Day Eight
(Edit: Sorry, this didn’t post yesterday for some reason.)
A reoccurring question I’m encountering is ‘Should we really be obligated to feel bad for Borders after they put so many indies out of business?’
Well you aren’t obligated to feel anything, really. If you’ve lost a favorite store, a job, or your own business because of Borders you have every right to feel upset, that’s where most of us are too. We’re losing all of the above because of a series of corporate decisions. Our bookstore just happens to have “Borders” on the outside. My store was “my store” before I got a job there. It is the closest store to my home. It’s right by several restaurants and on the bus line and those low income people I’ve worried about that make up a good part of our customer base? I started out as one of them. It took, maybe, 15-20 minutes to hop a bus and ride downtown to 4th Street Live! back before I had a working car. It was the best place to go for me to get out of the house, treat the kids to a lunch and myself to a book off my wishlist. Getting to any other book store in the city would take at least 45 min to two hours on the bus, making it a very discouraging thing to do. (This is why the internet wins. Stores really can’t be expected to be “close” to every would be consumer.)
In the last few years the book business fight (on the seller side, the writing side looks completely different, though there are quite a few familiar players) has become less about indie versus big box and buying local versus buying from a warehouse a couple states away.
Buying from Borders still supported the local economy. Big box stores pay local employees, who pay local taxes and spend money locally. The stores pay rent, utilities and call local companies for service repairs. They pay state taxes, and our store, at least, carried local magazines and papers and books by local authors, artists and photographers.
Recently Texas decided to require Amazon to charge state tax and hit Amazon with a huge bill for back taxes owed. Amazon responded by announcing the closure of their Texas distribution center leaving 119 people without a job. (This is how Amazon treats people on the publishing/writer side of things too.) How is it a benefit to a local economy to support a business like that?
Also, as I said before, Borders wasn’t a presence in Louisville until a local indie store, which Borders supplied, wanted out of the business. The owners approached Borders and asked them to buy their business. Borders relationship to the other stores in Louisville is a little different than elsewhere.
Also, while I’m working toward the sad acceptance that I’m out of a job because our store just couldn’t compete profitably there’s a level of accepting that the same is true with the indie stores which closed–because they just couldn’t compete and the market loves that competition.
It sucks all around, period.
But Borders stopped being just an evil empire a while ago. By the way my name tag about saving the empire wasn’t just quoting Empire Records. It’s also a nod toward Borders’ history and reputation of being a contender in a Star Wars style Empire as well. Borders’ role in the book/publishing community is as complicated and multi-faceted as its bankruptcy.
(At this point I keep catching myself and having to change “failure” to “bankruptcy”, thought either way it’s a failure to me personally.)
Bitter feelings about Borders are certainly normal and probably warranted. But the store is largely its employees, with the corporate heads cloud dwelling gods handing down commandments from on high, for all the contact and control we have with/over them. No matter what silly, good or really horrible decisions are being made when you come into a bookstore you’re dealing with people like me and my co-workers. We’re ex-indie employees still in the business because we love it, thanks to Borders. Or we’re librarians struggling to make it in an environment of government cuts.
I strongly suggest that book lovers respond to Borders closures by being determined to remain book lovers. Here in Louisville there are 2 Barnes & Nobles, 2 Books-A-Millions, 2 Carmichaels locations, 2 Waldenbooks and several used book/media stores. And that’s just on this side of the river.
If you love books and reading don’t et this stop it. Don’t let reading be just a convenience activity for you or in the end we all lose.
Louisville Bookstores:
Barnes & Noble
801 South Hurstbourne Pkwy
Louisville, KY 40222
502-426-0255
4100 Summit Plaza Drive
Louisville, KY 40241
502-327-0410
Books-A-Million
502-894-8606
992 Breckenridge Lane
Louisville, KY 40207
502-426-2252
4300 Towne Center Drive
Louisville, KY 40241
812-284-4798
757 E Lewis and Clark Pkwy
Clarksville, IN 47129
Borders
3050 Bardstown Rd.
Louisville, KY 40205
502.456.6660
4600 Shelbyville Rd, Ste. 133
Louisville, KY 40207
502.893.0133
Waldenbooks
757 Hwy 131 East, Space #410
Clarksville, IN 47129
812.282.4658
7900 Shelbyville Rd, Space J-5
Louisville, KY 40222
502.423.1596
4801 Outer Loop Rd
Louisville, KY 40219
502.966.5783
Carmichael’s
1295 Bardstown Road
Louisville, Kentucky 40204
502-456-6950
2720 Frankfort Avenue
Louisville, Kentucky 40206
502-896-6950
Half Price Books
2025 S. Hurstbourne Pkwy.
Louisville KY 40220
502-491-4310
10220 Westport Rd. on Frey’s Hill
Louisville KY 40241
502-326-8585
Book and Music Exchange
1616 Bardstown Rd. 502-454-3328
5400 Preston Hwy. 502-969-4403
5534 Newcut Rd 502-364-8944
New Albany: 201 Market St. 812-944-2270
A Reader’s Corner
138 Breckenridge Lane
502-897-5578
The Book Attic
8659 Preston Hwy
Louisville, KY 40219
(502) 962-6808
Any locals have any others to add?
I also work at a closing store, in New Jersey. I have to say I’m finding myself appalled at the behavior of the majority of our customers. I didn’t that the act of putting up some “Closing Store” signs turns ordinary shoppers into absolute pigs who feel justified leaving piles of books all over the store, knocking books onto the fllor (and then ignoring the mess they just made), sticking books they decided they didn’t want into any book-sized crevice they can find, and generally being slovenly. They do these things right in front of store employees – and some of them then expect you ti help them find a book!!
The biggest surprise was seeing customers casually sitting in those easy chairs on the day we began our closing sale, seemingly oblivious to the chaos going on all around them, while the staffers were still trying to adjust to the shock of seeing their workplace (and jobs) implode around them. Needless to say, we removed those chair just as soon as we possibly could.
It is appalling, more so because our “normal” customers rarely behaved such a way. I can only guess what employees in stores like Walmart deal with, where this is probably par for the course.