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You are here: Home / Archives for selling

Daunt Admires Waitrose And Next But Says He Would Royally Screw Up Selling Frocks

March 18, 2014 By achuka Leave a Comment

Extract from a long interview with James Daunt in Retail Week

RetailWeek

Clearly Daunt admires Waitrose. But could he ever see himself running another retailer? After all, if he manages to turn Waterstones around, Daunt will be a man in demand. “I have a great interest in the way other retailers work and I admire hugely what they do at Next and Waitrose, and I absolutely unapologetically go and steal what others do. But I am a bookseller.

“You could put the riches of the world before me to run the Body Shop or whatever it is, and I wouldn’t do it. [Next boss Simon] Wolfson sells frocks, that’s what he does. I expect he would royally screw up the bookshops if he came to run them and I would definitely royally screw up his frocks business if I was to take over that.”

Does Daunt have any regrets about leaping out of his comfort zone and attempting a turnaround on such a huge scale? Emphatically yes, he says. But more because he lacks the time to pursue his love of being a shopfloor bookseller than anything to do with the scale of the task at hand.

“And I don’t get home as early as I used to either. It’s a lot of hard work,” he says.

“My analogy is it’s like skiing a couloir – it’s very steep and very narrow and really fun, your legs are going like billy-o, and if you’re asked if you have regrets half way down, it’s, ‘oh shit’. But there are none when you get to the bottom – assuming you’re still standing.”

via http://www.retail-week.com/people/interview-waterstones-boss-james-daunt-turns-over-a-new-leaf/5058250.article?blocktitle=Entertainm

Filed Under: Blog, Books Tagged With: bookselling, business, Next, selling, Waitrose, Waterstones

Sarah McIntyre – what do authors need from our publishers?

April 22, 2013 By achuka Leave a Comment

Very comprehensive blog post from Sarah McIntyre… Highly recommended

booktrust_babette_chris_zpsb5a297ef

We KNOW our publishers can’t do everything, that readers look to authors themselves to be inspired to buy their books, that publishers have limited budgets, and that it makes business sense not to devote quite as much of their time to a book that’s selling millions of copies versus a book that sells hundreds.

At the same time, we’re expected to be writers, artists, bloggers, e-mailers, stage performers and educators. (I itemised the jobs from my blog post, The McIntyre Way™, and added two more jobs: accountant and housewife. Possibly lobbyists, too.) I estimated that I can easily spend 70% of my time doing publicity work when, really, I’d rather spend 70% of my time writing and drawing. So what CAN our publishers do to help us so we actually have time to write and illustrate?

via Sarah McIntyre – booktrust at london book fair: what do authors need from our publishers?.

Filed Under: Blog Tagged With: authors, campaign, illustration, illustrators, promotion, publicity, publishers, publishing, self-publishing, selling, slush-pile, social media, Twitter

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