Balancing the books: how Waterstones came back from the dead

The chain of booksellers has announced its first profit in years – thanks in part to a bold decision to run each branch like a local bookshop Late on Thursday afternoon, would-be wizards across the UK dropped what they were doing to join the professors of Hogwarts for Harry Potter night. At 6pm in the basement of Waterstones’ six-storey London Piccadilly building, staff were scurrying around with bowls of jellybeans and bottles of raspberry lemonade, but the Harrys and Hermiones were