Bye Bye Borders

The bookseller Borders is history.

Borders Group Inc. said it would liquidate after the second-largest U.S. bookstore chain failed to receive any offers to save it.

Borders, which employs about 10,700 people, scrapped a bankruptcy-court auction scheduled for Tuesday amid the dearth of bids. It said it would ask a judge Thursday to approve a sale to liquidators led by Hilco Merchant Resources and Gordon Brothers Group.

The company said liquidation of its remaining 399 stores could start as soon as Friday, and it is expected to go out of business for good by the end of September.

From a consumer perspective, I always liked Borders more than Barnes & Noble so there’s a part of me that’s sad to see them go. But, to be honest, I’ve only been to a bookstore once this year and I don’t remember buying anything. Ever since I gave Marathon Girl a Kindle, we’ve downloaded all the books we read. The few times I’ve needed hard copies, I’ve ordered them off Amazon. So, yeah, I’m part of the reason Borders is history, but there are now more efficient means of purchasing books. Though a few bookstores will survive, their time has come. Bookstores are simply a victim to technology making life more productive and economical.

From an author perspective I’m not that broken up about Borders demise. Books will survive just like music survived the digital transition.  More efficient means of distribution are already making them cheaper* and available to more and more people. In the past the loss of a bookstore like Borders might have been devastating to authors. Now booksellers are losing their edge. You don’t have to be in a book store to be a best seller. There’s a lot more opportunities for authors now than there was two or three years ago. With some marketing savvy and ability to write books people want to read, the possibilities for authors and publishers are endless. There’s never been a better time to be an author than right now.

* The big six publishers still haven’t gotten this message. For example the upcoming Lee Child novel, The Affair, is priced at $13.99 for Kindle. Not cool. Not cool at all.

Typos You Never Want to Make

Having gone through the book publishing process twice, I can say nearly impossible to produce a book free of typos. Even with several editors and proofreaders in the mix, there are always one or two things that will get overlooked and make it into a book’s first edition. I’ve even found typos and other mistakes in novels from big name authors and publishing houses.

It’s not that writers, editors, and proofreaders or aren’t competent or don’t know what they’re doing. They’re usually word and grammar kings and queens. But they’re also human. (I've made my share of mistakes too.) As a result, there are always one or two errors like a typo or a comma splice that’s going to make it through the first edition. Generally the errors are small, don’t raise any eyebrows, and are quickly corrected in the next printing. That’s why I was surprised to read this weekend that a typo in a book actually made the news until, that is, I read what slipped past one proofreader.

An Australian publisher is reprinting 7,000 cookbooks over a recipe for pasta with "salt and freshly ground black people."

Penguin Group Australia's head of publishing, Bob Sessions, acknowledged the proofreader for the

Pasta Bible should have picked up the error, but called it nothing more than a "silly mistake."

The "Pasta Bible" recipe for spelt tagliatelle with sardines and prosciutto was supposed to call for black pepper.

"We're mortified that this has become an issue of any kind and why anyone would be offended, we don't know," he told The Sydney Morning Herald for a story printed Saturday.

I agree that the typo was unintentional, but were I the book’s proofreader, I’d be embarrassed beyond belief that I didn’t catch that one.