What the Death of Borders Means to Me

This past week, former bookstore behemoth Borders succumbed to the inevitable and liquidated its remaining assets, i.e., closing the rest of its stores and going out of business. Now, there were a lot of factors that contributed to its demise--a changing literary landscape, widespread digitalization, the rise of Amazon, egregious mismanagement, etc.--that led the majority of the publishing and bookselliing world to conclude that Borders would not last the year. And these factors have been discussed thoroughly by those more knowledgeable than I, who agree that Borders should just die already.

My personal experience with Borders was not a terrible one--far from it. Though hardly as charming as the numerous smaller, intimate indie bookstores in the Boston area (my current place of residence), it retained the mute, cozy presence of bookstores that I do enjoy. And considering that many of its stores were pretty large, it was easy to just spend hours in the store and get tempted to buy any book I found the least bit interesting. In all, Borders didn't particularly stand out from other bookstores, except that it was huger.

But for most of my life thus far, I haven't lived in a town with a lot of bookstores--at least, not many that I knew of. (for my first sixteen years, I was dependent on my parents for transportation and had restricted access to the internet, so I didn't really know about the indie bookstore gems hidden in the 30-mile radius of my hometown) So for much of my childhood and adolescence, there was only the Waldenbooks at the mall, plus the library. Much later, a Barnes & Noble opened. And not too long after that, the Waldenbooks closed. (gee I wonder why?)


Waldenbooks was its own independent bookstore chain for 50 years before it got bought by K-Mart in 1984, then merged with Borders in 1994, and became an entity inseparable from Borders starting in 2004. So for most of the time I went to this Waldenbooks, it was already a part of Borders. I got rather attached to this store, needless to say. In addition to plenty of picks for my hungry young mind to peruse through, this Waldenbooks had an impeccable selection of manga--which was a godsend to me after my former go-to manga shop (and the place where my otaku phase started) closed. Barnes and Noble's manga offerings, by comparison, were pathetic, especially to a fan of shojo manga (they mostly had shonen manga and more adult stuff). (In other old sad news, TokyoPop, the publisher of some of my all-time favorite manga titles, folded this year, as well) Since I'm usually indifferent to salespeople when I already know what I'm looking for, I liked Waldenbooks because I could find what I was looking for, and even find something new that I didn't even know about. There were more than a few times when I walked out of that store with books that I didn't even know existed when I went in. Waldenbooks was my go-to place to spend my gift money--I hardly ever needed to give it a second thought. When I found out that it closed, I was saddened by the loss, indeed. Though at that point I was only living at home part-time, so it wasn't as big of a deal as the anime store closing was.

So, while Borders never really meant much to me, Waldenbooks did. And Waldenbooks was already dead.

As for what the future holds? Ultimately, I'm glad Borders is dead. I hope that this brings in new indie bookstores to neighborhoods that now will no longer harbor the increasingly obscure niche that is a bookstore, people will patronize their local libraries more often, and indie authors, publishers, and booksellers alike will be able to flourish with one less corporation grabbing for their shallow purses. One unfortunate consequence could be that Amazon grows even larger, putting publishers in a stranglehold and overshadowing the intrepid brick-and-mortar booksellers who just can't compete with Amazon's price gauging. I hope that the death of Borders will help to usher in a new era of publishing, as publishers and booksellers rethink their current models more seriously.

In all, I hope Borders will not die in vain.

Photo cred: Culture Tease and the Carnegie Center blog