I'm sitting in the midst of an event that is at once bizarre, sad, frightening, and surprising. My local Borders store, like many others around the world, is closing. ‘EVERYTHING ON SALE!’ and ‘NOTHING HELD BACK!’ signs hang all around the store. Additional tables have been put out, with books piled on top. The magazine racks—usually bursting with glossy pages and eye-catching covers—appear ransacked, plain, and sterile. Only the most and the least popular ones remain—the rest having been snatched up by shoppers eager to get their fix (at a lower-than-usual price) while they still can.
The store is packed with people of all ages, shapes, and sizes, with a turnout that better resembles the week before Christmas than a quiet, overcast Sunday afternoon in April. But there's an edge to this crowd. They aren't looking for the right gift—the book they know or hope their loved ones will cherish. No, this has a feral quality. Everyone wants a piece of this dying beast, once so proud and mighty but now collapsing under its own weight.
I see a middle-aged housewife of nondescript appearance rush by, her arms cradling a dozen books. The look of determination in her eyes is unsettling. I wonder if she'll limit herself to what she can carry, or if there'll be multiple trips for this keen bargain hunter. Either way, I make a note to stay out of her way. The lady means business.
At 20-40% off list price, most of the books here can still be bought cheaper online, though. I'm checking my Kindle at each prize catch I spot on the shelves, often dismayed to see the ebook costs as little as a quarter of Borders' discounted price. It is of little wonder that bookstores are dying, if an administrator's sale isn't even enough for a giant like Borders to compete with nimble online-only stores like Amazon and Book Depository.
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Curious onlookers wander in and out, looks of almost-morbid fascination plastered across their faces. This is how a mega bookseller dies. It's really quite pathetic. Back in February, REDgroup Retail, the owner of Borders in Australia, hurried to distance the woes of Borders in the US and UK from the Australian operation. The only common element between the two, they said, was the brand name. Within a week, they'd entered voluntary administration, and now they're closing 17 stores around Australia.
Everyone seems shocked at the suddenness of this closure. In my experience, Borders stores have always been much busier than those of the rivals. Here in Camberwell, you would have predicted that, of the three bookstores clustered around the Junction, it'd be the one to survive longest. They seemed to be doing great business, even with the rise of ebooks and online retailers. Hell, they even released the hit Kobo eReader last year.
But I guess the Global Financial Crisis took its toll on top of the rise in the popularity of online stores, especially as the Australian dollar strengthened against the US dollar—marching along from around 80 cents to parity in less than a year. The high cost of retail mixed with these economic changes may have been too much, too soon for such a large operation to adapt.
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No-one is buying just one book. And who can blame them? The temptation to pick at the carcass before the beast has even died is too strong to resist. The smart shopper stops to think about how much they're spending, and whether they're actually saving money. But how do you stay smart when "everything must go" and refunds or exchanges are not allowed? If you wait, so you can check the alternatives, it might be too late.
I've been here on every holiday, dropped by during all the busy seasons and major sales. I've seen Borders filled to the brim with trigger-happy shoppers. This is different. I sense a madness in the air, like we're just a blink, a hair, an additional price drop away from losing control.
And I wonder what will be left when the dust has settled. How does a mega bookstore die, and what happens to its remains? This is history in the making; I'm watching with morbid fascination.
A week has passed since I was last here, and a lot has changed. The chaos of before has given way to a sense of fatalism. Borders is really closing. Entire rows of shelves stand empty—the remaining books having been moved to be as close to eye-level as possible.
The atmosphere is now completely different. Staff walk around quietly, carrying what few books remained boxed or in storage. They’re not quite zombies, but they have a detached demeanour. You can’t blame them—they have to watch their store die, and soon they’ll need to find new jobs. Morbid curiosity aside, I wouldn’t want to trade places.
Customers appear equally quiet and subdued. They scan the shelves and the piles on tables, hoping to spot a bargain—hoping something will catch their eye. There's an aimless quality to the wandering of these people. I get the impression they are in the store because they think they should be—because there are books here that need to be sold; because soon there won't be books here at all. People hang around, reluctant to leave, until they can no longer justify meandering about the store gawking at the non-present books. The dust is already settling, and the store's still open.
There’s something about a bookshop with empty bookshelves that feels very wrong. Much like any bookshelf without books seems odd to look at, but on a grander scale. It’s unsettling, like the world is losing some of its magic. And it’s hard to wrap my head around the idea that books are not actually disappearing—they’re being sold, and presumably placed on bookshelves in people’s homes. The absence of replacement books, waiting to be stocked on the shelves, establishes a vibe akin to the end of the world. I guess in some, admittedly minor and trivial, ways, it is. You could even make the case that it is the end of infinite worlds, because each book can transport its reader to another world.
That’s the real tragedy here—that for someone the closure of Borders Camberwell is a life-changing affair. For someone, it removes an opportunity to fall in love with the printed word. For someone, it signals the loss of their escape from the dreary world of everyday life. Many will replace the store with another—perhaps Dymocks just down the road, or a bookshop located in another suburb or online. But what of the people for whom this store was a daily ritual or a promised land?
I can only pray that other bookshops will survive, for to lose them like this would be a tragedy of untold proportions.
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