They can close half of them and still not make it, the transition to the ebook market is here and is here to stay, a few years from now Borders will probably not exist and in the next 5-10 years most books will be obsolete. There is no need for books anymore everything will be in digital format. Even school text books will be a thing of the past along with newspapers and magazines, 20 years from now print will be totally obsolete, maybe even sooner.
So a badly-run bookstore chain closes down, and as a result you think our entire species will lose its humanity? LMAO Think of all the trees that won't be cut down. Think of all the petrol/gas that won't be burned driving to the store and back. Think of the retail space that will be freed up, lowering rents and providing other more useful business services. Think how much more people will read now they can get books cheap or even the classics for free - the entire library of human written output in seconds, at the click of a mouse. How about looking at some of the positives instead of being a knee-jerk reactionary doomsaying communist? Only old people have such an instinctive hatred of progress.