End of an Era

As an enthusiastic reader, visiting book stores is something I ‘d always love to do. After I started working in 2006, I stopped buying ‘used’ books and was buying new books from the book stores, sort of an ethical commitment. One of the things that happened in Hyderabad (for that matter, any metro in India) during that time was the opening of the Mega bookstores. Every other day we had a new mega bookstore opening in the name of Crossword, Books and Beyond, Odyssey etc. With these brick and mortar bookstores, going to a bookstore itself turned out to be a hobby of mine.

Going to a bookstore was not just about buying a book. First of all, the aroma of fresh books is so beautiful and is so inviting. The facilities like providing a couch to sit, let me pick books and start reading it at the bookstore itself. Selecting a book was itself an activity. I go and search for books in the shelf, pick up attractive titles, get the feel of having the book, read the back cover, then pick a couple of others. Then, I sit on the couch, start reading the prologue and if it is interesting start reading the first few pages and if I find it attractive, check the price. Now if I don’t find it worth it, start the whole process again. I tell ya, 9 out of 10 times I ended up having a good book in hand at the end of the day. Lastly, the activity for some reason was tiring and I always ended up eating something the moment I got out of the bookstore.

One of the pioneers of the brick and mortar bookstores business is Borders. They are the ones who started the concept of having a mega bookstore, where you get all sort of books under the same roof. All others just tried to catch up with them. Recently, Borders filed for bankruptcy. Today, I went in to check the closure sale at a nearby Borders store, where they put up signs saying “25-50% discount, everything must go!”. Oh boy, I felt butterflies in the stomach, the moment I went inside. The shelves are all empty and it really seemed like being in a deserted island.

One of the biggest mistakes Borders did was to outsource its online business to Amazon. Amazon cashed on it and went on to come up with brilliant ways of selling books. It offered free shipping for books ordered online. Today, Amazon even provides you the opportunity to sell the used books.They came up with an electronic reader called Kindle. They patented the E-Ink technology, that gives a close to reading a physical book experience. They went on collaborating with Authors to publish their works on Kindle. When it didn’t go well with the publishers, they went on to start a publishing house of their own. However, the biggest value proposition of kindle is “Think of a book and start reading it in 60 seconds”. I wonder what strategy of brick and mortar stores could compete against that.

For our strategy exam we were asked a question “Now that Borders has filed for Bankruptcy, what should other brick and mortar bookstores do. Should they try to acquire or form alliances with Borders?”. My conclusion was that “the best thing is to acquire, however, because the industry is no more attractive, they should not even do that. They should let the store close and buy the assets”. With Amazon leading in book sales through its online store, people now seldom visit these brick and mortar bookstores. And with the growing popularity of electronic book readers like “Kindle”, the physical books almost seems like being extinct. Last year, for every 100 physical books purchased, there were 115 kindle books purchased.

When I went to an underground library at Purdue, I imagined a library like those shown in movies with ladders to reach out for books. But I was pretty surprised that I couldn’t see anything of that sort. Library had not many books as I would like it to, but had a lot of space to sit and read or surf the web. But, I liked that the library had a large collection of national and international magazines and journals. All, our references are through online libraries as I had mentioned in one of my earlier posts.

Borders closing seems like the beginning of an end, of the brick and mortar bookstores and who knows, the (physical) books itself. I would, for sure, miss this hobby. I wish Borders come up with some new thing and the brick and mortar bookstores remain forever, else, my last book at Borders would be ‘The moveable feast’ by Ernest Hemingway.

Here are some pictures of Borders: