I went to Borders this week to check out their getting-out-of-Dodge sale. I felt my membership card deserved one last scan - though it may not have been needed. I wouldn't know. I didn't buy anything. Here's what happened...
The first thing I noticed was that the same liquidation company that handled the closure of Virgin Megastore and Circuit City here in the U.S. was also handling Borders. They use the same discount signs and the same price guide chart that's convieniently taped all over the store. It's a good time to own a discount stockcard sign company!
How are the sales? On Tuesday, it was 10% off most books (that's about a 1/2 dollar off retail), 30% off romance novels (about $1.50 - $2.00 dollars off), and 40% off magazines. Items I was hoping to find (Doctor Who magazine, some Agatha Christies) were not there...kind of. They had Dame Agatha's worst book - Passenger to Frankfurt. They had a bunch of James Bond novels, including Quantum of Solace, and some Doctor Who novels, plenty of those Twilight/Vampire Diary things, if that's you're cup of tea, only a few Harry Potters, LOTS of Harry Potter wannabes Lemony Snicket, Percy Jackson, that 39 clues/ bar code thing where you're not just buy to read a book (how silly is that ;), but to enter an online contest, lots of manga, lots of dog-earred comic book trades, lots of cookbooks, bios, science,business, westerns, horror, sci-fi, and other books you promise to get around to someday.
The big issue for me was that the sale wasn't so great. I always reserve the right to walk out empty-handed. I imagine all the stuff that went unsold will appear in some new discount bookshop like the DVD stores that have popped up around NYC lately. I'll go cut up my card now - at least that was free. Barnes and Noble charges a processing fee (huh?) for a 10- 20% discount membership. Wouldn't that be covered by the amount I'm paying to get the card?
"Bonk!"
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