Wednesday, February 16, 2011

Is A Borders Near You Closing? [Updated]

Update: Borders has opened a website that's a clearing house for information on the bankruptcy and reorganization. You can find it here, at the Borders Group, Inc. website. Among the points they make on that site are:

  • Borders stores are open for business. We will continue to provide our customers with a vast assortment of books in a warm and relaxing environment - and we intend to build on this. Our stores will continue to be places where families can gather to enjoy enriching events including author readings and signings, book clubs as well as kids storytime and parties.
  • Borders.com is operating as usual. We are fulfilling online orders as customers choose from among more than two million books, music, movies as well as other entertainment items.
  • Our Borders Rewards programs, including Borders Rewards Plus, remain in effect. Customers can continue to earn and redeem their Rewards in stores and on Borders.com and they'll also continue receiving coupons. As always, we are honoring gift cards, which can be redeemed in stores and online at Borders.com.
  • Borders will continue to maintain its strong national presence. Our nationwide network of stores is a key foundation of the Borders brand. Borders, however, will be closing underperforming stores within our network over the next several weeks. Should your local store be affected, please visit Borders.com to find another Borders store near you, or to purchase our vast selection of books and other merchandise on-line.
I know that Borders has to make the claims that business will be going on as usual, but I find it hard to believe that, for example, author signings will progress when Borders isn't getting new books and is having difficulty with paying publishers. I guess we'll see. Locally for me, the few remaining independent booksellers have more book signings than the local Borders anyway.

A pdf is from the Borders bankruptcy filing lists all of the locations that will be closing. While many Florida locations will be closing, strangely it looks like the closest to me (St. Petersburg, FL) is not on the closing list.Click here for a copy of the list of store closings that I uploaded to Google Docs.

Update: A second (and cleaner) list organized by state is here (from the reorganization site above). I will upload a copy to Google Docs or some other external site, in case the Borders site takes down their copies.