James Daunt, Bookselling's Most Powerful Figure, on Reading's Supposed Decline
At 63 years old, James Daunt serves as the CEO of both Barnes & Noble and Waterstones, overseeing more than a thousand retail locations and nearly 20,000 staff members, with annual revenues nearing $4 billion. He established Daunt Books in London, which was highlighted in a 2020 exhibition at the Victoria & Albert Museum. Daunt took the reins of Waterstones in 2011 amid its bankruptcy and joined Barnes & Noble after Elliott Management purchased it for $683 million in 2019. His initiatives lowered Waterstones' return rates from 25% to 4% and reversed a £43 million loss in 2011 into an £18 million profit by 2017. In 2021, Barnes & Noble experienced growth, opening 60 new stores. Elliott is anticipated to take both brands public next year, valuing them at a minimum of $3 billion. Daunt dismisses the notion of a post-literate society, pointing to increasing print sales and a 70% rise in U.S. independent bookstores since 2020. He mentioned that while Barnes & Noble will carry A.I.-generated word games, it will otherwise refrain from stocking A.I.-produced books.
Key facts
- James Daunt, 63, is chief executive of both Barnes & Noble and Waterstones
- He oversees more than a thousand stores and nearly twenty thousand employees
- Annual sales across his chains total roughly four billion dollars
- Elliott Management acquired Barnes & Noble for six hundred and eighty-three million dollars in 2019
- Waterstones' returns fell from twenty-five per cent of stock to four per cent under Daunt
- The chain's forty-three-million-pound loss in 2011 became an eighteen-million-pound profit by 2017
- Barnes & Noble added sixty new stores last year
- Elliott is expected to take both chains public next year at a valuation of at least three billion dollars
Entities
Artists
- James Daunt
- Hugh Bonneville
- Bill Nighy
- Rachel Cusk
- Natalie Portman
- Emily Wilson
- Robert Darnton
- Nancy Bass Wyden
- Joel J. Miller
- Jack Edwards
- Eden Yonas
- Rebecca Yarros
- Colleen Hoover
- Paul Harding
- Tom Willis
- Rob Doyle
- Sally Rooney
- Alexander Mamut
- Jared Kushner
- Paul Singer
- Bill Ackman
- Jeff Bezos
- Walter Benjamin
- W. G. Sebald
- Benjamin Britten
- Matthew Arnold
- Bruce Springsteen
- Stephen Fry
- Hugh Laurie
- Emma Thompson
- David Abulafia
- Jordan Pavlin
- Ferdinand Mount
- Marina Grönberg
- Bea Carvalho
- Luke Taylor
- Kurde Atfield
- Victoria Harty
- Michael Cader
- Felicity Blunt
- Kris Austin
- Dorian Thornley
- Tyler Jagt
- Rose Horowitch
- James Marriott
- Andrew Pettegree
- Laura Macaulay
- Marigold Atkey
- Diana Liu
- Brett Wolstencroft
- Juliet Mushens
- Usman Mohammed
- Nigel Beale
- Nina Wilkins
- Steph Burridge
- Alice Daunt
- Eleanor Daunt
- Timothy Daunt
- Patricia Daunt
- Katy Steward
- Christopher Foyle
- Toby Blackwell
- Paul Best
- Dennis Stevenson
- Gabrielle Zevin
- Maggie O'Farrell
- Rebecca Perry
- Rachel Blackmore
- Alexander McCall Smith
- Adam Biro
- Irène Némirovsky
- John Berger
- Alexandra Romanoff
- John Grisham
- Robert Caro
- Jane Austen
- Agatha Christie
- Proust
- Heidegger
- Fernando Torres
- Roman Abramovich
- Queen Elizabeth
Institutions
- Barnes & Noble
- Waterstones
- Daunt Books
- Foyles
- Blackwell's
- Tattered Cover
- Books Inc.
- Elliott Management
- Kushner Companies
- Victoria & Albert Museum
- Knopf
- Pew Research Center
- National Assessment of Educational Progress
- Harvard University Library
- Strand Book Store
- National Education Association
- Morgan Guaranty Trust Company
- J. P. Morgan
- Pembroke College, Cambridge
- Sherborne School
- Footlights
- Granta
- Pushkin Press
- University of Chicago Press
- Daunt Books Publishing
- Amazon
- HMV Group
- Bookberry
- Pershing Square Capital Management
- Borders
- Chelsea F.C.
- The New Yorker
- The Atlantic
- Wall Street Journal
- Reader's Digest
- Times Literary Supplement
- Chronicle of Higher Education
- Publishers Lunch
- Publishers Weekly
- Curtis Brown
- Draft2Digital
- TikTok
- Nielsen
- Organise
- Adnams
- McNally Editions
- Slightly Foxed
- Westsider Rare and Used Books
- Soho Reading Series
- Durham University
- N.H.S.
- U.N. Refugee Agency
- House of Lords
- Bank of New York
- Chanel
- Lumix
- Polestar
- Brompton
- I.B.M.
- Kindle
- ChatGPT
- Southwold Books
- Re-Wrap
Locations
- Eatontown
- New Jersey
- United States
- London
- United Kingdom
- Denver
- San Francisco Bay
- Wichita
- Skokie
- Henderson
- Nevada
- New York
- Union Square
- Hampstead
- Sussex
- Turkey
- Dorset
- Cambridge
- Brussels
- Hungary
- Transylvania
- Syria
- Marylebone High Street
- Belsize Park
- Antigua
- Horsham
- Piccadilly
- Suffolk
- Darsham
- Southwold
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- Georgia
- Nicaragua
- Cuba
- Ethiopia
- Sri Lanka
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- Russia
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- Texas
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- Cheyenne
- Wyoming
- Washington State
- Japan
- Botswana
- Italy
- Poland
- Czechoslovakia
- Manhattan
- Upper West Side