The display tables near the door of Borders bookshop in Islington, north London, were once among the most desirable real estate in the business, a bookselling Belgravia on which publishers lobbied hard for their most select titles to be prominently displayed.
It was a very different story today, as customers picked the store clean on its final day of trading after the retail chain went into administration last month, 12 years after opening in Britain. The group's 45 Borders and Books Etc stores have been offloading the last of their stock for some weeks, but slashed prices by 90% on all remaining stock for the final day's sale.
It was a forlorn scene; the literary fiction and big name biographies that the shop once sold to Islington's bookish were long gone, leaving a small and somewhat more prosaic selection on display by the door. Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink's autobiography, now 69p; Letters to Penthouse VIII, 79p; something called Troll Blood ("Savage spirits, Viking villains"), 69p.
Most of the shelves had already been emptied, and upstairs workmen were dismantling plywood display cabinets and taking down signs, but it did little to slow the scrum for bargains. Shoppers carrying eclectic armfuls of books snaked in line to the back of the store, happy to queue to pay even with 50 waiting ahead of them.
Julio Martino, a theatre director, had filled a basket with books, including some French poetry, "a lot of film-related stuff", and a number of titles he'd never heard of, several of which, he admitted, he was unlikely ever to read. "I've also got a couple of really rubbish films but they are so cheap you can't really go wrong. I can always sell them on eBay." It was a shame for the area to see the store go, he said, and for the 1,100 people who will lose their jobs across the group, but "a lot of problems that have arisen are problems that were already there. If there's anyone to feel sorry for it's the small bookshops who have been struggling for years because of places like this."
Linda McLean, a journalist on a parenting magazine, had found just one book that tempted her, a biography of the model Marie Helvin, but wasn't sure if it was worth queueing for. "I often used to come in and look at the art books and the magazines, and there aren't many places where you can get a really good selection these days. That's another 40 or so outlets gone now. But I guess this just is another nail in the coffin for books and magazines."
