Borders is closing their store in Miami-area Aventura next month, even though “locals will tell you [it] always seems crowded” according to the local NBC station. “A Borders spokesperson told us on the phone from the company’s headquarters in Michigan that the Aventura store just wasn’t making enough money to justify keeping it open, especially with rents for such a large space as high as they are for a prime location on Biscayne Boulevard.”
Owner of the area’s Books and Books Mitchell Kaplan remarks, “It’s a very precarious marketplace right now for all bookstores and for publishers as well.” He adds, “I think that like all of us have to do in business, they’re gonna have to remake themselves, sort of figure out who exactly they are and what community they’re serving.”
NBC Miami
Shirley Leishman Books, Ottawa’s oldest independent bookstore, will close after 51 years in business. As is often the case: “Traffic is down. Rent is up. Online book companies and big chains offer profit-killing discounts that her independent store can’t match.” Three years ago the store was pushed into a larger, more expensive space in the mall where they are located, which lowered their traffic.
Ottawa Citizen
San Francisco architectural bookstore William Stout is opening a new store in Berkeley, with new, used, and out-of-print books on architecture, interiors, photography, arts and crafts and urban planning. Staffer Matthew Swiezynski, who will run the new store, says “in San Francisco an interest in books is dying.” Stout has a publishing collaboration with the University of California, Berkeley.
Berkeleyside post