Could Steve Jobs be right? Are books going the way of the dinosaur? Or just traditional booksellers? 

On the heels of two years of disappointing performance, Borders Group announced today that it has suspended its quarterly dividend and is considering a possible sale.

The country's second-largest bookseller managed to swing to a profit, but said it had retained J.P. Morgan and Merrill Lynch as advisers to help "review strategic alternatives," including selling all or parts of the company.

Borders also announced a $42.5 million financing commitment from Bill Ackman's Pershing Square Capital Management, the company's largest shareholder. Pershing Square may also choose to purchase some of the company's international businesses, pursuant to a $125 million backstop commitment.

George Jones, Borders Group's chief executive, expects that the cash loan, paired with the halt to dividends, will allow Borders to stave off liquidity issues and fully fund itself through 2008.

"This will be a challenging year for retailers due to continued uncertainty in the economic environment," Jones said in a statement.  

There are not many likely buyers for Borders, which has a market value of $473 million. Private equity is a possibility. And there has been periodic market speculation that Borders would merge with its larger rival, Barnes & Noble, DealBook notes. While such a deal would presumably attract antritrust scrutiny, the brick and mortar chains are competing more with Wal-Mart and online booksellers than with themselves.

Borders has been struggling to maintain market share from the likes of Wal-Mart and Amazon.com. It operated at a loss for fiscal 2007, and spent the first three quarters of fiscal 2008 in the red.

But Borders did manage to pull out a profit for the most recent quarter.  

The company reported net income of $64.7 million, or $1.10 per share, compared with a loss of $73.6 million, or $1.22 per share, a year earlier. Revenue fell 2 percent to $1.35 billion. Still, analysts expected profits of $1.42 per share on sales of $1.37 billion.