And the comfy seating!
I’ve seen this many times, and I need someone to explain what the hell it means. Every bookstore I’ve been to – Borders or otherwise – sells books that have the prices printed on the bindings by the publishers. Unless they put a discount sticker on them and sell them at sale prices, the book prices are fixed, and everyone sells them for the same price – Borders, Barnes and Noble, and Independents. I’ve never seen a bookstore jack up the price unless it’s a used book store selling a collector’s item.
So where does this idea of “Border’s prices are outrageous!” come from? What does it even mean?
It means people are accustomed to buying books at a loss to the retailer.
Every book marked 40% is a loss to the land-based retailer.
Most books marked 30% off are a loss to the land-based retailer.
People are not willing to pay for books, what it costs to sell them in a retail environment. In a good year, Borders was a break-even business 3 quarters of every 4.
IMHO Borders will end up liquidating. They have no workable business plan, and the loss of the buying staff who had both the passion and the merchandising expertise is irreparable.
We have one Borders location in the Metro area, and it’s in a part of town we never go to. There was a Waldenbooks that became a Borders in the mall close to where we live, but as the mall started to die, all the big names pulled out: Borders, Radio Shack and Lane Bryant were all next to each other, and not they’re all gone.
The only big box stores near us are Books-A-Million and Barnes and Noble. B&N lost my business years ago because their customer service was horrible. The people at BAM have always been kind and more than happy to help me find what I need: and if they don’t have what I need in stock, I don’t have to ask if they’ll order it. They’ll offer to order it. They’ve been willing to hold books for me for up to two weeks until I get paid. We have several local bookstores as well, but they never seem to have the type of books I read, so I usually go to BAM first.
If I want a book, I want it in my hands as soon as possible, so it’s bookstore first, then online.
I’ll tell you exactly what it means. I got a gift certificate for $20 for Borders. I wanted to buy The Walking Dead, Book 5. Normally, I’d never even consider Borders, but now I’ve got captive money I need to spend.
I could buy that book from Amazon for $19.77 with free shipping. I’d obviously have to spend another $5.23 to get the free shipping, so let’s figure that in and call it $25, just to makes things easy.
The same book from Borders is full list price, $34.99, with another $3.98 in shipping, plus tax. There’s absolutely no excuse for that kind of price online.
I think I found some sort of free shipping deal or something, so with that $20 gift card, I ended paying somewhere around $39-20= $19.00, ie. right around Amazon’s price. I’ve run into this type of situation whenever someone has been nice enough to give me a gift card to Borders. Funny enough, I believe I also found an old Waldenbooks card at the same time with 4 or 5 bucks left on it, and Borders honored it online, so there were a few more bucks knocked off my bill. But the main point still stands.
If people mean that Borders prices are ridiculously high compared to Amazon, that’s one thing. But Borders’ prices are identical to those of any other bricks-and-mortar bookstore.
Even before websites existed mail order was almost always cheaper than a local store. It’s mostly because of lower overhead when you don’t need to set up a nice store.
Well, price is price. But even so, that’s a comparison of their online presence vs. Amazon’s, so I don’t think it’s unfair. Unfortunately, because I do understand how nice it is to wander around a bookstore and make random discoveries, there’s is a dying business model. Thanks, in part, to me I guess.
Bookstores in Australia are generally extremely expensive, especially in comparison to overseas. A paperback novel shouldn’t cost $35, and there’s a feeling that, as a “Big” store, Borders should be charging less than the “no-one pays any attention to it” price marked on the book because it’s clearly a silly price; in much the same way Supermarkets charge less for groceries than a 7-11 or a petrol station.
So yes, they’re charging the same as every other bookstore- but it’s still way too much, and given how they’re a large international chain, they should be doing a lot better on the price of their stuff, IMHO.
I just heard on the radio that Borders has filed for bankrupcy in New York(?), and plans to close 30% of its stores.
The news release is here.
Amazon doesn’t pay rent on stores, or staff to help you find things, or for furniture to sit it, nor do they take losses from customers thumbing through books and spilling coffee on them, they don’t lose product to shoplifting either – and Borders doesn’t sell a gajillion product that have better markup than books do.
As I said, their business model is not sustainable as customers are not willing to pay the price it actually takes to operate the stores as bookstores, and others were quicker to the punch in the online arena, and do it better besides. They are sunk, and it’s a damn shame because they had a thousand opportunities for it to not turn out this way.
I understand the business model, and the cost of brick and mortar. None of that changes the fact that their prices stink(stank… stunk.) As Martini started touching on, you see “deals” at most big chains (Best Buy and their ilk), but never at Borders.
Also, their couches mean nothing to me when I’m sitting on my own ordering a book through their website.
Guess I will have to check my local store and see if they are closing. Can’t find any info online about which stores will close.
Some people just want a rock bottom price and those people will buy online. These days many people are like that so that’s why regular stores probably cannot survive.
I wouldn’t blame yourself for that being a dying business model – that’s not the business model that Border was using.
The “wander around, make random discoveries” business model requires a large inventory of a broad category of books.
Borders cut down their inventory, and focused on the mass-marketed, biggest-moving books. Like, the ones Oprah recommended, or Twilight or Harry Potter books.
Wandering around Borders, you didn’t find those “random discovery” books, you just found… whatever Oprah was talking about, mostly.
If you wanted a specific obscure book, they would have to order it for you, which means you hadn’t “discovered” it in the store… which is Amazon’s business model, against which Borders could not compete.
If you wanted a mass-marketed, Oprah-recommended book, that you could find. And also find at Wal-Mart, the grocery store, and any other random store that has a small book selection. Usually at a cheaper price… so Borders couldn’t compete in that business model, either.
This Ann Arbor-based site says that a list may be released this afternoon.
Funny you brought that up. I hadn’t made that actual connection, but one reason I didn’t even bother taking my gift certificate to the store near my house is that, last time I was in the same situation, I couldn’t find any of the books on my short list to actually buy in-store.
Crain’s said that Borders filed for Chapter 11 today:
The Wall Street Journal just published a list of stores to be closed:
http://s.wsj.net/public/resources/documents/st_borders0216_20110216.html
In our area, the one on Boylston Street in Boston is going down (that leaves only two big bookstores in the downtown area), as is the one in Peabody (Bad location. There’s a Barnes and Noble across the street near Northshore Mall that gets all the business) and one in Burlington I didn’t even know existed. But it looks as if the ones at Downtown Crossing in Boston, the Cambridgeside Galleria in Cambridge, and the one in Swampscott will stay.
Aw, bummer. My local one is closing. Like Cal’s above, it’s another one competing with a Barnes & Noble barely a block away. But the Borders was there first, and I always liked it better, or at least found it a more comfortable place.