The Barnes & Noble online marketing team sent a mass email to blog editors today, requesting that bloggers change Borders links to Barnes & Noble links.

Here’s an excerpt from the email: “Barnes & Noble recently purchased most of the Borders trademarks and intellectual property in a recent auction. As a result of this purchase, we started transitioning the Borders.com website to Barnesandnoble.com via redirects. We noticed that your site is currently linking to http://www.borders.com, and I’d like to reach out and ask you to kindly update your links to the corresponding URLs on Barnesandnoble.com. We have redirects in place for many Borders.com pages, so you can use that to help you determine the correct landing pages on Barnesandnoble.com.”

What do you think about this mass email? We currently have more than 420 different posts on GalleyCat linking to Borders news, so it is a pretty major request. Follow this link if you want to read more about Barnes & Noble’s purchase of Borders’ intellectual property.

Borders has finally closed down its online store and the website now redirects to Barnes & Noble’s website. Borders shoppers are greeted by a “Welcome Borders Customer” message with an introduction to Barnes & Noble’s membership program, a free two month offer and a 10% off coupon.

This is all very new. Just this morning, this GalleyCat contributor visited the old Borders.com page, which was still an active link. It even had links to the Borders Facebook and Twitter pages. Those social media accounts, whose last posts were from September 13th, have now been taken over by Barnes & Noble. Earlier today, Barnes & Noble updated both with an image of the Barnes & Noble logo with the Borders logo beneath it.

Last month, Barnes & Noble purchased intellectual property from Borders during the bookseller’s liquidation. Today the Borders Twitter account tweeted: “Barnes & Noble appreciates the role bookstores play & we are sorry that Borders closed. Pls follow @BNBuzz to continue your love of reading.”

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As Borders closed forever this weekend, one patron snapped a photograph of a bitter bookseller’s manifesto at an unidentified store: “Things We Never Told You: Ode to a Bookstore Death.”

The massive list (embedded above) collected years worth of pent-up sarcasm and frustration, spawning thousands of angry (and bemused) reactions from bookstore patrons.

Below, we’ve collected five controversial statements from the list. What do you think about the list? (Via Matt Staggs)

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Borders will close forever on Sunday, leaving tens of thousands of booksellers out of work. Below, we’ve included the final closure schedule for the remaining stores.

In an exit interview with the Detroit News, CEO Mike Edwards confessed that the company had been “in perpetual crisis” during his tenure.

Here’s an excerpt from the article: “Edwards tried to keep the final week at the headquarters festive, with job fairs, resume writing workshops and champagne parties … He is an unemployed chief executive without a grudge and with a $125,000 severance check. He doesn’t know where he’s headed — perhaps Southern California or Oregon, where he led Lucy Activewear and Ellington Leather — but he said he has received job offers from companies impressed with his handling of Borders’ bankruptcy.”

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Reddit user Jessers25 took the photo embedded above at a Borders going out of business sale. In the photo, a Thomas Jefferson quote sat on a bare wall with a pile of dismantled bookshelves: “I cannot live without books.”

The photo has spawned hundreds of comments and a raging debate about the future of bookstores.

No matter what you think about mega-bookstores or Borders management, this is a sad year for everyone who loves books. If you want to help, the Help Ex-Borders Employees page is collecting resources for the thousands of booksellers looking for work.

Today Borders revealed that president Michael Edwards and chief financial officer Scott Henry have been cut. Former senior vice president of restructuring Holly Felder Etlin has been appointed to replace Edwards. Chief accounting officer Glen Tomaszewski will replace Henry.

Here’s more about the new president:  “Ms. Etlin, age 54, has served as the Company’s Senior Vice President — Restructuring since February 2011. Ms. Etlin is a Managing Director of AlixPartners, a global business advisory firm that provides financial restructuring, bankruptcy reorganization and other advisory services. AlixPartners has been engaged since February 2011 to provide financial restructuring and bankruptcy reorganization advisory services to the Company and its subsidiaries.”

The Borders liquidation will close the company’s remaining 399 stores and cut around 10,700 employees.

Books-A-Million has ended its bid for 30 Borders stores. According to a brief release from the bookseller, “the parties could not agree on terms and the going out of business sales at these locations commenced.”

The announcement ended hopes that a few Borders locations could be saved. Books-A-Million CEO Clyde B. Anderson had this statement: “we worked exhaustively in an effort to acquire these stores and reach agreements with all of the parties whose consent was necessary. Unfortunately, we were unsuccessful.”

Last week publishing professionals around the country rallied to support Borders employees. A new job-focused blog was launched “To Help ex-Borders employees find work, make rent, have food and survive.” Mediabistro.com’s Job Post also added a few job leads for bookstore employees. (Via paidContent)

Is the Borders’ liquidation the beginning of the end for independent booksellers? The American Booksellers Association (ABA) doesn’t think so.

The ABA released this statement: “It is jolting news for any community when a bookstore closes, and independent booksellers are saddened to hear that almost 11,000 Borders employees will be losing their jobs. However, we do not believe that the Borders closing is a bellwether for the future of bricks-and-mortar bookstores nationwide. Rather, it is, in part, an unfortunate right-sizing of a bookstore landscape that has suffered from overexpansion in certain markets.”

What do you think? The ABA also compiled a link-filled collection of resources for independent bookstores, offering practical and successful ideas for surviving this difficult time for bookstores. We’ve collected our favorite suggestions below, adding some tips from GalleyCat features as well.

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Books-A-Million has made a last-minute bid for up to 35 Borders stores today.  Publishers Marketplace news editor Sarah Weinman tweeted the store locations from the courtroom.

Bloomberg reported on the hearing: “Books-A-Million would likely buy inventory from the liquidators, led by Hilco Merchant Resources and Gordon Brothers Retail Partners LLC, and use a similar cost structure. The liquidators agreed to pay about 72 percent of the cost value of Borders’ inventory, which was estimated at $350 million to $395 million.”

At the same time, publishing professionals around the country rallied to support Borders employees. A new job-focused blog was launched “To Help ex-Borders employees find work, make rent, have food and survive.” Mediabistro.com’s Job Post also added a few job leads for bookstore employees.

As GalleyCat previously reported, Borders Group is preparing for liquidation, which will close the company’s remaining 399 stores and leave roughly 10,700 employees out of work.

We’re always posting about new job opportunities, but thanks to an interesting topic of discussion posted by Penguin Group’s Colleen Lindsay about helping those soon-to-be unemployed workers, we decided to draw attention to several openings that might be of interest to Borders employees.

For instance, Bauman Rare Books is looking for a well-read bookseller in Las Vegas, while Oxford University Press is in the market for an online editor. Lindsay’s company, Penguin, is currently on the hunt for an eBook Producer/managing editor in its New York office. These are just a few of the job openings we’ve seen this week on the mediabistro.com job board. Read more