Tax is to blame for the death of the high street, says Waterstones boss

Moreover, Amazon ensures that more people read, he argues.

‘Once you start owning books, you get bookshelves and soon you end up in a bookstore. Amazon actually helped us.

“One of the driving forces behind the growth of the book industry as a whole is the popularization of book ownership, which has occurred dramatically over the past thirty years and is reflected in the prosperity of publishers.”

Amazon “is a big part of that and we are in trouble too,” he added.

Yet he is not blind to the pressure on the bookstore. “Selling books has always been a very tough job. Profitability has been terrible and just after my career ends, most people go bankrupt.”

For Mr. Daunt it was a different story. His first foray into the market – in 1990, when he was just 26 – was Daunt Books, which he launched from a single bookshop on Marylebone High Street. Ultimately he grew further into a successful small chain.

When Russian businessman Alexander Mamut was looking for someone to turn around Waterstones – a company he bought for £53 million – in 2011, he chose Mr Daunt. The bet paid off. In 2018, activist investor Elliott reportedly paid £200 million for the company. Waterstones has since bought smaller chains Foyles and Blackwell’s, deals that Daunt said needed to happen to keep those bookstores afloat.

“We possess them only out of necessity, not out of desire. I would have much preferred if Foyles had continued independently.’

Mr Daunt said Waterstones, which has more than 290 stores, was “chugging along and there isn’t much to do now”.

“The way to run it involves successively doing less. That’s the whole point. I may be a little funny, but the point is, the less I do, the smarter everyone thinks I am.”

Instead, most of Mr. Daunt’s time goes to another company. He has been leading a turnaround at Barnes & Noble since 2019, after being brought in by Elliott to implement the playbook that revitalized Waterstones.

Nowadays he spends three weeks a month in the US and then one in Britain. “All the problems at Barnes & Noble are identical to those at Waterstones.”

Mr. Daunt has already made progress, even if there is still some way to go.

“Barnes & Noble is currently probably Waterstones in 2016, which implies the turnaround is a little slower. But you have to remember that in between we had Covid. And if you leave that part out, it goes a little faster.”

A new challenge he faces is AI-authored books. Unlike Waterstones, Barnes & Noble sells e-books and Daunt deals with ‘many more’ self-published works.

“Artificial intelligence has caused a dramatic increase in self-publishing, and what it’s mainly trying to do is trick you into thinking it’s a mainstream book when it’s not.

“It could be nonsense that AI has written in the style of a famous author, which might make you want to buy. We endlessly add filters to keep that out, let alone something anti-Semitic or racist. Very little gets through.”

Vetting can be a minefield. “We have been accused of either removing all books by pro-trans authors or anti-trans authors, or that the books are in the wrong corner of the store.”

Which brings us to the topic of politics. Mr. Daunt oversaw the opening of a major new Barnes & Noble store in Georgetown, Washington, the day after the U.S. election. “I have to say it was all very subdued.”

Still, he is happy that it is now out of the way. “For us, we always do poorly when something is going on in the world. When the world is boring, we do much better. It’s great to have a result that no one can compete with. It means that everyone can now relax and do their shopping.”