Bye-Bye Buck-A-Book?

Buck-A-Book in Davis Square is closing. The Hanover Street store closed last December, and the Government Center and Arlington Center stores are also closing (if they haven't already closed).

I asked the clerk if the whole chain is going away, and the answer he gave boiled down to "not yet". He said that the chain had fallen behind in payments to suppliers, which resulted in suppliers refusing to send more stock, which resulted in less and lower quality stock, which resulted in fewer customers and less spending .... you get the picture. Sounds to me like a death spiral, and I don't see how they can recover from it.

Their web site is also gone. I wrote to the webmaster to ask what happened to it, and his reply was that the customer had asked that it be taken down. So I can't even tell you which stores are still open.