The Ledger, every show

“And then we use the data to inf to impose uniformity on the stores. And that really is the death knell for us. It works in almost every other branch of retail. It doesn't work in books.”

“Well, we have the great benefit of not having a marketing department, so we have zero marketing dollars to spend, so that makes it an easy thing. So that's never happening. Jeff Berman: None whatsoever. James Daunt: None whatsoever. I mean, literally zero.”

“And definitely at the moment exclude and go to great effort to exclude both from our online catalog Probably happens, we think, with the, with what's in our stores naturally because we're selecting and curating, but online we really need to put in lots of filt…”

“Is AI gonna write, write the next great books? I very, very much doubt it, but it will take categories of books out quite clearly. Such as? Home study guides, you know, you, that will, that's an easy thing.”

“A book's, Bought in a bookstore, discovered in a bookstore is a better book. Same book, but it's a better book. And also it's just nice and enjoyable. These are places in which people will want to continue to come.”

“There was this sort of obsession that people were coming into our stores and photographing books and then ordering them Amazon and, or coming in and choosing books and then downloading them on their Kindles. And it was, which just simply doesn't happen except …”

“It's a much nicer way to work and it's much more engaging and much more empowering and all of those good things, but it's so much more difficult that often people resist it, particularly when it's difficult. We'd rather have the hierarchy. Just tell me what to…”

“You're changing a culture at the end of the day and changing cultures is, is, is like stretching on a rubber band. You know, the minute you relax, it just pops back.”

“What I am good at is let's not look in the rear view mirror and let's quickly recognize anything that we're doing wrong quickly, quickly, and there to be no consequence to that and no reflection upon it. So I'm not one for saying, Why did we make that idiotic …”

“We've also, at the core of our market, and this has been since I started bookselling, 36 years ago, has been these three young adults, so teenagers up into people through their early twenties. That's when people really engage with bookstores and with reading, …”