![]() “The key to good staff is to keep them long-term to build their careers to teach them the trade,” Daunt told Jen Campbell for her 2014 book The Bookshop Book. The core of Daunt’s bookselling strategy relied upon investing in, and trusting, his staff. “And I like traveling and I like reading and it really wasn’t more sophisticated than that.” “I thought if I’m not going to do that office job, which was about as good as an office job as I could imagine, then I had to do something else,” he told the Financial Times in 2011. When authors do readings in Marylebone, their backs to an arched stained-glass window that serves as the room’s centerpiece, the scene resembles nothing so much as a church service.ĭaunt’s personal affinity for books was what inspired him to open a bookstore at age 26, having worked for four years as an investment banker at JPMorgan-well, that and the urging of his then-girlfriend (now wife), who wanted Daunt out of finance. The original location in Marylebone, which opened in 1990 on the site of an Edwardian-era bookseller, is long and narrow, with tall galleries of books offering a reassuring vision of orderly abundance. In a recent podcast interview, Daunt said this is “so you can find your way around a shop subliminally.”ĭaunt Books locations are also beautiful spaces, filled with dark wood shelves, green lamps, and gold light. All Daunt stores eschew detailed signage for genres like “self-help” and “history” in favor of closely themed tables of books. Some have books arranged by country rather than genre, a setup that encourages browsing: You might visit the Japan section looking for Haruki Murakami novels only to find yourself paging through a history of ramen or a book of haikus about cats. Daunt’s London bookstores guide readers toward such serendipitous discoveries.
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