Although you can still get into the country, the Australian Borders are closed. The Borders bookstores, that is. The Bookseller reports that, within the next two weeks, all remaining Borders bookstores in Australia will close, because no buyer for the Australian stores could be found. This will result in 315 people losing their jobs. Previous Borders store closings in Australia had already laid off over 500 people. As we reported earlier, private equity firm the Gores Group has bid on half of Borders’ 405 remaining American stores.

Meanwhile, following up another Borders story, about Kobo taking over Borders’ e-bookstore functions, Galleycat has a post detailing how to transfer Borders e-books to a Kobo account. The instructions explain how to set up an account with Kobo, and have it transfer your Borders e-book library over in a "partner migration." Too bad Barnes & Noble wasn’t able to let those of us with Ereader and Fictionwise accounts do that.

1 COMMENT

  1. Borders Australia is not owned by Borders US … the brand name is licensed. Borders Australia (aka REDGroup) operates under more than one brand name and they are all in trouble and have been for some time.

    The migration from Borders ebook to Kobo ebook is easy technically since it is the same underlying service — Borders ebook store was “powered by Kobo”. I’ve done the merging myself and it was dead simple.

    Fictionwise to B&N is harder since they are completely different systems and Fictionwise also have customers outside of the US. B&N is likely to close Fictionwise by attrition and simply close down “soon” urging customers to download their libraries for a final time. But, that’s just by guess.

The TeleRead community values your civil and thoughtful comments. We use a cache, so expect a delay. Problems? E-mail newteleread@gmail.com.