Is the closing of Borders a freak or a trend?
How would one go about getting people to care more about the written word or has the internet all but killed book stores?
Unfortunately it is probably an irreversible trend. Books and the written word are forever changed and I, for one, believe we will lose something in the change. The Internet make it very difficult, if not impossible, for a book store to survive long term.
It's a mixture of the internet, and ebooks, although ultimately it is the consumers pushing the prices of information, ebooks, music, film, etc. to ZERO.
Technology is going to have drastic implications for the landscape of our generations indeed. All we can do it try to be as informed as we can when consuming. Teach people what it takes to put those shoes from China on their feet, that ereader into their hands, and what the peripheral costs are to artists across the board.
As an ebook author myself I wonder what writers are going to do to make money? What happens if writer, musicians, painters, and photographers simply throw up their hands and stop producing?
Cheers and great post, I hope is garners plenty of attention. Personally the big corporate book stores need to go anyways.
I wonder if there aren't ways of fixing this problem if authors start treating their books, even ebooks like computer programs or online art. Maybe see if a programmer can create code that makes the books unpirateable. I see hurdles but....
I worked at Borders for several years, and I would say that while the decrease of sales was a factor, it wasn't the main reason they went under. There was a lot of mismanagement going on behind the scenes. They went through a few CEOS in the few years I was there trying to turn things around, for example, and frankly, their Borders Rewards card cost them far more money than it ever made. I could go on. The truth is that what happened to Borders was more a trend of a bad economy than a sign that the love of the written word's dying out.
Thank you so much for you r answer and the information that it carries. It is nice to know a little bit more about the inner workings of what happened. in my area it is only Barns and Noble. Have you ever considered starting up your own book store?
I haven't really, though it is a thought. Still, I would love being an author more than selling their works. How about you?
All the Borders stores by me have closed so I am afraid it is a trend.
by GW Nichols 15 years ago
Over the years I've noticed more and more people in published literature following to the conformed style of everyone else. Dry unimaginative, and some of it feels like reading instructions to working on your car. What happened to us, the Bards, and Tale-Weavers? We used to master the written word...
by Christin Sander 13 years ago
Now that Borders has announced it is definitely closing all of it's stores - will you miss it?Do you think bookstores are going the way of the dinosaurs? Big box stores eliminated so many "mom and pop" book shops - now Amazon and eBooks are taking over... I know my SO and I used to go on...
by Cyn Lee 13 years ago
How do you know when you're a good writer?
by Steve Witschel 12 years ago
Does written word have more of an impact than spoken word? Why or why not?My feeling is that is does indeed carry more weight. My initial feelings as to why are that when something is written, it has the element of sustainability. It's more permanent. Also, when someone reads an article, or book,...
by Genna Eastman 7 months ago
Please join me in noteworthy praise of John's recent poem:The Written Word Is Like a Birdhttps://letterpile.com/poetry/the-writt … ike-a-birdI love how this acclaims the freedom of the poetic voice and creative license. Beautifully and cleverly penned, John. You have always been...
by R.S. Hutchinson 14 years ago
Email just received from Borders is titled "Fond Farewell" as they close their doors forever. but.... now everything is on sale beginning at midnight 7/22/11.Happy Shopping!
Copyright © 2025 The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers on this website. HubPages® is a registered trademark of The Arena Platform, Inc. Other product and company names shown may be trademarks of their respective owners. The Arena Media Brands, LLC and respective content providers to this website may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website.
Copyright © 2025 Maven Media Brands, LLC and respective owners.
As a user in the EEA, your approval is needed on a few things. To provide a better website experience, hubpages.com uses cookies (and other similar technologies) and may collect, process, and share personal data. Please choose which areas of our service you consent to our doing so.
For more information on managing or withdrawing consents and how we handle data, visit our Privacy Policy at: https://corp.maven.io/privacy-policy
Show DetailsNecessary | |
---|---|
HubPages Device ID | This is used to identify particular browsers or devices when the access the service, and is used for security reasons. |
Login | This is necessary to sign in to the HubPages Service. |
Google Recaptcha | This is used to prevent bots and spam. (Privacy Policy) |
Akismet | This is used to detect comment spam. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Google Analytics | This is used to provide data on traffic to our website, all personally identifyable data is anonymized. (Privacy Policy) |
HubPages Traffic Pixel | This is used to collect data on traffic to articles and other pages on our site. Unless you are signed in to a HubPages account, all personally identifiable information is anonymized. |
Amazon Web Services | This is a cloud services platform that we used to host our service. (Privacy Policy) |
Cloudflare | This is a cloud CDN service that we use to efficiently deliver files required for our service to operate such as javascript, cascading style sheets, images, and videos. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Hosted Libraries | Javascript software libraries such as jQuery are loaded at endpoints on the googleapis.com or gstatic.com domains, for performance and efficiency reasons. (Privacy Policy) |
Features | |
---|---|
Google Custom Search | This is feature allows you to search the site. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Maps | Some articles have Google Maps embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Google Charts | This is used to display charts and graphs on articles and the author center. (Privacy Policy) |
Google AdSense Host API | This service allows you to sign up for or associate a Google AdSense account with HubPages, so that you can earn money from ads on your articles. No data is shared unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Google YouTube | Some articles have YouTube videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Vimeo | Some articles have Vimeo videos embedded in them. (Privacy Policy) |
Paypal | This is used for a registered author who enrolls in the HubPages Earnings program and requests to be paid via PayPal. No data is shared with Paypal unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Login | You can use this to streamline signing up for, or signing in to your Hubpages account. No data is shared with Facebook unless you engage with this feature. (Privacy Policy) |
Maven | This supports the Maven widget and search functionality. (Privacy Policy) |
Marketing | |
---|---|
Google AdSense | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Google DoubleClick | Google provides ad serving technology and runs an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Index Exchange | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Sovrn | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Facebook Ads | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Unified Ad Marketplace | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
AppNexus | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Openx | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Rubicon Project | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
TripleLift | This is an ad network. (Privacy Policy) |
Say Media | We partner with Say Media to deliver ad campaigns on our sites. (Privacy Policy) |
Remarketing Pixels | We may use remarketing pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to advertise the HubPages Service to people that have visited our sites. |
Conversion Tracking Pixels | We may use conversion tracking pixels from advertising networks such as Google AdWords, Bing Ads, and Facebook in order to identify when an advertisement has successfully resulted in the desired action, such as signing up for the HubPages Service or publishing an article on the HubPages Service. |
Statistics | |
---|---|
Author Google Analytics | This is used to provide traffic data and reports to the authors of articles on the HubPages Service. (Privacy Policy) |
Comscore | ComScore is a media measurement and analytics company providing marketing data and analytics to enterprises, media and advertising agencies, and publishers. Non-consent will result in ComScore only processing obfuscated personal data. (Privacy Policy) |
Amazon Tracking Pixel | Some articles display amazon products as part of the Amazon Affiliate program, this pixel provides traffic statistics for those products (Privacy Policy) |
Clicksco | This is a data management platform studying reader behavior (Privacy Policy) |