Worrying news (UK)

[la_marquise]

Borders UK is going into administration.
There goes one of the few booksellers we have locally who still stock substantial amounts of backlist and of US as well as UK paperbacks. (I know Borders aren't perfect, but since Heffers was gutted by the Evil From Oxford, and since Waterstones decided they were bestseller focused, Borders have been the best chain we have in Cambridge, at least.)
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8380268.stm

Evening edit: it's now even more complicated, as the administrators have pulled out citing a 'conflict'. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/nov/26/borders-books-set-administration

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

Link, please?

[dancinghorse.livejournal.com]

Oh nooooo! Not Heffers, too! I loved my Heffers.

[armb.livejournal.com]

Bother.

[themis1.livejournal.com]

I saw this was looming, and I'm sorry it's happened. Whilst it's possible to get things online if you know what you're looking for, at this rate there will be nowhere left where you can just browse and find unexpected treasures. Apart from the Penn Book Shop, of course, but you do have to be prepared to wade through a lot of books to find the treasures there!! Perhaps the demise of some of the bigger chains will lead to the re-emergence of independent booksellers, though - that would be excellent.

[the-faery-queen.livejournal.com]

CRAP! they're one of the few places that will do a book launch for people like me, people who don't have big stored tonne of books (waterstones will do launches for those not with a big house but only if you have a tonne of books and i can't afford to buy a tonne of books to supply them with! while borders don't seem to have the same requirment) :(

[the-faery-queen.livejournal.com]

as for buying books, i get mine from abebooks.com. or bookmooch! free books from the latter, and the former are second hand, cheap even with postage, and do a lot of us books. but you need to know what you want, which was the joy of a bookstore i guess, not having to know and just getting to browse :(

[pwilkinson.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, I'm not at all surprised by this news. Borders UK almost went under in July just before the management buyout, and from some comments I met at the time, the existing management were probably exactly the wrong people to trust to run a chain of bookshops successfully. And whether Borders branches have been worth patronising since then has depended on just how committed the staff in each individual shop have been to keeping things running in very adverse circumstances - and I'm going to be very sorry for the (probably quite numerous) staff who have been that committed.

I would expect Blackwells and/or Foyles to expand into some (but far from all) of Borders' present locations - but I suspect that any independents who try to do so are going to have to find some very well-defined niches if they are to survive at all.

And since, to date, I simply don't buy books online at all - it's probably a very good thing for me that I live in London.

[shui-long.livejournal.com]

The BBC report has been updated, naming a different administrator (MCR). But the clear implication is that they're looking to sell off individual stores, and there aren't likely to be many buyers, which looks like very bad news for the Cambridge (and Oxford) Borders.

[anna-wing.livejournal.com]

Someone needs to give a call to Kinokuniya, and ask them if they're interested in expanding into the UK.

[lil-shepherd.livejournal.com]

Heard Tim Waterstone this morning basically saying that Borders made the wrong decision to diversify and try and be all things to all men rather that a high class purveyor of books. What they did was put themselves into conflict with the supermarkets and HMV and with the middle-market new management at Waterstones, with the result that they lost market share all round. Also that they have too many out of town stores in Industrial units, when the book market is the high street and the internet.

As he says, the book market is strong, and they do very well in the US where these mistakes have not been made.