SLICE OF LIFE: Death of a book storetore
The Demise of BORDER'S
Steve Gilbert | Posted: Sunday, July 24, 2011 8:00 am
Save for the scorching pavement, it was just like the day before Christmas Friday — the parking lot crammed with cars, shoppers stripping store shelves, bins picked over, arms bulging with books.
It would have been joyous, if it wasn’t so mournful.
“Death of a Salesman” could be had for $13, in paperback, but these were the dying throes of “Death of a Bookstore.”
A month from now, the parking lot will be empty and the 14,600-square-foot building will be lifeless.
Who would have guessed that on Oct. 25, 2003, the grand opening of Borders books and Music in Monadnock Marketplace?
The Sentinel headline that day read, “Battlefield is Booked: Area booksellers say they’re prepared to thrive in the shadow of Borders.”
We devoted almost 2,000 words to the pending competition between the incoming corporate giant and the established independent book shops, particularly our own superstore, Toadstool Bookshop.Yet we missed the real competition, the behemoth lurking stealthily in the high-tech gizmos that now rule our lives, the catalysts of the electronic reading revolution.
The Internet was mentioned just once, in passing, in those 2,000 words, and nowhere to be found was Kindle, iBook, Nook, Cybook Opus, PocketBook, etc. They didn’t exist. Sony Reader showed up in 2006 and Kindle a year later.
Yet the Internet and all that it has spawned has traditional bookstores on the run.
“Paperback out, Kindle in,” is how one shopper succinctly described Borders’ demise Friday.
for the full article go to
http://www.sentinelsource.com/opinion/columnists/staff/gilbert/slice-of-life-death-of-a-book-store/article_a32d6e7d-cb47-5f25-ae88-1acdcd6fac9b.htmland a Fitzsimmons illustration: