Barnes & Noble flailed, in part, because it contested Amazon’s turf, investing heavily in e-commerce and losing more than $1 billion on the Nook, a competitor to the Kindle. Waterstones has spruced up its website “on a shoestring,” Mr. Daunt said, and it now accounts for 5 percent of sales.

But the company has largely persisted by selling the pleasure of bookstores first and books second. Because if a store is charming and addictive enough, goes Mr. Daunt’s theory, buying a book there isn’t just more pleasant. The book itself is better than the same book bought online.

“It just is,” he said. “You’ll enjoy it more. You’ll read it quicker. You chose it with your own eyes, your hands, your ears. Now it’s all about anticipation. If you buy a book from Amazon, there’s a little anticipation as you rip the tag off the envelope. But it’s generally slightly flat and disappointing.”

When Mr. Daunt took over at Waterstones, there was plenty of skepticism about him among publishers. His only previous bookselling experience was running what was then a chain of six stores that he had founded, Daunt Books. He had managed about 50 people. Waterstones employed 3,000.

Maybe he was in over his head.

Plus, he seemed a bit too erudite for a mass-market retailer; his style was more sommelier than salesman. And he had some radical ideas. He wanted Waterstones to forswear $38 million a year in “co-op fees” paid by publishers. The fees gave publishers the power to dictate which books would be stocked and where they would be displayed, in every single Waterstones.

Although best sellers in Truro, near the southern coast of England, are different from best sellers in, say, Belfast, the capital of Northern Ireland, these Waterstones were essentially interchangeable.

To Mr. Daunt, this was manifestly insane. He likened co-op fees to crack, an easy high that comes with an intolerable price.