Waterstones managing director James Daunt has complained its web site is ‘pathetic’ compared to dotcom rival Amazon and said he plans to overhaul the site to improve standards.
Managing director James Daunt, who was drafted in to turn the business around by Russian billionaire Alexander Mamut, said he wants to use the knowledge of his staff to make the site better and capitalise on its relationship with authors and publishers to promote the site.
He told the Guardian newspaper: 'It's pathetic in relation to Amazon and that’s just a fact. We have 3,500 booksellers [staff] with an awful lot of knowledge.'
He explained: 'We've got authors coming through our shops - all sorts of things which are very different to Amazon - and we are keen to harness that and put it on the website. Do we want to be able to sell as cheaply and quickly and efficiently as them? We would like to do quick and efficient but I don’t want to sell a pair of trainers at the same time as selling a book.'
Waterstones sells Amazon’s Kindle e-reader which Daunt said was important to offer because customers want both digital and physical books.
However, he said the the ebooks market in the US is plateauing at about 30 per cent and there are signs that the UK digital books market is plateauing at about the same level. He said that meant there is likely to be a long term future for physical books and that people still wanted to buy them from shops.
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