this is bbc news. the headlines: us stock markets have fallen after the central bank imposed a futher rise in interest rates. the federal reserve increased its key lending rate by a 0.25% despite fears it could add to the recent instability in the banking system. the former british prime minister, borisjohnson, has insisted he did not lie to the house of commons about lockdown parties at downing street. he was speaking to a cross—party group of mps, who must decide whether he deliberately or recklessly made misleading statements to parliament. the white house has urged uganda not to enact a new law threatening anyone who identifies as gay with life in prison. us officials have warned there may be economic repercussions if the bill,

which has passed a parliamentary vote, is signed into law. now on bbc news, it's hardtalk. welcome to hardtalk. i'm stephen sackur. in a world fixated with the unstoppable march of the digital revolution, it's kind of refreshing to look at what's happening in the old school business of selling books. ink on paper has not been eliminated by the rise of the e—book, and the good old bricks and mortar bookshop hasn't been wiped out by online shopping. my guest today, james daunt, boss of a growing bookshop empire, is a leader of this counter—revolution. he's made buying physical books cool on both sides of the atlantic. how?

james daunt, welcome to hardtalk. thank you. i used to use paper cash. i pretty much don't anymore. i used to write cheques in a chequebook. i certainly don't do that anymore. why are you so convinced that iwill, still, continue to use ink on paper, physical books, for years to come? books remain, i think, by far and away the most pleasurable way, and most memorable way, to read most books. you can read on an e—reader, of course, and that will have some advantages, particularly for some sorts of books.

and millions and millions of people across the world. and millions of people happily do. and the numbers are growing. and the numbers are not growing, actually, within developed markets. in the uk, the us, for example, i think, pretty much, it reached a peak and then came down to a level and is now steadied out. lots of people enjoy doing it, but it's a relatively small number of people in particular conditions. they like not to rustle a paper at night because the person next to them is asleep or they need to blow up the font or whatever it might be. and it's very concentrated in particular sorts of reading. romance fiction, by far and away, dominates e—book sales, but for most people, a physical book remains truly the most effective way to read a book, which is not true of how we listen to music, for example, it's actually much better digitally and much more convenient and money

and all the rest. but with books it isn't. perhaps there are other factors. i mean, for a start, you can download pretty much any book that's ever been written in a millisecond on a smart tablet. so, that's convenience. there's also a, sort of, environmental question. i mean, you make profits from selling books. books, ultimately, are made of carbon. and, frankly, they do look, in our efforts to get to a carbon zero world, a decarbonized world, they look like something we should get rid of. i think i would sort of argue, though, that they have an enduring and remarkably durable role to continue to play, if it's a good book. i mean, i think that, ideally, as booksellers, we sell good books. well, it doesn't matter if it's a good book or a bad book. well, no, but a good book goes onto a bookshelf. it's reused multiple times. and at its apogee, it's obviously in a public library and it's read multiple, multiple times and lent. but even our own personal libraries, our children read them, we lend them to friends, they pass through the generations. i read my grandfather's books. books really do endure and they decorate.

and, sadly, we do still put curtains up over our windows. we do the things that make our homes warmer and nicer, and books are a very important part of doing that. since, i guess, 1990, when you first got into this in your twenties, you've specialized in taking over bookshops which are failing for one reason or another, and turning them around, notjust individual shops, but then chains of shops and people watching and listening in america will be very aware of barnes and noble and the uk's waterstones. i mean, these are massive businesses, chains of bookstores which were, pretty much, in a state of collapse when you took them over. what is the secret to your turning them around? i think the secret was that actually i spent the first 30 plus years of my book running my own shop. independent booksellers. at that stage, you know, 20 years odd, i wasn't taking over anybody. i was just sitting in, literally, sitting in my own shop behind the counter, talking to people saying, "£20 please, sir". "read this, read that."

