The New Age of Reading.

Nathan Heller writes for the New Yorker (archived) about James Daunt, who runs much of the bookselling world and apparently does so surprisingly well: Though less known than many authors, Daunt leads a bookselling empire of unprecedented scale. For seven years, he has been the chief executive of both the largest bookstore chain in the United States, Barnes & Noble, and the largest in the United Kingdom, Waterstones. He is the founder of what may be London’s most beloved independent bookshop, Daunt Books, whose reputation extends so far beyond the literary world that, when the Victoria & Albert Museum mounted an exhibition of influential bags, in 2020, it included the Daunt Books tote alongside a specimen by Chanel. In recent years, the British chains Foyles and Blackwell’s, as well as other independent stores in the U.K., have come under Daunt. So have the Tattered Cover, in Denver, and Books Inc., a chain around the San Francisco Bay. Daunt oversees more than a thousand stores and…