Borders Bookstore closing in St. Paul, Photo courtesy David Erickson
BORDERS TO CLOSE REMAINING STORES
MSNBC
Borders plans to close its remaining 399 stores and go out of business by the end of September.
THOUGHT: You know I’m a big fan of eBooks but even so, this is sad. Inevitable, but sad. I truly enjoy the experience of the actual, physical bookstore.
Though I’m an eBooks fanboy, I love the feel, the smell of an actual, physical book.
Much of the commentary about Borders closing has focused on just that, the experience of the book store. While I’ve resigned myself to their extinction, don’t fool yourself: They won’t disappear overnight. There are still plenty of Boomers and Gen Xers who want real books.
Even if Barnes & Noble eventually closes its physical locations, we’ll still have plenty of indie bookstores buying and selling atom-based books for the foreseeable future.
What the eBook dealers need to do–and so far, I haven’t seen them doing it–is finding a way to replicate that book store experience online.
The operative word should be Serendipity. THAT is what you get from the book store experience.
Amazon has a long way to go. Finding Kindle books at Amazon.com is not easy unless you know exactly what you want. They’ve already got some of the pieces that could make it happen: You can follow reviewers and authors at the site and they own the book-themed social networking site Shelfari. They’ve also got a powerful incentive in their Amazon Associates affiliate marketing program that gives bloggers and others a cut on sales that result from links on their sites.
They just haven’t tied it together in an easy-to-use whole.
KEYWORD WEDNESDAY: According to Yahoo! Clues, people searching for “Books” are mostly Millennials while people searching for “eBooks” are mostly Gen Xers.
Thank you for iPads!
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