Wither Bookstores?

[woodwardiocom]

The Borders at Downtown Crossing, being close to my office, is my chain bookstore of choice. They're closing late this summer.

And, of course, Curious George Goes to Wordsworth is in its death throes, following its parent store, which closed about seven years ago.

Note to self: Spend more money at Pandemonium.

(My other bookstores of choice are Rodney's in Cambridge or the Book Rack in Arlington for used books, and the Million Year Picnic for comics.)

Comments

[infinitehotel.livejournal.com]

Is Rodney's the bookstore in Central Square? IIRC, it was closing when I left. Did they manage to stay open?

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

Yep, their extended 50%-off sale apparently brought in enough money to save them.

[infinitehotel.livejournal.com]

Hooray!

[thespian.livejournal.com]

Also the building owner noticed things like the year that the former Gap location lay empty (and even now is only half leased, to TD Bank, the empty Blockbuster location, the empty Pearl location, the empty Economy Hardware location*, and realized that a 6000 square foot store with one entrance was going to sit there empty for a good long time...and did the sensible thing, of sitting down with the owner and working out what he could actually pay in this economy, along with a month to month tenancy.

*and, I suspect, the empty Uno's, Burlington Coat Factory and Blockbuster in Porter, the empty Rich Girl/Poor Girl and SS Office in Davis, etc.

[trowa-barton.livejournal.com]

I remind myself of those who sold horses before the Model-T or railroad engineers before commercial airlines.
It is a sign of the 21st century, sadly.
I'll still shell out loads of money on Pandemonium. (After all, I have a son to teach)

[bedfull-o-books.livejournal.com]

I am fond of Porter Square Books, and picked up a book at The Harvard Bookstore just yesterday.

I had thought that the DTC Borders was staying open. They closed down the one near my office, on Boylston, a month or so ago. Looks like I'll be shopping at small independents more. Which is a good thing.

[bluegargantua]

Oh yeah, MacIntyre and Moore closed down too. Which is too bad because you could always find that odd-ball non-fiction work you needed -- just I never needed it often enough. :/

later
Tom

[kimberlogic.livejournal.com]

I'm a new fan of Porter Square Books - and they will special order anything you want that isn't on the shelves & seem to get them quickly.

[unquietsoul5.livejournal.com]

I believe there's still Raven Books in Harvard Square (JFK street), Grolliers Poetry Shop, and of course Harvard Books.

The often broken distribution system for books is one of the big killers... if stores can't stock what people want because they are tied to a single distributor then people go elsewhere to get what they want rather than what they have. Ingram is not your friend if you want back title stock in your store. This is why Amazon is doing so well and why the Ebooks are finally taking off (something that they did their best to try to strangle since the1980s since it kills the distributor middle man).

Same with Game Stores. The East Coast distributor system (Alliance we're looking at you) fails its stores far more often the the distribution for the West Coast and Midwest for games, as I hear constantly on the roleplaying and board game related podcasts.

It all saddens me... especially with all the inferior tech that's replacing books (as I've said the Cloud is not where you want your stuff).

[dmmaus.livejournal.com]

Every single Borders in Australia closed down last week.