Alas, Borders

 

Borders is dead.  The bookstore chain failed to find a white knight that satisfied its creditors, and will go into receivership within the next few days.

This, my friends, is bad.  Borders was nearly half the bookstore sales in North America.  While competitors like Amazon and Barnes & Noble will doubtless pick up some of the slack, I’ve been reading lament after lament from readers who are no longer within easy commuting distance of a big bookstore, or any bookstore at all.   Small stores may benefit, but there may not be enough small bookstores left to take advantage of the drop in competition.

(And Barnes & Noble, it should be noted, is for sale.  So far nobody’s offered to buy.)

Moreover, Borders’ long agony has already left its mark on publishing.  Many publishers had stopped shipping books to Borders because they weren’t getting paid.  And even so, Borders has collapsed owing $272 million, mostly to major publishers such as HarperCollins, Simon & Schuster, Macmillan, and Hachette.

Publishers are highly leveraged companies.  They borrow money in order to purchase and print books.  They “loan” books to distributors and bookstores, in hopes they will be paid in sales.  With tens of millions of dollars suddenly missing from their account ledgers, we can expect publishers to react as they have always done: editors will be fired, lines canceled, advances cut, and fewer books will be purchased.

And while the situation with major publishers is dire, the situation with small to middle-sized publishers may be catastrophic.  Small presses simply may not survive losses from the Borders collapse.

The tertiary effects will extend to writers: even more writers will find careers collapsing, or careers not even starting.  Writers with careers may be forced to cope with smaller sales and smaller advances.   Artists will be squeezed: so will the various specialists necessary to publishing, such as copy-editors.

Yet another sign of yet another Publishing Apocalypse.

And more personally, I had grown to like my local Borders.  It was a place of refuge after a day of rushing around, where I could sit in their lounge with a cup of coffee, read quietly, and try to recapture a bit of the peace and pleasure that I lose while running errands.

I don’t know how to react to this except with sadness and quiet terror.  How many more Publishing Apocalypses can we writers stand?

Alas, Borders.  Alas, alas, that great city Babylon . . . for in hour is thy judgment come.