From the Bottom Up

03.06.11 | Martin Latham

The East India Company, based in London, could never decide about "the man on the spot" in India. He knew the local people better than anyone—he spoke their language—but could he be trusted? He resisted company policy where it conflicted with local conditions.

The introduction of pork-greased cartridges in 1857 typified the growing arrogance of the central authorities, and the Indian Mutiny ensued. Thus ended the golden age of Anglo-Indian understanding. The East India Company stopped talking to their customers, instead blowing them out of cannons.

When I did my PhD on the Raj, I failed to understand this centralising tendency. Having witnessed seven m.d.s running Waterstone's, I now see that it takes cojones to trust the man on the spot. But it's worth the risk: 4,000 intelligent booksellers are better employed talking to customers rather than installing the same planogram, or filling in a spreadsheet called "passion for books". To measure the commerciality of localism in Waterstone's: work a Saturday in a branch, and please regard bottom-line profit as the supreme "Key Performance Indicator". A fellow manager once bravely asked at the end of a managers' gathering: "So let me get this straight: profit is the fifth KPI?"

Booksellers, being skint, are surprisingly commercial. When Tim Waterstone bonused card sales they went through the roof: I've never seen such assiduously filled card spinners and such locally appropriate cards. Even a notional element of profit-share would massively engage booksellers, more than corporate "values".

Booksellers know, too, not to be publisher-led. Publishers, the source of great wonders—but also of ever-swelling rivers of imitative ordure—want Waterstone's as showrooms. Booksellers must resist this and save money so that they can stock a decent offering of solid, saleable literature. Too often we have run out of, say, Dracula, but have 11 years' stock of the new Jamie Oliver. Last month, holidaying in Pakistan, I was struck by the magnificence of the bookshops' range, free from both the endless roundabout of returns and the absurdity of celebrity. Back in the UK, Brigitte Nielsen's £19 autobiography has so little to say that it is illustrated with her mangy mutts. Tumescent frontlists, over-caffeinated sales directors, rapacious agents and over-bidding editors are publishers' problems—not Waterstone's.

The future is bright for Waterstone's. Last Saturday I kept hearing customers saying—as they do in any branch—"I could spend all day in here," and "I shouldn't come in here, I always end up buying more than I meant to". The ideal atmosphere in branches, with booksellers enjoying their jobs, is energised and innovating, a place where people want to be. It avoids the twin extremes of "Black Books" and W H Smith's uniformed, Galaxy-bar-pushing hell. Despite some surreal Waterstone's strategic trips over the years,
customers' goodwill remains astonishing. And, despite the whole blowing-the-mutineers-out-of-a-cannon thing, Anglo-Indian relations are looking up, too.

• Martin Latham