AP: Amazon to take over Borders Group’s online bookselling operations. Amazon will become the seller of record, providing inventory, fulfillment and content and customer service for the site.
There’s something sad about today’s announcement, because Amazon is the enemy of real bookstores — places where you are surrounded by literature and culture.
The first Borders store was here in Ann Arbor. I hung out there during the year I spent here on a fellowship at the University of Michigan, and it became my all-time favorite bookstore.
In the last-one-standing school of business survival, maybe Amazon will be that company. Borders’ cave-in is the best news Amazon has had in a long, long time. I don’t think it’s good news, ultimately, for bookstores.