when waterstones got into trouble i, then, did step in there and really just brought all of the ethos of 20 plus years of independent bookselling to what was then the only large bookseller left in the united kingdom. and as it happens, if you let each of those individual waterstone�*s run themselves and you do, really, try and be, in each individual shop, a really good bookshop, you do well. and what is the secret to a really good bookshop? i think it needs a certain amount of things to be working underneath. it needs distribution. it needs money to make the lights work and fix the carpet and put in new furniture. so there's those things... a lot of these bookstores who have done those things are failed. but what you absolutely have to have his good booksellers running those shops and they have to be free to make all the decisions within that building over which books they promote, where they put them, how they display them. and if they are given those freedoms, they will engage

with them and all of the, sort of, special atmosphere and enthusiasm that comes from vocational booksellers in a building that they control will be allowed to flourish. and you do well then. so, it's the passion of the staff that matters most. ijust wonder, then, why in recent years you've become known as somebody who insists on paying yourstaff, particularly when they're first taken on by waterstones, your biggest chain in the uk, why are you insist on paying them as little as possible? that... what we do is we, it's effectively, more or less, a zero sum game with the amount of money that you pay your staff. what i've done is moved from a model when i arrived, which would have one or two people who were full time and well paid, the manager, the assistant manager, everybody else would be, as is the case in most retail businesses, the minimum wage or close to it. we've put in a much more of a career structure,

and it is into that career structure that i think that we need to invest as much money as possible. right, but in 2019, some of yourjunior staff were so peeved by what they saw as exploitation that they mounted a petition which a number of famous authors also signed, saying, "this is not acceptable." "you are paying us the legal minimum wage when the trades unions "and others recognise a real living wage, which is at least 10% more and you consistently refuse to pay it." what i consistently say is that my priorities and my loyalties and my obligations are to the booksellers who are vocational booksellers, who've been with us for six months, a year and longer, who we're promoting up through those stages. those are the people that we need to prioritise paying. and when we can look those people in the eye and say that the differentials that we are giving you, the increments we are giving you above that are adequate then we can bring up the base. thing is, you have a very strict view of value. i know you do, because you say you won't massively

discount books. you won't do the endless two for one offers because you say that undervalues books. books are priced fairly and we shouldn't discount them and send a signal that we don't actually value them. aren't you sending a signal that you don't value your staff? i'm saying that i value the eight or nine out of ten of my staff who are up that career ladder. those are the people that i need to invest in, the people who start at the beginning, we should, and should definitely, aspire as the business prospers to raise that as far as possible. but our obligations are to the career bookseller, because a career bookseller is who makes our shops what they are, and those are the people that we need to pay the most to. and you do say that one of the keys to your success is empowering your staff to make key decisions about which books are put on the most prominent display, about writing their own reviews for books and things like that. can you truly say that in any individual store, whether it be waterstones, barnes and noble, blackwell's or whatever, that that store, in essence, has a huge amount of autonomy and that the local staff are really driving

what you see as a customer when you go into that shop? absolutely, they are. see, in recent weeks there's been a controversy about the fact that you go into a branch of one of your stores and it's been very difficult to buy certain books. i mean, there's an author, hannah barnes, who's written a book, time to think, addressing the transgender issue. she looks in detail. she analyses the work of a clinic which works in the transgender space. she says, and she's been tweeting, "it is very difficult to get this book in waterstones, "even though it's on the national bestseller lists." why? we take in, initially, an order, we send them out through the stores and in this case didn't order enough copies. it happens. you will run out of a book in a shop for three reasons. either we will mess up, centrally we just won't put in enough copies, the publisher won't print enough, or the bookjust takes

off in a dramatic way. we run out of colleen hoover. we run out oij rowling. these things happen. in this case, it was our fault. we didn't put in enough copies initially. back in 2021, two other authors who were writing about the transgender issue, which is a very deeply controversial issue, has very strong opinions on both sides of a debate. two other authors, helenjoyce, kathleen stock, they said that waterstones was not properly promoting and distributing their books. do you have a problem or do your staff have a problem with certain books? i think we will be making judgements as to how popular those books are. not unreasonably... they were all, i checked, they were all in bestseller lists. i also know that we have them in the vast majority of our shops and we sell relatively low numbers of them. yes, they're bestsellers, but these are still relatively low numbers and they were stocked in most of our shops.

