In e-mails, blog postings and open letters, a variety of people reacted to the end of Borders Group:
Outwrite Bookstore & Coffeehouse, Atlanta, Ga.: "It is with mixed emotions that we greet the news of the closing of Borders Books. Although Borders has been a tough competitor for us, we sympathize with all the booksellers who are losing jobs. If you are a Borders customer, we are here to meet all your needs for books, music, and movies. If we do not have an item in stock, we can order it for you. Most items can be in the store in a few days. Thanks to all of you for your continuing support.
Rachel Weaver and Jason Smith at the Book Table, Oak Park, Ill., in part: "First and foremost, we will say flat out: we are not celebrating. Eleven thousand fellow booksellers out of work is a dark day for all of us in the book industry. It's a dark day for publishing when there are 400 fewer outlets for books, when our friends in the already beleaguered publishing industry will face even more rounds of layoffs. It's a sad day for bricks and mortar, when there are that many more people who will turn to the Internet, most specifically to one company--to Amazon--to fill their shelves or e-readers with books. It's a sad day for reading when there are fewer communities with bookstores, a place where someone might stumble upon a book to read who otherwise might have gone home to their television or their Internet connection for entertainment and companionship. Frankly, speaking as two people who have each worked in the industry for close to two decades, it is just plain devastating.
"There is no doubt: Borders changed the industry landscape in the 90s, in some arguably good ways, some bad. We spent most of the 90s working at various independent bookstores in the Lakeview and Lincoln Park neighborhoods. One by one, Borders encroached on them, one by one they closed. So no, we are not without resentment for the company. We are not without criticism of the way they chose to operate over the years, both to the detriment of publishing, and to the detriment of themselves. The company expanded rampantly over the years in the name of an attractive balance sheet, with little thought to any underlying stability. They taught their customers to shop on Amazon rather than develop their own website. They made many mistakes. But at their best, they opened stores where no other bookstore existed for miles around, providing unprecedented access to a wide range of titles in smaller, underserved communities, and that is no small thing.
"Of course, we hope we can pick up some of the business that Borders leaves behind. But we do not delude ourselves into thinking that we will be the winners in this situation. Many Borders customers will head to their nearest Barnes & Noble; a vast number will turn to Amazon. For many, simply picking up the latest bestsellers while at Target or Costco will satisfy their needs. For some this may even push them into adopting e-books. We will likely pick up a percentage of the business as well, but we are well aware we don't have the name recognition or even a fraction of the capacity to take over what Borders provided for Oak Park."
ABA CEO Oren Teicher: "It is jolting news for any community when a bookstore closes, and independent booksellers are saddened to hear that almost 11,000 Borders employees will be losing their jobs. However, we do not believe that the Borders closing is a bellwether for the future of bricks-and-mortar bookstores nationwide. Rather, it is, in part, an unfortunate right-sizing of a bookstore landscape that has suffered from overexpansion in certain markets. ABA is not only bullish on bricks-and-mortar bookselling, but we see opportunities for our current members to expand and for new stores to open. Indie bookstores have cultivated strong ties to the local community, curated hand-picked selections of titles, and leveraged well-designed retail spaces to serve book lovers across the country. The result has been a stable market share in an unstable economy. We are optimistic for our industry and our channel."
Dominique Raccah and the rest of the staff at Sourcebooks, in part: "For Sourcebooks, Borders was our dear friend over the pond (Lake Michigan, as it were), and they were an essential part of our growth and success over the past 24 years.
"The news this week is incredibly difficult, as hundreds of communities lose long-standing gathering places for readers. I really wanted today to say THANK YOU to Borders--to their community of booksellers and home office staff over the years--for being such an important part of our lives, and for their dedication to getting books into the hands of so many people for so many years."
Joshua Bilmes, the literary agent blogging as Brillig, in part: "You can love Borders or hate it, you can rue the day they came in to your neighborhood in 1994 and helped to kill some local independent store, you can say you liked Barnes & Noble better, or that the staff at your local Borders were rude, or they never seemed very nice when you wanted to arrange a signing. You can do all of that. But if you love books, if you care about the power of the written word, of the ability for a writer to tell stories, and for those stories to move people and give meaning to the lives of others, if you care about any of that you can't be happy today. This is the saddest day for the book business that any of us have ever seen, and let us only hope that we can still say the same 25 years from today.
"There are millions of people who now don't have a good, convenient, physical place to buy and explore books, unless you think a computer screen counts. And I mean that. I don't agree with everyone Kris Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith say about agents, I don't remotely like they'll have an extra hour to drive to visit a good bookstore. There are millions of people living in Manhattan, many millions more working there on a weekday, and we're about to revert back to before Sept. 5, 1995, when Borders opened at the World Trade Center--only worse because before then there were at least a handful of indies on the island with decent and wide selections co-existing with B&N, and now you can't look at the sf section of Posman Books in Grand Central and think this is a place you want to go for your book shopping needs. So for all the rest of us, our book selection is now only and solely what Barnes & Noble decrees it to be. And I've got news for you, if you think publishers have been spending the past several months doing detailed analysis of their Borders sales and finding the 1% or 2% of their titles that were selling well at Borders alone and are now going to give those the extra TLC to get B&N to share the love--well, the idea's good for a laugh. There are authors who no longer have a store to sell some or all of their books."