"If I can make it there, I'll make it anywhere..."
If you read yesterday’s post about the takeover of Waterstone’s, you might have thought to wonder how even James Daunt can turn around the “ailing chain” (this phrase is becoming a modern cliché) and make it work again. Lots of people are asking this. Not so much me, because I believe in Daunt’s superbooksellingpowers. But some are asking, and frankly there is a lot of fashionable schadenfreude in their tone. It’s not big or clever.
So here, to put them right, is the Age of Uncertainty – by far my favourite book blog (sorry, all you others! You know I love you too) – telling, in his own simple inimitable way, how he did it. With a hugely underperforming branch of Ottakar’s, in the centre of Crawley.
It’s a really inspiring and heartening story, and it tells you a lot about what bookselling is, and should be, and can be.
There is one thing the Age of Uncertainty is wrong about, though, and only one: he calls it “another dull post about bookselling.” It’s not dull.
Dear Katy
I think it’s safe to say that if someone like James Daunt can’t turn Waterstone’s around, then nobody can. Obviously he can’t easily compete on price with Amazon.com so he will have to concentrate on making Waterstone’s bookshops really pleasant places to while away a morning or an afternoon.
Best wishes from Simon