Opinion: Waterstones has turned over a new leaf with a back-to-basics tack

Time was when bookshops were about skinny lattes and cappuccinos. The theory among the bigger players – and yes, there were several players, rather than just a single chain – was that if you gave shoppers coffee, they’d sit around reading and probably buy some books.

In this regard, booksellers were way ahead of the leisure curve where the prevailing approach seems to be that distracting customers from the core products will lead to longer dwell times and incremental sales will soon follow.

Then along came the e-reader and the whole thing began to look a little sick. Readers could have access to almost any book they fancied and if they really wanted a coffee, then the cafe boom would satisfy that desire.

Yet now, Waterstones, the last remaining bricks-and-mortar book behemoth, is retuning to profitability for the first time since the global financial crisis and sales of e-readers appear to have stalled.

So what’s changed?

Stripped-down simplicity

Waterstones, for the most part, has eschewed the allure of the coffee bean and focused on running bookshops that look like bookshops. These are places where shoppers go, not to shout, push and shove on Black Friday, but to enjoy a few quiet moments considering which book they might like to buy – a process that can take a little time, but which remains enjoyable.

“Amid all the high street noise and hubbub, bookshops can be places of respite”

John Ryan

There is no music, there are a few audio books and gifts that are reading-related, but for the most part, the books themselves are the stars.

And amid all the high street noise and hubbub, these can be places of respite, even if the aim is just to buy the latest celebrity biography.

Compare this, perhaps, with WHSmith, which is still a bookseller, but the range is small and unless there’s a celeb on the cover or a famous author has written the book, there will be no shelf space.

Back to a focus on books therefore and maybe to a pre-digital era when getting things done in the shortest possible time was not necessarily the objective.

So here’s a little seasonal advice. Light a warming fire, toss a couple of e-readers on the blaze to get things going nicely and tuck into a cheap Aldi or Tesco lobster while leafing through the pages of a new book. Sound improbable? A few years back, yes, today, not so much.