"I now arrive at Barnes & Noble where they've had a loyalty programme forever and a day. And yet if you walk into any of the Barnes & Noble bookstores, they are the most crucifyingly boring stores. Which is odd, because they know what people want, they have all this data, and yet they can't interpret it and they've been unable to manipulate that knowledge to in any way deliver decent bookstores to people....
"We have to use our character and personality, the curation and the intellectual engagement that we have as booksellers with the titles that are published, an ability to seize the book that not many have noticed, to champion it, to spread it. If we can't do that, then we have no role and we'll be destroyed."
--James Daunt, CEO of Barnes & Noble and managing director of Waterstones, in a keynote speech at the FutureBook conference in London, as quoted by the Bookseller