James Daunt is a bookseller with a penchant for stories (Anna Karenina is one of his favourites), who is also an inveterate risk taker. In 2011, he watched a Russian oligarch named Alexander Mamut make an insane bid for commercial suicide. And then he volunteered to join him.

Mamut’s crazy venture (“Nobody invests in bookshops to make money,” says Daunt) was his bid for Waterstones, then an ailing chain, burdened with several million pounds of debt. Daunt’s reckless career move was to join Mamut as his CEO, a job widely seen as a poisoned chalice. Many Waterstones-watchers predicted various dire scenarios.

Sometimes, however, stories have happy endings. And this month, Daunt was able to announce that, finally, Waterstones is about to break even.

The news that, for the first time in a long time, Waterstones is beginning to show signs of modest growth (new shops; new optimism; new markets) is symbolic of a sea-change in the world of books. Whisper it discreetly, but the book is showing signs of making a modest comeback, with British bookselling exhibiting the symptoms of an unfamiliar, fragile optimism.

During the first decade of the new century, this sector cornered the market in gloomy predictions that the end of the world was nigh. The digital revolution, plus Amazon, plus the credit crunch, seemed to add up to a literary apocalypse. There were moments, some CEOs in book publishing now concede, when they could hardly see a commercial way forward. A mood of panic quickly spread, with many dire predictions.

In Britain, hardbacks were said to be on the rocks, libraries doomed, the ebook all conquering, with the Visigoths of online selling storming through the high street. Among writers, with the tumbleweed blowing down Grub Street, the garret loomed.

When Daunt, who had founded a chain of London bookshops, became CEO of Waterstones in 2011, he recalls that “everyone was looking into a dark deep pit”. No question: he faced a uniquely bad set of economic indicators. Sure enough, his appointment was followed by three very difficult years – horrendous is the word he chooses – in which about half his shop managers were laid off, the head office closed down and margins slashed to the bone.

Now, as the all-important Christmas season comes into play, Daunt is one of a growing number of senior people in the book trade who see that this is not, after all, the beginning of the end but – possibly – the end of the beginning.

To demonstrate the resilience of the traditional book in the midst of a changing market, Daunt took the Observer on a tour of his latest shop opening, Waterstones/Hatchards in St Pancras Station, London. “What we have to do,” he says, “is adapt to new market conditions. It’s no longer enough just to stock a lot of new titles.”

Bookselling today is about bright lighting, friendly staff, cleverly designed bookcases that display new hardbacks – yes, hardbacks – to best advantage, an espresso coffee machine behind the checkout counter and finally – how can we put this ? – many unbookish things such as novelty items, jigsaws, games, children’s toys, Paddington bears, greetings cards and upmarket stationery.

“We’ve been through a fairly tumultuous period,” says Daunt, “but it does seem to be settling at last.” At times, he has seemed to be fighting a war on three fronts: the global recession; the surge in e-reading; and the threat of online selling (Amazon). “Occasionally,” he says, “we thought that people were in flight from the physical book. But now I think the book is back.”

Certainly, the trade has stabilised. More people than ever before are reading, in all formats. In Britain, ebook sales, which have now peaked, account for about 30% of the market. “Waterstones can make a living from the 70% that’s left over,” says Daunt. “And now that we’ve stabilised, we can begin to grow.”

Daunt’s “stabilisation” programme has involved fundamentally rethinking Waterstones. Gone, for instance, is the old tyranny of central buying, the process whereby Bath, Bolton and Blackpool would be instructed by head office which books to order. “We used to be top-down,” says Daunt. “Now it’s all about what’s right for the individual shop and its local market.” Lately, in Waterstones redux, bookshops and their managers have become much more autonomous – independent states within a federal system.

And then there’s the new Waterstones vibe. The chain still has 287 outlets (roughly the same as when Daunt took over) but they have been comprehensively revamped. They are brighter, lighter, and more welcoming. “We are now selling a lot of things that are not books,” says Daunt.

This is not the end of civilisation, but a sign of the times. Reading habits are changing worldwide. The consumer’s use of leisure time is no longer dominated by book-reading. That, says Daunt, means “we have to rethink what a good bookshop should be”.

One prerequisite, which is as old as retail, is market awareness. “Getting the right number of the right books on to the shop floor is essential,” says Daunt, who is renowned within the trade for his belief in computer systems. “Booksellers, as a tribe, have resisted technology, but computers do some things extraordinarily well.

“The actual arrangement of the bookshop is down to the bookseller. We have become really good at creating bestsellers.” He points to the success of The Miniaturist, a first novel by Jessie Burton, the sales of Being Mortal by Atul Gawande, and the success of Henry Marsh’s extraordinary memoir, Do No Harm. “It’s very simple,” says Daunt. “If you sell good books, you get repeat orders. We find our customers can become addicted to our choices.”

And here’s where new selling techniques meet age-old instincts. “Do not underestimate,” he instructs, “the pleasures of reading. The satisfactions of the book, in the age of social media and proliferating cultural choices, are very singular.”

The pleasures of reading morph into the aesthetic delights of print and paper. Reading a favourite novel on a screen is like tasting a vintage wine through a straw. The unintended consequence of the ebook, Daunt reports, has been to make many readers return to the hardback.

Daunt points with fascination to the perennial puzzles of the book trade. Why, for instance, has The Guest Cat, a modern Japanese fable, done so well ? It’s a mystery.

Does he have a Christmas sleeper? Mystery in White, a British Library reprint of a classic crime story is selling in “astonishing numbers”. Why? How? A big smile. “No one knows.” Another exquisite hardback, geared to the gift market, that has just begun to show signs of movement is Susanna Hislop’s Stories in the Stars (Hutchinson).

As always, it’s word-of-mouth, the irresistible rumour of a good book, that’s crucial. Radio – “another old-fashioned medium” – still plays an important part here. And this, he agrees, has turned out to be “a golden age of reading. We don’t sell books, really, so much as sell reading. Looking into the crystal ball three years ago, a lot of us feared for the future. Now there’s a future in which even the hardback has a role.”

Daunt is far from complacent. “It remains a big challenge to do it better, year on year. We have a responsibility to the culture to do it well. We will remain in the high street, however challenging that becomes. Our market share is up and we’re celebrating break-even. But that’s not sustainable. No business can survive just by breaking even. So this is work in progress.”

Did he ever despair in the depths of the recession ? “No – but I knew everything had to go right for us to succeed.”

Waterstones is on a roll. New shops have opened in Lewes, East Sussex; Ringwood, Hampshire; Southwold, Suffolk; Gateshead; and Dorking, Surrey. Daunt pays tribute to some “sensational” shops in Doncaster, South Yorkshire; Livingston, West Lothian; and Middlesbrough. Yes, he repeats, with a confident smile, “It does feel like the end of the beginning. Who knows what the next chapter will be?”