James Daunt, the CEO of Barnes & Noble, has declared that he has “no problem” with AI-written books being sold in the retailer’s stores.
In a recent segment for NBC News’ “Business in America” series, Today host Jenna Bush Hager asked Daunt how AI has affected the book publishing industry. The question came amid fierce concerns in creative industries about AI-generated content replacing authentic human art, and artists seeing paid work disappear as their literature is being used to train AI models.
“You have said that if the rise of AI books becomes a thing, you would be willing to sell them within your stores,” Bush Hager said.
“Yes, I have actually no problem selling any book, as long as it doesn’t masquerade or pretend to be something that it isn’t,” the British businessman responded. “And that it has an essential quality to it, and that the customer, the reader, wants it.”
“So as long as an AI-written book says it’s an AI-written book and doesn’t pretend to be something else and isn’t ripping off somebody else, as long as that’s clearly stated and the customer wants to buy it, then we will stock them.”
“We have 300,000 titles across all of our stores,” Daunt, who became the CEO of Barnes & Noble in 2019, added. “Do we think that some of those may be AI? The chances are that they are, but we’re not really conscious of them.”
He also argued that in this moment, it doesn’t seem like those AI-generated books “are going to get much commercial traction.”
“So I think it’s something that one should treat with common sense and acceptance, but not allow anything to masquerade [as],” he explained. He said that the “clarity around who the author is and whether they’re a real person” is what’s crucial.
His comments come after many authors’ careers have been impacted by AI. In a 2025 study for Cambridge University, 59 percent of UK novelists reported their work had been used to train large language models (LLMs) without permission or any payment. In addition, more than a third of the authors stated their income had suffered due to generative AI, often through the loss of other work that supports their novel writing.
Daunt — who’s also the Managing Director of Waterstones, the largest independent bookshop chain in the U.K. — has previously shared his acceptance of AI-generated books.
During a December appearance on BBC‘s Big Boss Interview podcast, he said: “If people want to read that book, AI-generated or not, we will be selling it – as long as it doesn’t pretend to [be] something that it isn’t. We as booksellers would certainly naturally and instinctively disdain it.”
In 2019, Barnes & Noble was acquired by the hedge fund Elliott Advisors for $683 million, after it had been a publicly traded company on the New York Stock Exchange for 26 years.
Although hundreds of Barnes & Noble stores closed in the 2010s in the U.S., the chain is in the midst of a comeback. In December, the retailer announced its plans to open 60 stores across the country this year, with locations in Ohio, Texas, Florida, Illinois, Colorado, Washington state, California, Virginia, Georgia and Washington, DC.
“Barnes & Noble is enjoying a period of tremendous growth as the strategy to hand control of each bookstore to its local booksellers has proven so successful,” the company said in a statement to USA Today at the time. “In 2024, Barnes & Noble opened more new bookstores in a single year than it had in the whole decade from 2009 to 2019.”
