12 October 2015
This morning, The Bookseller reported that Waterstones was taking Kindle devices off most of its shelves due to "pitiful" sales.
No great surprise here: the chain's managing director James Daunt said after Christmas 2014 that device sales, once strong, had tapered off, a reflection of a digital market that has moved beyond its adoption-period.
Daunt has never made any secret that under him Waterstones' job was to deliver what its customers want: at the time of the Kindle deal in 2012 Daunt said that a number were choosing to read digitally, and Waterstones needed to be in that game.