Friday, November 27, 2009

Deathray and Borders.

The credit crunch (silly name) continues to bite, though maybe in the case of Borders that's credit crunch plus Internet and supermarket competition:

Borders UK, the bookshop chain, went into administration last night, putting 1,150 jobs at risk and raising the prospect of a firesale before Christmas.

It also seems we might not be seeing further issues of Deathray, which is a shame:

As some of you may have heard, and others who popped along the shops to pick up the latest issue of Filmstar may have feared, Blackfish's two magazines, Filmstar and Death Ray, are currently 'on hold'. What this means is that there will not be another issue of either of them along for a number of weeks – or, likely, months. Indeed, whether there will ever be another issue of either is a moot point, and at this moment in time impossible to answer. But we hope so.

3 comments:

Inchy said...

I suppose the problem that a chain like Borders has is that books themselves are almost perfectly designed to be sold via the internet. They're easily transportable, rugged and easy to list online. I like to buy my books in advance, so I'm never left with the nightmare scenario where I finish a book and, God/Buddha/Flying Spaghetti Monster forbid, I don't have a fresh one to start!

Having said all that, there's something quite therapeutic about trawling the shelves of a well-stocked bookshop and gambling on a book/author on a whim.

In an ideal world we'd have both, but I can't see some bricks and mortar retailers surviving the next few years, unfortunately.

Anonymous said...

I want to buy books at Borders, I often try to buy books at Borders. They simply never have anything I'm looking for, but they devote entirely too much space towards carrying every Star Trek, Starwars and Halo, then 3 copies of every King and Koontz book.

Its great if you want to find someone new, but they'll rarely have the first book... and there's an Amazon warehouse locally and free shipping will get it to me in under 48 hours

Anonymous said...

I picked up Orbus on Friday from Borders at 50% normal value, to good to turn down ... Sorry Neal ;)

I was going to wait until it came out in paperback due to serious storage issues, but the 50%/60% off at the moment just broke me.