Drew Perine, The News Tribune / AP Photo
Borders Books may soon be no more: bids were due at 5 p.m. on Sunday for the struggling book-store chain, but the deadline passed without a single offer. The best hope now appears to be a last-minute offer by Books-A-Million over the next 48 hours; otherwise, the company is likely to be sold to liquidators this week, which will put the company out of business. If Borders closes, Barnes & Noble will be the sole national books chain.
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BORDERS BOOKS NEARS LIQUIDATION
Many years ago I travelled to the USA to link up with my wife, who had just completed a course at the University of Michigan. The university was in Ann Arbor, a fairly small town some miles from the huge, crude, industrial city of Detroit, home of the derelict US motor industry.
Ann Arbor, quiet and cultured, was a world apart from its industrial neighbour. The university was its main industry and though the town was small it had one of the best book shops I had ever seen. It was surprisingly large.
The Border brothers, who owned it, were clever, dedicated people. Their shop contained as wide a range of the best books in our language as one would find anywhere. There was no junk. Because of the large, civilised university community nearby they were flourishing. But, unknown to me, the maggot was already in the apple.
One of the brothers was a pioneer in the application of information technology to the book trade. They were able to maintain their large stock with an efficiency and an economy still unknown to other booksellers. Then Mephistopheles whispered in their ears.
In IT they had the means, without moving from Ann Arbor, to control book shop stock anywhere in the United States or, in fact, anywhere in the world. It wasn’t very long before trucks loaded with books for the Borders stores, were criss-crossing the United States, day and night, throughout the year. Australia and NZ followed.
Having fattened up the enterprise, the Borders sold it, but not to the sort of booksellers they had once been themselves. The new owners were simply on to a good thing and set about exploiting it. They were easy meat for the devil. Now he has claimed them - and their successors. Other retail book trade empires have followed them, one after the other. What are we to make of all this?
The ranks of booksellers, even of the very good serious booksellers, are thinning out, day by day. Mephistopheles, ever active, is providing devices of his own invention which are taking the place of books. For those with a serious commitment to books the only sensible course I can see is to grow old and retire as quickly as possible.
John Griffin
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