Bright lights, good coffee ... and great books (even hardbacks) are the key to injecting new life into bookshops, says James Daunt, chief executive of Waterstones
James Daunt is a bookseller with a penchant for stories (Anna Karenina is one of his favourites), who is also an inveterate risk taker. In 2011, he watched a Russian oligarch named Alexander Mamut make an insane bid for commercial suicide. And then he volunteered to join him.
Mamut’s crazy venture (“Nobody invests in bookshops to make money,” says Daunt) was his bid for Waterstones, then an ailing chain, burdened with several million pounds of debt. Daunt’s reckless career move was to join Mamut as his CEO, a job widely seen as a poisoned chalice. Many Waterstones-watchers predicted various dire scenarios.
Sometimes, however, stories have happy endings. And this month, Daunt was able to announce that, finally, Waterstones is about to break even.
The news that, for the first time in a long time, Waterstones is beginning to show signs of modest growth (new shops; new optimism; new markets) is symbolic of a sea-change in the world of books. Whisper it discreetly, but the book is showing signs of making a modest comeback, with British bookselling exhibiting the symptoms of an unfamiliar, fragile optimism.
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Mamut’s crazy venture (“Nobody invests in bookshops to make money,” says Daunt) was his bid for Waterstones, then an ailing chain, burdened with several million pounds of debt. Daunt’s reckless career move was to join Mamut as his CEO, a job widely seen as a poisoned chalice. Many Waterstones-watchers predicted various dire scenarios.
Sometimes, however, stories have happy endings. And this month, Daunt was able to announce that, finally, Waterstones is about to break even.
The news that, for the first time in a long time, Waterstones is beginning to show signs of modest growth (new shops; new optimism; new markets) is symbolic of a sea-change in the world of books. Whisper it discreetly, but the book is showing signs of making a modest comeback, with British bookselling exhibiting the symptoms of an unfamiliar, fragile optimism.
More
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