when you have a small number of shops go out of stock, of course people, and the author in particular, and i'm not remotely saying that the authors should not feel deeply aggrieved if their books are not available, but it is part and parcel of what happens within our world. do you think, in all honesty, james daunt, that bookshops are getting caught up in the culture wars? 0h, forsure. i mean, we're having this discussion. so, they are caught up in the culture wars. they're caught up in political wars. it's notjust this... and what of your staff? because you've talked about the degree of autonomy you want your staff to have. what of your staff? and many of them are young. what if they, and many of them have very progressive views, what if they don't want to stock a book because they feel it, editorially in terms of its content, is unacceptable? would you allow them not to stock that book? we have clear lines where we decide not to stock a book. and these books that you're citing are not remotely under those lines.

but if a book is anti—semitic, in a way, if it has really objectionable, for example, paedophilia content in or something, we will not stock it. and that is something that... can you cite me some examples of books that in recent times you've decided took a decision to? i suppose the phrase in a sense is no shelf, as in no platform. yeah, holocaust denying books, we will not stock. plain and simple. i want to quote to you words written by to tomiwa 0wolade who's a very young, but very significant cultural, sort of, commentator and writer. he says, "booksellers should be serving their readers rather "than their own ideological bias." do you think you always uphold that principle? i think we do, almost always. i think that the vocational bookseller is... really believes in free speech, believes in ideas, believes in promoting them, is not taking political sides, is not taking sides on many of these social issues. believes that we are there to promote ideas and that we are a civilizing force within that.

you mentioned very specifically you wouldn't stock a book that was clearly and blatantly anti—semitic. you're too young to have been around when the satanic verses was first written. no, sadly, i was very much a bookseller when the satanic verses. well, it was 1988. i thought you bought yourfirst one in 19... no, but satanic verses was a huge issue... you certainly stopped it but what i'm saying is it first came out in 1988. but anyway, the point is there were real threats associated with bookshops that were prepared to sell and to promote with prominent displays, that book. did you ever consider not giving prominent space to the satanic verses? at the time, i think prominent would be an exaggeration, but we had the book and in fact, that is a book where people ran out of it early on. we are stocking these books and it is completely disingenuous to claim that we're not. i have it all the time. i have it on these

books in the us. i have it that i'm apparently not stocking young adult books written by people of different ethnicities. it's simply not true. we do not stock and choose not to stock books that we don't believe are of adequate quality. so, there is a curation that goes on within individual bookshops. obviously, if you're a smaller bookshop, you carry much less than in a larger bookshop. but i absolutely refute that we're taking a stand. do i think that individual booksellers will put a book that they personally disagree with in a less prominent position to one that they do? absolutely. will they dress up their windows to poke fun at politicians that they don't like? yes. do they ever get reprimanded by hq? by you? we send them a note saying, "can you please grow up and remember that "we are booksellers?" and that's one of the things we say, "just remember you're a bookseller," when these things happen. and so far and i won't, you know, when you give autonomy to, in my case now

a 1000—ish bookshops, you're going to have the odd thing go slightly wrong. but i think, given how many shops we have, we're remarkably good at what we do. you're a bookseller. you're not a publisher, and of course, you're not an author, but you're intimately involved with the whole book industry and the creativity that underpins it. when you look at the way publishers work today and the kinds of books they most invest in that they seem to promote most lavishly, do you worry that there is a certain lack of ambition and creativity in the publishing industry? i think that it goes in cycles. i think the consolidation that's going on within the world of publishing, i mean, we have now farfewer mega publishers as each acquisition and consolidation reduces their number. that, perhaps, is is making and resulting a bit more homogeneity than we would ideally like. but at the same time, there

are very few barriers to entry. you've got new publishers coming up all the time and if you publish well, you will succeed. but if one walks into a bookshop owned by you, you know, you'll see a slew of books by celebrities, kids books, cookbooks, all driven by a big name. you'll see a slew of books about the royals and even by royals, and you'll see the sort of famous thriller and entertainment franchise books. but the truth is that most writers, the vast preponderance of writers today who are looking to making a living out of writing are earning, according to the writer's union, roughly £7,000 or roughly 10,000 usd a year. they can't make a living from writing. and that is a problem, isn't it? that will be a problem for you. we have to remember that the number of books that fit into a bookshop is relatively small. the barriers to publishing are extremely low and in fact zero if you're so motivated to a self publish. publisher advances that have

