Last week, I scoured my bedroom for Borders gift cards, wiped off their dust, and set out for the book megastore for the final time. On July 18, Borders announced it was liquidating its remaining stores. Along with droves of other book buyers (seriously, maybe they should have announced their closure more often), I cashed in before the shelves were emptied. Packed elbow-to-elbow inside the massive two-story building, there were more faces than books.
It's an unfortunate fate, especially considering 10,700 people will be left without jobs, according to CNN.com. But it's not the mark of death for books like some have suggested. In fact, the outlook for literature has never been better.
Bookstore purists blame Borders for forcing out cozy independent shops, but I never held animosity. A bookstore is a bookstore. Sure, you don't have the thrill of stumbling upon an incredible find for 75 cents in Borders, but you were surrounded by just about every book you could think of. Being inside Borders was like being inside the Internet, tangibly interacting with all the information and entertainment you could imagine.
So how did I end up sheepishly handing over my three Borders gift cards, so obviously from three separate Christmases that I couldn't bear to look the cashier in the eye?
This may be overly simplistic, but in short: Amazon.
The same books I bought for $20 and $9 on my recent visit were available for $8 and $4 on Amazon.com, including free shipping and two-day delivery. I can't thumb through them beforehand online, but I can read hundreds of reviews, find users with similar thought-processes, and match their buying habits with my own.
And even that is bordering on old-school in the growing demand for automation. A new startup program called BookLamp recommends books with an intricate algorithm based on specific writing styles and themes. Users will "be able to request "something like ‘The Da Vinci Code'" but "less dense" or "shorter" or "more fight scenes." Described as the Pandora.com of books, the company has already formed a partnership with 11 publishers and is already breaking even. That's impressive for a new startup.
With ideas so easily and digestibly published online, many claim print is on a downward spiral toward irrelevancy. Certainly with so much more media at our disposable, books aren't as popular as they once were.
However, it's not nearly as calamitous as the ominously red GOING OUT OF BUSINESS banners suggest.
In fact, according to a recent article in the Economist, American book publishers "reported growth across all platforms in 2010." Barnes & Noble, for one, successfully invested in e-books and e-readers with its Nook. Borders, on the other hand, foolishly clung to CDs and DVDs, and played catch-up too late with their Kobo e-reader.
The problem isn't demand. The problem is how to make money off it. In addition to anticipating new media, the way we think about entertainment has fundamentally changed. The constantly online expect their media to be not only instantaneous, but free as well.
The problem is familiar to music and video companies. Surprisingly, those industries are now discovering how to make money, even from professed pirates. Netflix has become almost as ubiquitous as cable in the last couple of years, now boasting 25 million subscribers. Its recently announced price increase (a 60 percent hike if you use DVDs and streaming) could take away a chunk once enacted, but its reputation seems to be good enough to pull them through.
More recently, Spotify has taken the music industry by storm, now servicing over 10 million users. Spotify CEO Daniel Ek is fond of saying that for a music service to succeed, it has to be more convenient than piracy. Spotify gives free and legal access to music from all the major music labels, with seamless Facebook integration and playlist sharing. For a monthly fee, users also get higher quality, no ads, and phone access.
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