Barnes and Noble's new boss is James Daunt, who rescued the UK's Waterstones

James Daunt gave up a brief career in banking and opened a small, family-owned chain of London bookstores bearing the family name (the original store, in Marylebone High Street, is literally the most beautiful English-language bookstore I've ever set foot in); in 2011, he took over management of Waterstones, the UK's last, foundering bookstore chain, and effected a miraculous turnaround by devolving purchasing to the managers who knew local tastes best, ending the practice of soliciting "co-op" payments from publishers to order in and stock massive piles of their frontlist titles, most of which would end up being returned.

Daunt is now moving to New York to assume control of Barnes and Noble, following a private equity takeover of America's last major bookselling chain (Borders failed in 2011, the same year Daunt took over Waterstones).

B&N has been in steady decline for a decade, losing $1b in its valuation (and also losing $1b on its Nook e-reader product). A few years back, the company laid off its most experienced booksellers in a nationwide bloodbath that shed its highest-waged employees, at a terrible price. Hundreds of stores have shuttered since.

Daunt has vowed to purge B&N of the "piles of crap around the place" (e.g. the creeping tide of scented candles, jigsaw puzzles, and ancient remainders) and to revitalize the stores, which, he says, are "a bit unloved, the booksellers look a bit miserable, its all a bit run down."

B&N will also borrow Daunt's "merit-based" promotions system, where the national HQ chooses a book of the month and a book of the year, without seeking payment from publishers, and rockets those books to national bestsellerdom. Read the rest