There were some interesting foretastes of Monday’s deal between Amazon and the big UK bookstore chain Waterstones in comments made by the latter’s managing director, James Daunt, at the FT a few weeks ago.

Mr Daunt – who had previously called the etailer a “ruthless, moneymaking devil” – spoke at a roundtable in early May to launch the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. You can listen to a podcast of his initial interview in which he pointed out that all bookshops had to find ways to make the environment for book-buying attractive again. He added:

The largest of us face the additional challenge of how do we become a relevant part of this new digital world, in which, clearly, a substantial part of the reading that our customers engage in is going to take place.

The Amazon deal - under which Waterstones’ stores will sell Kindle reading devices as well as ebooks, alongside the physical product – clearly answers that rhetorical question (even if it doesn’t entirely explain the speed of Mr Daunt’s conversion from devil-hater to devil-worshipper).

The more interesting comment came at the end of the ensuing discussion with publishers and agents, who pointed out that in some respects (for example, in its publishing venture), Amazon was still rather dependent on traditional publishing models.

Mr Daunt added that on the rare occasions when Waterstones fails to get the physical book onto its shelves, the title “sits unmoving on Amazon, until it arrives in our shops and then up it goes”. Most booksellers, while trying to use technology to complement their traditional business, have railed against becoming Amazon’s showroom. Mr Daunt appears to want to embrace that fate. The big question is whether Waterstones can profit from it.

FT video – Book end?