grown hugely at the top end and reduced at the bottom end. so i think that's something that the publishers themselves have to grapple with. do we require creativity and energy and innovation? absolutely. but actually, i think barnes noble and waterstones have become much greater forces in allowing new voices to come through, allowing the rooneys of the world to come through. and it's notjust james patterson. here's something that claire wilson of the literary agency rcw, she says, "readers are not well served if the first thing "they see on every shelf in a bookshop is mediocre "writing put into a celebrity package." sort of echoes is what ijust said to you. do you think carefully about that? yeah, no, i mean, i would completely agree with that sentiment. and i would say if that's something that she thinks is going on in waterstones and barnes noble, she has not been in one of those. she is actually sitting in some ivory tower, probably scrolling the best seller list of amazon. and we talk to actors now and again, and some actors make

the point that acting is such a precarious profession now that, frankly, for many actors it's only possible to be in the profession if they are backed by wealthy parents or if they have some sort of support network. the danger is that is true of writers as well. and it might mean, and according to some writers it does mean, that increasingly you get white middle class writers dominating this creative space. do you see that? i'm not sure i do. i see, for example, i think translated fiction has grown hugely in popularity. the prizes that are given out are not being won uniformly by white identikit people, but actually of becoming extremely diverse. many of the bestselling authors that we would immediately trip out of our would be adichie, would be zadie smith, would be salman rushdie. they say bernardine evaristo,

who appeared on this programme not very long ago. these are major talents. i think talent is what is will out. well — and it's great that you feel so optimistic, so positive. bernardine evaristo says this. she says the publishing industry, which is central to this whole debate, is still run by predominantly white, middle class demographics, same as years ago, with the perceived target reader being a middle aged, middle class and often white woman who apparently does not have the imagination often times to want to engage with writings by people of colour, she says. this is the assumption made, but she says "it's plainly not true". so you're very confident that that assumption within publishing no longer dominates? no, i'm not remotely confident that that doesn't dominate within publishing. i don't run a publishing business that is investing in romance, fiction and the like. but there's a great deal

because you're rather important to them. well, we're important in quite an elevated niche within publishing. there is books are sold through supermarkets, they're sold through many other channels. amazon obviously hugely and through ebooks, kindle, which is obviously by far and away the most popular of them, where you do have a particular sort of book coming through within a proper bookshop. and that's why i think the survival of bookshops is so important. this is where you get a much more diversity of content and authors and where people come in to discover books, where you come in to find the book that you didn't know about. and that's what we do. and we have booksellers out there in our shops constantly recommending things that they find interesting, they find inspiring. and i think if you don't have that as part of the mix, then publishing would indeed fall down that sort of rather perilous slope that you're describing. but, actually, i've been having this conversation since 1990. everybody wails that the book

is going to die, that fiction is homogenizing, that we will have no creativity. but actually, there have been moments when that appears to be a little bit true at the moment. we have bestseller lists dominated by romance writing, but actually underneath it is bubbling a huge ferment of great, great creativity. and that's what we promote. one last element of this sort of cultural battleground that we've been exploring. do you welcome the idea in your bookshops of selling books, classic books by well—known authors that have been re—edited with a view to sensitivity? and in recent times, the most clear example has been roald dahl, which puffin books thought it was going to re offer to the public with many of dahl�*s most loved and famous characters characterized in different ways so that,

you'll know these examples — augustus gloop could no longer be fat. mrs twit was no longer going to be fearfully ugly and the 0ompa—loompas were going to go gender neutral. would you like to sell those new roald dahl books? i would, for the sake of amusement, perhaps have them in. i wouldn't expect anybody to buy them. it's utterly idiotic. it may be quite amusing to flick through one to see how they've done it. it was proposed, in all seriousness, it was going on, do you think? i think that there are clearly agendas being played through in these ways, how it sort of works its way and is treated seriously i don't understand it. but as the most in that experienced bookseller in the land, your message to me is that won't work and it won't sell. is that what you say? it's the other side of where we started this program saying we're not selling these important books on trans gender issues. we are. it's — everyone gets very... no, but what i mean in this

