Archive: Opinions

The store at the Shops at Ithaca Mall is on a list of 200 Borders locations that will be closed as part of the company's Chapter 11 filing, according to a Wednesday Wall Street Journal report.  We all saw it coming.  Borders was the last major book chain to jump onto the eBooks bus, and evidently hasn't responded at all to the popularity of music and video download services like iTunes and Amazon Downloads.  Only a few months after the first year Amazon reported more eBook sales than book-book sales, that was a market trend that nobody wanted to be behind on.  That bus had already left the station.

I first thought Borders might close when I went to look for a CD last year.  I had a Borders gift card, so I thought I'd spend it on a CD I wanted instead of downloading it.  I hadn't been in the store for a while, because I am doing almost all my reading on a pad computer and the same for music.  I was stunned on two counts.  First, the CD section in the Borders store was tiny compared to what it had been.  Second, the prices were not at all competitive with the download services.  Why should I pay $18 for a CD that I'm just going to rip into iTunes so I can play it on an iPod (or via wifi on my stereo) when I can pay $10 for the download version?  And, by the way, they didn't have the album I was looking for.

Yesterday's somewhat desperate sounding email from CEO Mike Edwards to Borders customers capped what has appeared to me to be a series of desperate moves, including the downsizing of the music department, the late introduction of what I think is a second-rate eBooks service, the introduction of 'Borders Rewards Plus (it was the timing that made it seem desperate to me).  The purpose was to reassure Borders customers that all is stable and well.  But Ithaca is losing it's Borders.  That's not stable and well.

This brings us to a scenario that Ithaca has lived through before -- a mall in a college town
with no book store.  In the 1990s the Ithaca mall had Lauriat's Books, part of a Massachusetts chain.  I was familiar with the chain, because I grew up in Massachusetts and the bookstore my mother took me to when I was small was a Lauriat's in Brookline.  It was an old fashioned bookstore, a bit musty with the heavenly smell of ink and pages.  The one in the Ithaca mall was a more modern, mally version.

Ironically it was the rise of mega-bookstores like Borders that helped bring Lauriat's down.  In 1999 the company closed it's 71 stores and the mall was left with a big empty hole where its book store had been.  At the time I thought, 'This is a college town.  It is unthinkable that it's major mall wouldn't have a book store, even if it's only a little Waldenbooks outlet'.  (That would have been unfortunate, because Waldenbooks is evidently owned by Borders.)

But it wasn't to be.  Years went by with no book store.  For a college town, especially one with an ivy league university in it, I thought this was a disgrace.  Every single time I went to the mall I thought, when are they going to get a book store?  I thought, this is the second worst mall ever!  (The worst, at the time, was in Cortland.  That mall had, I believe, three stores open, one at each end and one in the middle, a barber shop.  For a time I went to a barber in that mall.  I had to walk through the dark concourse to get to the lone storefront in the middle of the mall that was occupied.  It was depressing every time I needed a haircut.  I called it The Mall of the Dead).

The current management is responsible for revitalizing the Ithaca mall, and I think they have done a great job.  Personally I would have preferred a Barnes and Noble, but I was thrilled when I learned a shiny new Borders would be opening there.  It was a real honest to gosh book store.  Ithaca was back!

It was great, but then the world moved on.  iPods became the next big thing, and electronic media delivery went from illegal media sharing to a huge legitimate business.

Border's desperate leap onto the electronic bandwagon has been painful to watch.  Amazon successfully introduced its own electronic book reader and did a bang-up job of giving iTunes a run for its money with its similar download service.  Barnes and Noble introduced its own book reader, and, so far, has been nimble enough as a company to stay in the game.  Much later Borders announced it would sell eBooks for the Kobo reader, in my opinion not the greatest reader in the pack.  But using an existing reader was faster than developing their own.  They are selling four or five different readers now, which I believe confuses the issue of their eBooks store, rather than making it more attractive.

So here we are again.  1999 redux.  Soon there will be no book store in the Ithaca mall.  In a college town.

But this time I have to wonder whether it isn't OK.  Aside from my nostalgia for that musty Brookline book store, I am part of a growing cadre of people that don't really need a bookstore in the mall.  I am downloading almost 100% of the books I read and music I listen to.  When I want a book-book Barnes and Noble isn't all that far away, and I am probably more likely to just order it on Amazon anyway.  The absence of a physical bookstore has a much different impact on the community than it did 12 years ago.

I will be sad to walk past the space where Borders was.  It will be like a giant tooth missing from an otherwise attractive mouth.  But for me eBooks have added some dimensions to reading that I am quite enjoying.  I love being able to control the font size, especially as my eyes are aging and need a little extra help.  I love not putting more books on our already overflowing shelves (I suspect our house is sinking under the weight of the books).  I love the green piece -- when I read there is no consequence to trees.  And I can report that I have become more adventurous in my choices for pleasure reading because the price of an eBook is about the same as that of a paperback (and there are a lot of eBooks for only a few dollars or free).

So I will miss having a book store at the mall, but I won't think it's a disgrace that there isn't one there.  I am sure the mall management will find a terrific store to fill in that gap.  Personally I'm hoping for a Jelly Belly depot, one that has Top Banana and Chocolate pudding jelly beans in bulk.  Until they figure out a way to download a Jelly Belly I'll be that store's best customer.

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