Borders declaring bankruptcy
So today is my 31st birthday and most major newspapers have announced that Borders Group Inc. has filed for Chapter 11 protection (read: it has declared bankruptcy). It pretty much bums me out. Of course, I have no loyalty to Borders as a brand. It's after all a big chain bookstore with all the negative aspects this entails. But I used to work there. First as a bookseller, then as IPT (I still have no clue what the acronym stands for, just that it had to do with inventory), and finally as special order clerk (okay, really, it also meant I was the book buyer for the store; a note: a famous poet who had the same position as mine, Christian Bök, for Chapters). I made several friendships while working there (well, mostly at store 605 at the San Francisco Center, which is still safe. For now). It gave me a stable job after graduating from college (because an English Lit degree in Houston is rather useless) and because it was a corporate job, it gave me a job when I moved to San Francisco for grad school.
It wasn't so bad for a big chain bookstore. I had a lot of latitude in what I could order for the store (ask Alli Warren how many orders I placed with SPD; oh, and thanks Andrew for giving me the space to do my job). Thanks to this, the store I worked at had a rather decent poetry section (some of the books I ordered are still there). Sure, corporate headquarters made some rather stupid decisions, such as outsourcing the e-commerce site to Amazon (that was before I started there). Such the decision to restructure (which is why I left; unsurprisingly, my position was eliminated some months after I left). It reminded too much of Circuit City (where I also worked as an undergraduate) and we know what happened.
It's not going to be catastrophic in San Francisco, except for those who couldn't be transfered to another store (strangely, the only store closing is the one on Post and Powell, which used to be the flagship store in the city), because we obviously have an abundance of independent bookstore (Green Arcade, Green Apples, City Lights, Borderlands, ...). But in other parts of the United States, Borders and Barnes & Noble are the only bookstores around for miles (the only independent bookstore in Houston for example is Brazos Bookstore, which was in dire straits not too long ago). Not to mention the damage this will do to publishers and distributors who are not going to be paid for the books Borders ordered. Hopefully, this won't apply to small presses distributed by Small Press Distribution (I'm pretty sure I was the only special order clerk to order there).
It wasn't so bad for a big chain bookstore. I had a lot of latitude in what I could order for the store (ask Alli Warren how many orders I placed with SPD; oh, and thanks Andrew for giving me the space to do my job). Thanks to this, the store I worked at had a rather decent poetry section (some of the books I ordered are still there). Sure, corporate headquarters made some rather stupid decisions, such as outsourcing the e-commerce site to Amazon (that was before I started there). Such the decision to restructure (which is why I left; unsurprisingly, my position was eliminated some months after I left). It reminded too much of Circuit City (where I also worked as an undergraduate) and we know what happened.
It's not going to be catastrophic in San Francisco, except for those who couldn't be transfered to another store (strangely, the only store closing is the one on Post and Powell, which used to be the flagship store in the city), because we obviously have an abundance of independent bookstore (Green Arcade, Green Apples, City Lights, Borderlands, ...). But in other parts of the United States, Borders and Barnes & Noble are the only bookstores around for miles (the only independent bookstore in Houston for example is Brazos Bookstore, which was in dire straits not too long ago). Not to mention the damage this will do to publishers and distributors who are not going to be paid for the books Borders ordered. Hopefully, this won't apply to small presses distributed by Small Press Distribution (I'm pretty sure I was the only special order clerk to order there).
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