Pretty good, but some quibbles.
Borders, of course, isn’t going to say that the book trade is fine and sound and that it simply blew it. Yet setting the “eReader revolution” alongside a “turbulent economy,” and branding it an “external force,” reveals a decade-long blind spot that goes some distance in explaining how Borders got to this point. It’s been said widely, but can stand repeating: e-readers and digital content are not part of some tidal force bent on destroying all that is fine and good about the written word. It is just another way for customers to buy books, for companies to sell them, and for people to read them.
It is also a way for publishers to cut bookstores out of the loop- Mom n' Pop's Paperback Shack and their ilk lack the wherewithal to put out their own branded ereader. Being a giant corporation Borders certainly could and should have gotten ahead of the that curve, but it isn't really an option for the bulk of the industry, i/e the independent shops.
Ereaders may not be inherently inimical to the written word but they are wantonly destructive to the ecosystem that has supported and disseminated those words over the past few centuries.
Another angle that’s being floated: maybe the independent bookstores that have held out during Borders’ forty-year run will now benefit from the closing, and, a larger point, reëmerge as the primary model for selling printed books to a dwindling but dedicated niche audience.
Uh......don't hold your breath, dude.
While the death of Borders won't hurt whatever stubborn independents still cling tenaciously to life it's not going to serve as any sort of rising tide lifting them back to prominence. As noted yesterday, a more likely result is accelerating the death spiral of books as physical objects and further cementing the hegemony of digital distribution.
A future where the big corporate players abandon physical retailing of books as a rum deal and indies scurry around subsisting off whatever crumbs fall to the floor isn't hard to envision, although I'm not sure it's the shiny silver lining the author seems to think.
Bookstores exist to make money, not fill in the quirky local independent bookstore checkbox on their community brag list. Ebooks, Amazon & the still ubiquitous Barnes & Noble don't leave much meat on the bone of publishing to attract interest from any but the most desperate entrepreneurs.
Bookselling has never been a terrifically profitable venture for independents, but for many years it provided a respectable livelihood doing something you loved.
Those days are numbered.
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