Bookselling business

James Daunt, the man who will soon try to revive Barnes & Noble, once spent weeks in a noisy, arm-waving debate about the ideal angle of tilt for bookstore shelving. His opponent was an Italian showroom designer who argued, in a series of otherwise congenial meals in some of London's best restaurants, that the shelf should be tilted four degrees.  Read more

In 1991, one year after James Daunt opened his first eponymous bookstore in London, Waterstones unveiled its first U.S. bookstore in Boston. The U.K. chain grew its stateside presence to a modest size, maintaining a foothold in the country until the turn of the millennium.  Read more

After a tiny increase in 2017, figures show their ranks swelled by 15 stores last year in the face of ‘an increasingly challenging landscape'

Blink and you'd have missed it. On Friday it was announced that Waterstone's have bought Foyles. Ten years ago this would have been a major news story, and featured in the first few pages of The Times. Today it didn't feature at all in the main newspaper and only managed a few columns on page 7 of the Business section. It shows how little the media cares about the books sector nowadays.  Read more

Someone should write a book about the economics of bookselling. Nothing about Britain's 900 independent bookshops adds up.  Read more