Alas Poor Borders, I Knew You Well

I remember when the first Borders store opened in my neighborhood. What a buzz! The parking lot was huge; the store was huge and even bigger was the concept that a store this large could be filled entirely with books. Yes, books.

And you could sit and read the books, in comfortable chairs, with a cup of coffee, and not even buy them. What a concept. It was hard to fathom but it was immediately the new place to be. You could wander in there at almost any time of day or night (another great concept: late hours) and run into someone you knew, or not.

You could hide away in the stacks or catch up with a friend over coffee. I know someone who wrote his first book there, on a laptop, in the middle of the day when he could sneak away from the office for an hour or so.

I did the research on competing pet titles for my first and second book proposals at Borders (and then on line). The point being that I needed to see a real live book store and how they categorized their books, in order to know where my book belonged.

That same principle still applies, by the way. An agent or publisher will always ask you how you categorize your book and where a book store would shelve it. Too bad, the bookstore now will almost certainly be virtual. Alas poor Borders, I knew you well.

My local Borders, by the way, is not one of the 200 stores to close in its recent "reorganization" strategy. But the one at the Mall is. Which means that there may be some decent bargains to be had at the one that is closing and that they may, perhaps, restock the shelves of the one in my neighborhood that looks like it is about to.

Am I guilty of buying books from Amazon? Of course. Especially when the bookstore down the street doesn't have what I want when I want it. But am I sad to see the demise of Borders? Yes.

Because, in my neck of the woods, there doesn't seem to be anything to fill the void.