The managing director of Waterstones bookshops James Daunt has said he expects to make a profit this year despite fierce competition from Amazon.
In an interview with the Sunday Times today, Daunt said improvements in the way the shops are run, fewer discounts and a better focus on more high-brow books has hauled the chain back on track.
But he complained - despite selling Amazon's Kindle in dedicated areas in its shops - that Amazon continues to have a clear tax advantage and opined that Waterstones, which has 287 shops, should have made more effort to develop a Kindle-style reader.
'I don't hate them in any way,' Daunt said of Amazon. 'They are an extra-ordinarily powerful competitor and one you wouldn't wish on your worst enemy. But we do something different and therefore selling the Kindle is not something I have a problem with.'
He told the newspaper he regrets that Waterstones did not develop its own version but accepts that, at the time, its former parent group HMV had its own problems.
HMV, which went bust and has been acquired by a restructuring group, has been accused by some of using Waterstones as a cash cow for years as it pumped money into turning around its main chain.
But Daunt, who acknowledges that the moment to develop a Kindle-style strategy has probably passed - said: 'Even if we did, we would still have a problem because we would have VAT of 20% on our ebooks and [Amazon] has got VAT of zip - 5 per cent, in theory, through Luxembourg; in practice, a lot less than that.'
Daunt said he had high hopes for Christmas trading but 'doesn't have the leeway' to mess up.
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