Why I Don't Want Borders To Fail

It looks like Borders is pretty well screwed.  According to stuff all over the internet, they're not paying some publishers, some distributors are not shipping to them, top executives are quitting, and the stock is in free fall.

As I look at my twitter feed and other bookish places I frequent, the reaction to this news seems to range from indifference to schadenfreude.

I think the independent bookstores have earned their schadenfreude.  Borders and B&N have made their lives increasingly difficult, and with so many indies struggling, it must be nice for them to see one of the 800-pound gorillas of bookselling on the ropes.  It was probably put there by the 1200-pound gorilla that is Amazon, which makes Borders kind of a victim of its own success. I'm old enough to remember when the chain stores first opened, and it was amazing to walk into them and go "whoa! This store has everything!"  But, of course, Amazon really does have everything, so if that's all you want in a bookstore, Borders and  B&N are kind of irrelevant.

I wish independent booksellers all kinds of success.  But I still don't want Borders to fail. Here's why:

1.) Borders and B&N have tremendous power over which books get sold and read in this country, and what the covers look like, and whether they'll be sold in hardcover or paperback.  They can make or break just about any book.  Doing away with Borders concentrates all this power in the hands of even fewer people, which is to say, the buyers at B&N.  I just don't think it's ever good in any area to concentrate a lot of power in very few hands.  It's a dicey enough situation with 2 brick-and-mortar gorillas, but going down to one...well, I just don't think it's good for authors or publishers or bookselling.

2.)Borders, being a big gorilla and all, probably owes a lot of money to small pubishers.  Without those payments, which some of these small operations desperately need just to keep the lights on, some of these small publishers will undoubtedly go under. Which is bad enough on its own, but this also means a lot of authors might not get money they desperately need from the sale of their work.  If a publisher goes under, they are taking six months or more of royalty payments due to authors (who, believe me, have their own bills to pay) with them. 

3.) I'm a fan of genre fiction, and the chains, and Borders in particular, are just way better places to find fantasy, science fiction, and horror novels than independent bookstores are, in general.  I don't know why this is.  I remember that, locally, when the Barnes and Noble down the street from Brookline Booksmith (an excellent store where I shop, and if you're in the Boston area, I recommend you shop there too) closed, there was an article in which someone from Booksmith said something to the effect of "now we'll have to beef up our science fiction section" in order to keep the former B&N customers.  I interpreted this to mean that, as an independent store locked in a battle with a big box rival, Booksmith hadn't even been competing for science fiction readers!  If you work for an independent bookstore and can explain this logic, I would actually be really interested to hear it.

(Strangely, most independent bookstores that skimp on fantasy, SF, and Horror tend to have decent mystery sections, which makes the whole thing even harder for me to understand.)

Borders is the only bookstore around here with its own horror section.  Even B&N has folded horror into Fantasy and Science Fiction.

I discovered Charlie Huston, who, as regular readers of this blog know, I think is one of the best writers working today, at Borders.  His Joe Pitt Casebooks have always been hard for me to find at independent bookstores.

Genre fiction is going to take the biggest hit if Borders shuts down. Authors will lose one of their most reliable pathways to readers.  Readers will lose a great place to find and discover Fantasy, SF, and Horror. And the small genre presses for whom shelf space at Borders has been the secret to solvency will take a hit from which they might not recover.

I get paid on Thursday.  I'm gonna go over to Borders and buy a horror novel.