{"id":202,"date":"2011-07-21T18:38:06","date_gmt":"2011-07-21T22:38:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/?p=202"},"modified":"2011-07-22T11:38:34","modified_gmt":"2011-07-22T15:38:34","slug":"whats-a-kobo-again","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/2011\/07\/21\/whats-a-kobo-again\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Borders Books Failed and Barnes &#038; Noble Didn&#8217;t"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a rel=\"attachment wp-att-203\" href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/2011\/07\/21\/whats-a-kobo-again\/20110625_kobo_exist_02\/\"><\/a><a title=\"Readers Without Borders\" href=\"http:\/\/www.slate.com\/id\/2299642\/\" target=\"_blank\">Annie Lowrey at <em>Slate<\/em> wrote a decent summary <\/a>of how a series of bad\u00a0top-level decisions laid\u00a0the course for Borders Books closing.\u00a0 In a nutshell: The internet didn&#8217;t do it.<\/p>\n<p>Granted, in today&#8217;s bookselling world, that&#8217;s like saying, &#8220;No.\u00a0 Really.\u00a0 It <em>wasn&#8217;t <\/em>the butler.&#8221;\u00a0 Which is basically what Lowrey\u00a0says, at least for the most part.\u00a0 She compares the Borders strategy to the much more successful Barnes and Noble business model, and then slips in later that, well&#8230;Barnes and Nobles&#8217; brick-and-mortar stores aren&#8217;t exactly tearing up the marketplace, either, thanks to e-readers and e-commerce.<\/p>\n<p>Ironically, the e-book revolution that&#8217;s killing Barnes and Nobles&#8217; big-box stores is saving its profit margins, thanks to the Nook.<\/p>\n<p>So the butler put the maid up to it.<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>But Lowrey does make a number of interesting points.\u00a0 Among them:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;&#8230;Borders neglected e-books, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.fastcompany.com\/1754259\/amazon-declares-the-e-book-era-has-arrived\" target=\"_blank\">fast becoming as popular<\/a> as their paper cousins. The Amazon Kindle came out in November 2007. Barnes &amp; Noble debuted its Nook, now sold in Walmart and Best Buy as well, in November 2009. Apple&#8217;s iPad came out in April 2010. Borders&#8217; Kobo (ever heard of it?) came out last, just a year ago.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>Which brings us to a little something that hit inboxes of Borders Rewards members on July 19th.\u00a0 Remember, Borders announced its closing on July 18th.<\/p>\n<div id=\"attachment_230\"  class=\"wp-caption module image aligncenter\" style=\"max-width: 460px;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/2011\/07\/21\/whats-a-kobo-again\/bordersad\/\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-230\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/files\/2011\/07\/bordersad-e1311349046369.jpg\" alt=\"\" title=\"bordersad\" width=\"460\" height=\"421\" class=\"size-full wp-image-230\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">Borders email promotion<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Beyond the obvious, &#8220;Can I move my Kobo books to a Nook, iPad, or Kindle&#8221; question, the weird timing of this message leaves me scratching my head.\u00a0 Can you even still buy Kobo books?\u00a0 Once Borders is gone, will Kobo owners get tech support?\u00a0 Can they buy any more books for their e-readers?\u00a0 And will Kobo owners be able to get in on the liquidation specials, or are they stuck paying full price?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Annie Lowrey at Slate wrote a decent summary of how a series of bad\u00a0top-level decisions laid\u00a0the course for Borders Books closing.\u00a0 In a nutshell: The internet didn&#8217;t do it. Granted, in today&#8217;s bookselling world, that&#8217;s like saying, &#8220;No.\u00a0 Really.\u00a0 It wasn&#8217;t the butler.&#8221;\u00a0 Which is basically what Lowrey\u00a0says, at least for the most part.\u00a0 She [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[14],"tags":[65,35,514],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=202"}],"version-history":[{"count":16,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":232,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/202\/revisions\/232"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/new-hampshire\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}