I know the politically correct thing to say about Border's bankruptcy and closing of 200 stores is: "gosh, anything that diminishes books diminishes all of us."
Bull. They're a corporation who had no problem putting as many independents as they could out of business. I may have sympathy for the employees, but I have none for Borders.
Or the publishers, who thought it was a good idea to put most of their business into three baskets -- Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Borders. Instead of the 8,000 or more independent bookstores that existed 20 years ago.
Biodiversity is a bitch.
And while the publishers are suffering, they might want to think about how assiduously Amazon is trying to screw them with Kindle, and B & N is trying to screw them with the Nook.
Didn't see it coming?
Of course not. The dinosaurs never see the asteroids coming. But they should have realized SOMETHING was coming, and instead of having 8,000 individual buyers to sell to, that maybe it wasn't particularly safe to have 3 buyers.
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That goes double for the toy makers (ToysRUs), record makers (Tower Books), sports card producers (Shopko, Walmart), and every other short sighted industry (pretty much all of them) that bet on the big box stores...
It was a bad bet in the long run.
But the guys who made those decisions are long gone, I guess...
It's the retail version of "too big to fail."
I suspect it's a law of nature not to put too many of your species in one habitat.
The more stores the better, the more local the better for the health of the total environment.
I meant Tower Records....
Not exactly sure of your logic when you say that Amazon is trying to screw the publishers with Kindle and B&N with Nook. The amount received by a publisher for each book sold is between the full hardcover and paper back amounts, but the publisher does not have to deal with printing, shipping and returns for those books. Plus so far statistics indicate that the number of books read goes up for those on the e-book readers.
Publishers seem to be doing well with e-books.
"The dinosaurs never see the asteroids coming."
Awesome, simply awesome.
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