What Killed Borders?

Slate.com has some thoughts on the matter and reading them over, I have to say they seem to have hit the nail on the head. I'm not a business major but given the changing nature of the book market and the publishing world, it seemed inevitable that there would be casualties- I tended to worry more about smaller, independent bookstores (like our own Prairie Lights) than the super-big-box titans such as Borders and Barnes and Nobles.

I loved Borders though. I remember whenever we went to Chicago, there was that gigantic one right across the street from the Wster Tower Place which was a close to heaven as I thought I could get as a kid. (The other place: Waterstone's. Any of those stores in the UK...) There were whole floors of books and music and I was like a kid in a candy store.

Yet, ironically, I never really purchased all that much from Borders. I think I snagged a Piers Anthony Xanth Novel (whose endless punning amused me at the time but whose appeal quickly faded for his more adult fare like the Incarnations of Immortality) and a Deep Space Nine Episode Guide. (I was young, I was a dork, so sue me.) Other than that, I didn't get to Borders all that much. There weren't any around Iowa City- only their smaller cousins of B. Dalton (long since closed in the Old Capitol Mall) and Waldenbooks (only recently closed- my first bookstore! It still hurts a teensy bit!).

But I still believe in bookstores. I know people are freaking out because Kindles and Nooks are so cool and they're the 'up and coming' thing, but I think they have limits to their appeal. I'm not going to buy every book I own all over again just so I can have it on a Kindle or a Nook. Personally, I think any book worth buying on one of those things is going to be worth going to a bookstore and picking up in physical form.

And besides, bookstores still have one thing that Amazon.com doesn't have: they have a location. There is nothing like a bookstore to me in the world... dump me in one and I'd be happy for hours on end browsing through all the racks and seeing what's interesting. Even if I don't buy anything, just the smell of books is enough to balance my chi and make me smile. They are serene, peaceful islands of knowledge in an increasingly bleak world and as long as people want to learn something or just read a good book, bookstores will last for a long time to come.