Daunt: bookshops 'don't need digital distractions'

Booksellers should not get distracted by consumer data, but focus on getting to know their customers in person, Waterstones managing director has told a meeting of international book magazines, hosted by The Bookseller last week (5th February). Daunt also said that fixed book prices would not help Waterstones become a better bookseller, and that using ‘screens’ in store to show author interviews or market books was an “abomination”.

Daunt said he planned to relaunch the Waterstones’ loyalty scheme, but the analysis of the customer data would be a centralised function, and questioned how useful such data really was to booksellers. He said he was “resolutely old fashioned” when it came down to how best to use data, adding that he would prefer Waterstones booksellers to spend their time on the shop floor meeting customers, not "tapping away on machines looking at data”. He said: “Amazon’s ‘if you read this, you’ll read that’, is not what I think bookshops do. Customer data distracts the bookseller from creating better bookshops.”

He also said using technology in store to market books would “detract” from the bookseller’s skill, and take them away from talking to customers. “What next, holographic booksellers?” he asked.

The meeting saw representatives from Germany’s Buchreport, France’s Livres Hebdo, China’s Book Dao, Publishers Weekly in the US and Spain's DosDoce exchange ideas as well as hear presentations from Daunt, Nosy Crow founder Kate Wilson, David Roth-Ey, executive publisher at HarperCollins, and Laura Swaffield, chair of The Library Campaign.

When asked about fixed book prices—still prevalent in many European regions—Daunt replied that they were “irrelevant” to his business. “Price is not the determining factor if you are good enough as a bookseller, and if you are not good enough then it does not matter. W H Smith is a god-awful bookshop, why would anyone buy a book from there that is more expensive than elsewhere? At Daunt Books I used to sell more books than the Waterstones up the road where they were cheaper, because the books I sold to my customers were better.”

However, when asked to comment on the rumour that Amazon could open 400 more physical bookshops, Daunt quipped that even the best bookshops would struggle against a competitor willing to lose so much money: “If Amazon chose to open 100 stores in the UK—selling books at online prices—then the only sensible answer for me would be to send them my CV. If they sold books at prices that were the same as ours, we’d be fine.”

He also said every bookseller had an “inner Basil Fawlty” inside of them that hated the customer, and said his job was to keep booksellers motivated and energised, which he did in part by giving them more accountability within the business.

Daunt said the company was “moving in the right direction’ following the release of the Waterstones’ annual financial results last week. Waterstones achieved a 1% rise in sales in the year to 25th April 2015, to £378.0m. Losses after tax were £1.9m, from a loss of £18.5m in 2014.

Daunt will be in conversation with Faber c.e.o Stephen Page at London Book Fair’s Quantum Conference, it has been revealed. The pair are set to discuss the “state of publishing and book selling” at the conference, which takes place ahead of London Book Fair on 11th April.