LEX A year after Woolworths went into administration, Borders UK has done the same. Like Woolies, Borders suffered from specific weaknesses. Its imported former US parent’s model of large, edge-of-town bookstores proved poorly suited to a country where book shoppers prefer browsing in high street shops. Borders has some city-centre outlets, but too many are on retail parks, beside Tesco or Asda superstores that aggressively discount bestsellers.
Yet Borders’ downfall symbolises the challenging outlook for bricks-and-mortar booksellers – and is in some ways ironic. The 1997 collapse of Britain’s net book agreement, which allowed publishers to fix prices, ushered in price competition. With Amazon still in its infancy, big-store retailers such as Borders, which entered the UK a year later, were expected to benefit in the long term. But the Booksellers Association says that from 2004 to 2008 large chains’ book market share by value declined from 43.3 per cent to 36.1 per cent. Internet retailers and supermarkets, meanwhile, almost doubled their share, to 16 per cent and 9.6 per cent respectively. Independent bookshops’ share has wavered around 10 per cent.
