[adventured]

It's not a coincidence that Borders, Waldenbooks, Books-A-Million and Barnes & Noble all got, essentially, decimated in the same era that saw the rise of Amazon and its Kindle.

Waldenbooks had been around since 1933. Books-A-Million dates to 1917. Borders to 1971. Barnes & Noble has been around in some form for ~150 years.

It wasn't overexpansion and debt that destroyed them all (yes, some are still standing in a straggling-on-zombie sort of way).

[dredmorbius]

That is not the same as saying cannibalisation-aversion killed the firm.

I'm aware the industry has seen shifts.