case, if they are offered in that completely sort of re—edited way to avoid offence to some people who might take offence, you don't think that would work? i personally don't think they will sell very many of them. i don't have any objection. if they want to put them alongside the originals, i think to withdraw the originals would have been an error of the roald dahl estate. you've been selling these books, books of one sort or another, for more than 30 years. are you absolutely confident, going back to where we started, that 30 years from now, whether or not you're still an active bookseller, that the bookshop won't be seen as some sort of quaint feature of a bygone age? i think it may be seen as quaint, but i don't think it's something of a bygone age. i think it's a real tragedy that public libraries aren't supported in the way of the good old fashioned public library were. you could go into borrow books and leave and read them at home and bring them back, and that somehow replacing that with screens and places to work and the like is an adequate replacement. i think that's a real tragedy.

it would also be a tragedy to lose bookshops. bookshops are where people of all ages, kids come in, young families come in, people come in after school. we don't require anybody to pay to come in or any obligation to buy. they're real social spaces and they are places of discovery. believe in books. i guess that's a great way to end. james daunt, it's been a pleasure. thank you for being on the hardtalk. thank you very much. hello, there. the weather is remaining pretty unsettled for the rest

of this week. low pressure will always be nearby, out to the west of the uk, in the atlantic — steering weather fronts our way, bringing outbreaks of rain, followed by sunshine and showers. and it will be blustery, even windy at times, particularly across england and wales. but on the plus side, it'll be fairly mild, with our air source coming in from the south—west. but it's quite a messy picture, i think, as you can see here for thursday, low pressure out to the west, lots of isobars, plenty of weather fronts. this weather front will bring more persistent rain to the south and south—east of the country later in the day. so we'll have showers, even longer spells of rain, affecting central, northern and western areas. some good spells of sunshine around, too. but later in the day, we'll see the cloud building up across the south and south—east as this persistent rain starts to push in. it will be a blustery day, certainly for england, wales, parts of northern ireland, not so much for scotland. a quieter day for you, but gusts around a0 miles an hour in exposure. but another mild day to come, temperatures reaching the low to mid—teens for many. a little bit chilly there for the far north of scotland.

that rain, then, persistent at times, affects the south—east corner and then pushes on into the north sea. that'll be followed by further showers, even longer spells of rain, across scotland, in towards northern ireland for a time, but some clear spells, too. and temperatures, again, fairly mild because of the cloud, the breeze, the rain. no lower than around 5—8 degrees. now into friday, our area of low pressure is a bit closer to the uk, so it looks like we'll start off with some sunshine, fairly breezy, but then showers will get going. they'll be widespread and they will be heavy at times, some thunderstorms mixed in, some hail at times too. but again, temperatures low to mid—teens for many. it will feel quite pleasant when you're out of the showers and in the sunshine. then it's all change into the weekend. we start to pick up northerly winds. that'll turn things very much colder. and we'll see showers turning increasingly wintry, particularly across the northern half of the country. you can see the arctic air plunging its way southwards gradually as we move through the weekend. the coldness

of the air initially at the weekend across the north and then spreading to all areas by the time we reach sunday. so another mild day on saturday with sunshine and showers. by the time we reach sunday, it'll be very much colder, particularly in the north — where we could see some snow, notjust in the hills, even down to lower levels.

this is bbc news. i'm sally bundock with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. 0n the frontline in southern ukraine — where ukrainian troops are holding their defences, despite constant attacks from russian shelling those two russian shells that have just come in, those two russian shells that havejust come in, i think it is tank fire moving close to these positions, it gives you an idea of how exposed it is here. the french president defends his decision to push through unpopular pension reforms — despite a wave of nationwide street protests. the more we wait the more it will get worse and so this

reform is necessary.