER KNOW YOU WANT THIS BOOK IN KINDLE VESION!!"

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[ilovestrategy]

ORIGINAL: Mynok


Yes. Except when there's no ebook version. [:'(]

Amen! I haven't bought an E book yet because I can't find anyone that has an E book version of my favorite series, David Eddings "The Belgariad"

[CaptBeefheart]

A friend of mine here in Korea used to work in "public relations" for Borders in Michigan, which means he took the highest level of complaints (i.e. the real doozies would filter all the way to him). He has some excellent stories. You wouldn't believe some of the things people would do to steal a few bucks from the system--actually, sadly, you might believe it. Anyway, he said the CEO was completely clueless and hamfisted and had no idea how to take on Amazon. So, I wouldn't cry for Borders, Argentina.

Cheers,
CC

[wild_Willie2]

@Ilovestrategy

If you want the ebook version of the "The Belgariad", you can simply download an illegal copy from the web in Epub (found it easy enough) and send a few $ to the author as compensation...

W.