If you’re one of the five people who purchased eBooks through Borders, I strongly recommend you log into your account and follow their instructions to port your library to Kobo. Teleread is reporting that Borders is no longer operating their own eBookstore, and any attempts at logging in or purchasing will lead you to instructions on how to move to Kobo instead. This should be fairly seamless since Kobo was doing all the behind the scenes work on Borders eBookstore. Any Borders eBooks you might have should work fine in Kobo’s desktop and smartphone applications, and of course, those books will continue to work on Kobo eReaders and any other devices you may have purchased from Borders.
It’s likely coincidental, but while Borders is losing one partner in Kobo, they may have found a buyer! Yes, someone actually wants to buy Borders, debt and all. The Gores Group is looking to buy roughly half of Borders stores, and the fate of the rest remains unclear. The Wall Street Journal has more details, but it all sounds very preliminary. I do wonder what the Gores Group wants with Borders, since the market headwinds for physical bookstores are just getting worse, and now Borders doesn’t even have access to an eBook partner. But it’s possible there’s a plan to reboot an eBookstore for them, and cutting several hundred stores is certainly one way to cut the dead weight out of the chain!
On a tangential note, 5 years ago today was my last day as a Borders employee…who knew that I would still be following and tracking the company all these years later!
If you’ve ported your Borders library, did it go smoothly? Let us know in the comments!