Moreover, he argues that Amazon actually encourages more people to read books.

“When you start owning books, you have shelves of books and soon you come across a bookstore. Amazon actually helped us.

“One of the incentives for the growth of the book industry as a whole has been the dramatic expansion of book ownership over the last 30 years, and you can see this in the prosperity of publishers.”

Amazon “is a big part of this, and we’re involved,” he added.

Yet he is not blind to the pressures on the bookselling industry. “Selling books has always been a very difficult business. Profitability was very bad and towards the end of my career most people went bankrupt.”

For Mr Daunt it was different. His first foray into the market – in 1990 when he was just 26 – was Daunt Books, which he started from a single bookshop on Marylebone High Street. Eventually it continued to grow grew into a successful small chain.

Russian businessman Alexander Mamut chose Mr Daunt when he was looking for someone to turn around Waterstones, which he bought for £53 million in 2011. The bet paid off. Activist investor Elliott reportedly paid £200 million for the company in 2018. Waterstones later acquired smaller chains such as Foyles and Blackwell’s; Mr Daunt said deals needed to be made to keep these bookstores afloat.

“We have them not out of desire, but simply out of necessity. “I would have preferred Foyles to continue as an independent.”

Mr Daunt said Waterstones, which has more than 290 stores, was “doing well and there isn’t much to do there anymore”.

“The way to make this work is to do less and less. That’s the whole point. Maybe I’m being a bit facetious, but the thing is, the less I do, the smarter everyone thinks I am.

Instead, most of Mr. Daunt’s time is spent doing something else. Since 2019, he has overseen the turnaround of Barnes & Noble, tasked by Elliott to implement the playbook that revived Waterstones.

These days he spends three weeks a month in the US, followed by a week in the UK. “All the problems at Barnes & Noble are the same as those at Waterstones.”

Mr Daunt has already made progress but there is still some way to go.

“Barnes & Noble is probably Waterstones now in 2016, which suggests the turnaround is a little slower paced. But you have to remember that we experience Covid every once in a while. And if you take that part away, it’s a little faster.”

One of the new challenges he faces is Books written by artificial intelligence. Unlike Waterstones, Barnes & Noble sells e-books and Mr Daunt has to deal with “a lot more” self-published works.

“AI means there’s a dramatic increase in self-publishing, and what it often tries to do is make you think it’s a mainstream book when it’s not.

“There may be some nonsense that the AI ​​writes in the style of a well-known author and can trick you into buying. We are constantly putting up filters to keep this out, let alone anti-Semitic or racist. “Very little gets through.”

Review can be a minefield. “We were accused of either buying all the books by pro-trans authors or anti-trans authors, or of having the books in the wrong section of the store.”

This brings us to the topic of politics. Mr. Daunt oversaw the opening of a large new Barnes & Noble store in Georgetown, Washington, the day after the U.S. election. “I have to say, it was all very subdued.”

However, he is happy that this situation is now over. “From our perspective, we always do bad things when things are going on in the world. When the world is boring, we do better. It’s great to get a result that no one can object to. “This means everyone can now settle in and shop.”