Far from being overjoyed, Gayle Shanks, co-owner of Changing Hands Bookstore, Tempe, Ariz., is concerned about a possible closing of Borders, which has three stores in the Phoenix area. "I think my biggest concern, really, is what it means for the publishing world and ultimately what it means for diversity and finding a marketplace that will be diminished," Shanks told the East Valley Tribune. "We will have fewer authors finding publishers for their books. We'll find fewer books being published and that might in fact mean that only huge, commercially viable authors will find their books going to market."
Amazon would likely take part of the market, she said, but "that's just the bestsellers and one level below. Unless you know exactly what you want to read, it takes the adventure and the curiosity factor out of what's involved with finding a new author."
She attributed Borders's problems to overbuilding and not keeping up with industry trends.
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In a eulogy for the Borders flagship store on Michigan Avenue in Chicago that is closing this month (Shelf Awareness, February 27, 2009), Mary Schmich wrote in the Chicago Tribune,
"Here's what I think is the real news--the city's premier shopping
street will be without any bookstore for the first time in decades.... I
can't help but feel that Chicago's top street without a bookstore is
like a bookshelf without a book."
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In the New York Post, Kyle Smith has a somewhat edgier remembrance of bookselling on New York City's Upper West Side following the closing last week of the Lincoln Triangle Barnes & Noble (and provides an example of just the kind of customer that helped lead to the store's closing):
"It was a multistory bookplex that, for 15 years, was an excellent place to read, browse, flirt, attend readings--and never actually buy anything, since everything it offered was much cheaper and could be delivered free via Amazon.com. Which didn't even have to charge sales tax until recently.
"The B&N was essentially the Upper West Side's grooviest public library.
"In the You've Got Mail era, there were five huge book/music stores between West 66th and West 86th streets. Now there's only one--the doomed B&N at 82nd and Broadway, where tumbleweeds roll across the gigantic second floor. You could leave cash in the dictionary aisle and it would be as safe as it is in the mattress.
"The majority of the prime space on the ground floor is given over to a display for the e-book reader the Nook (motto: "Someday we'll be almost as good as the iPad!"). It's like walking into a fire station and seeing an engine has been replaced with a display of Molotov cocktails."
He concluded:
"Bookstores (and music stores) provided something special and New Yorky, their former density giving soul-sustaining reassurance that you were at the center of the creative community--people who care about art and ideas more than shoes. Every time one of them disappears, a part of what makes this city special dies."