All Borders stores in Australia to close

[sabredog]

Well, Borders in Australia is now officially GONE

http://www.smh.com.au/small-business...602-1fhsx.html

I would assume their ebook estore, a pretty good one at that, will go as well.

Kobo, please take on the estore here and make it your own!

[Kiwiscott]

Not good for the Aussies, but its good news about the New Zealand stores, hopefully they will continue to trade long term.
Even with the limited stock that they have been running for the last few months, its still the best bookshop in my neck of the woods.

[viviena]

Oh no. That leaves only Dymocks and a rather useless Angus and Robertson for bookstores in my burb. Still, I thought Borders AU must have been in desperate straits indeed when my local Borders store was even trying to sell all their remaining display furniture and fixtures.

I wonder how Kobo will distribute their new ereader down here?

[HarleyB]

That really is a shame.
I'm so glad I took the step of doing the unmentionable thing to all my Borders ebooks - at least I know I will still be able to access them. Although hopefully Kobobooks will somehow take over the ebook store.

But like viviena I wonder who will distribute the Kobo now? Will we ever see the new Touch in Australia?

[caleb72]

Originally Posted by sabredog

I would assume their ebook estore, a pretty good one at that, will go as well.

I think Borders online is staying open for business - and I hope that continues.

I wonder how Kobo will distribute their new ereader down here?

Apparently Medibank Private -

I too wonder what Kobo is going to do to stay relevant in Australia.

[HarleyB]

Originally Posted by caleb72

Apparently Medibank Private -

Of course!

I had forgotten all I need to do is change my health insurance.

[Joonbug1]

lol
that's cool

[taming]

I'd look for new partnerships--not necessarily with booksellers. In Canada, readers can be purchased at several big-box electronic stores and at Walmart. I know folks who used Borders in the US had their books, buying history etc, merged into US kobobooks.com accounts. From what I can tell, it went well.

[J. Strnad]

Tying ereaders to bookstores seems, in hindsight, like a dumb idea since it instigated the Gillette model on ebooks: Lose money on the razor (reader) and make your profit on the blades (books).

We'd have been better served if electronics stores had, from the very first, sold readers that were independent of any bookstore. Maybe then a single standard would have emerged, or stores would support multiple formats.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by J. Strnad

Tying ereaders to bookstores seems, in hindsight, like a dumb idea since it instigated the Gillette model on ebooks: Lose money on the razor (reader) and make your profit on the blades (books).

We'd have been better served if electronics stores had, from the very first, sold readers that were independent of any bookstore. Maybe then a single standard would have emerged, or stores would support multiple formats.

You do remember this *was* the status quo before Kindle, right?
And Sony abandoned *their* walled garden to follow the standards bandwagon with the result that they're down to 4th place in sales and leapfrogged by two newcomers is barely a year.

It can be argued that it was the Walled garden approach is what allowed ebook readers to go from hobbyist tech toy/PC peripheral to a consumer item. (Not saying it is TRUTH, just that it can be debated. )

Even today, there are both hardware vendors and ebookstores playing by agnostic rules; and being outsold 10 to 1. The same thing happened in digital music; the Apple walled garden steam-rollered the multivendor standard approach.

The evidence so far suggests that in some businesses tight integration to make tech more accessible can be more compelling to the mass market than more open approaches. It is still too early in the game to say ebooks are one such, but the evidence (so far!) leans that way.

[MrsJoseph]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

You do remember this *was* the status quo before Kindle, right?
And Sony abandoned *their* walled garden to follow the standards bandwagon with the result that they're down to 4th place in sales and leapfrogged by two newcomers is barely a year.

It can be argued that it was the Walled garden approach is what allowed ebook readers to go from hobbyist tech toy/PC peripheral to a consumer item. (Not saying it is TRUTH, just that it can be debated. )

Even today, there are both hardware vendors and ebookstores playing by agnostic rules; and being outsold 10 to 1. The same thing happened in digital music; the Apple walled garden steam-rollered the multivendor standard approach.

The evidence so far suggests that in some businesses tight integration to make tech more accessible can be more compelling to the mass market than more open approaches. It is still too early in the game to say ebooks are one such, but the evidence (so far!) leans that way.

I don't think it was the walled garden approach that helped Apple and others do well - it was the rest of the platform and ease of use. I remember when the first Sony Readers came out...they were horribly complicated to use. Considering that ereading was very niche at the time and that most of us were ereading on our computers...it wasn't a good approach.

I'm sure that some of the issues that other non-handcuff device makers are having is a lack of platform: the standard consumer has become used to not shopping around. They don't always know that you can buy from the publisher (and others) direct. They haven't heard of Smashwords, fictionwise etc.