Borders, Amazon, & E-Books

this week Borders announced it was going out of business. Borders was a bookstore that was popular in the 1990s and now is going to vanish. Most people forget Borders use to sell movies and music along with books. Borders from what I remember had a pretty good café that was somewhat of a Waldenbooks which was a bookstore that usually was located in malls was a subsidiary of Borders will also be going out of business. Borders had 399 stores and close to 11,000 employees. The store should finally be out of business in September.

Some people are saddened that Borders is going out of business, however I view Borders going out of business as an overall positive. The marketplace lets people know when they are doing the right or wrong thing. Even though people are claiming e-books are what caused Borders to go out of business I would argue Borders has been in trouble ever since Amazon. E-books as of 2010 made up 9% of all consumer book sales. The Kindle has been attracting attention for readers. The first Kindle sold in 2007 for 2007 for $399. Right now someone can buy a Kindle for $139. Not only has the Kindle become cheaper but the quality has improved. The Kindle is smaller, has built in Wi-Fi, and can be read in sunlight. The number of books that can be read on the Kindle has also dramatically increased from when it debuted. When the Kindle first launched people could only download 88,000 books. In July of 2011 people could download more than 950,000 books (including free books). Over time the number of books will no doubt increase. I have a feeling out of print books could be republished since anyone with a Kindle and could download it. Another benefit is e-books allow people to download books in a minute which is much faster than getting in the car and driving to the bookstore. The downloadable books also seem to be cheaper than the physical copy of the book. Profit margins should be going up for e-books since the cost of the marginal cost of an e-book is nothing (just the file). The only major costs I could see would be the rights to the ownership of the work.

At any rate, book stores maybe extinct in the next 10 years. However, I think we will have more books than ever available. The Kindle 2 can hold around 1,500 books which could save a lot of book shelves. Since the data is electronic it would also be easier to store notes and information instead of highlighting like people usually do.

If anything the e-book would put more book stores out of business in the long term. The benefit though will be more reading done by everyone which is a positive thing. Knowledge is power.