# The radical idea behind Barnes & Noble’s surprising comeback > Source: > Published: 2026-08-04 09:32:38+00:00 **In today’s CEO Daily:** B&N CEO James Daunt abandoned an old business model to revive the bookstore chain.**The big leadership story:** Fidji Simo on why she left OpenAI**The markets:** Mostly up after a U.S. rally on Monday.**Plus:** All the news and watercooler chat from*Fortune*. **Good morning.** Phil Wahba writing from New York this morning. Remember when Barnes & Noble seemed to be circling the drain a few years ago? Now, the big-box bookstore is on track to open 60 stores this year and have more total locations than in 2019, the year CEO James Daunt took the reins to execute a retail comeback for the ages. The return to form is all the more stunning given that book sales overall are barely rising, and [Amazon](https://fortune.com/company/amazon-com/), which nearly felled Barnes & Noble in the 2010s, is still a threat. But the more useful story for any leader isn’t that a bookstore survived—it’s *how*. Daunt bet the comeback on a single idea most large organizations resist: stripping power away from headquarters and handing it to the frontline employees. For CEOs weighing how much control to centralize, Barnes & Noble is a live case study in what happens when you trust the people closest to the customer to make the call. For Daunt, a Brit who also runs an eponymous indie bookstore chain in the U.K., the plan was relatively simple: He began to make Barnes & Noble stores look, feel, and function like neighborhood bookstores beloved by locals. To pull that off, Daunt abandoned an old business model whereby publishers gave Barnes & Noble a discount for carrying the same books at all its stores and positioning them in the same place for the same amount of time. “It created these really dispiriting, anodyne stores because they were all the same, selling the same old books, the same authors, the same bestsellers,” Daunt told me in [a new episode of Fortune’s Behind the Business](https://fortune.com/2026/08/03/barnes-noble-ceo-james-daunt-indie-bookstore-revive-big-box-chain/) series. “We just said, ‘No more of that.’ We’re going to choose what we sell.” Shannon De Vito, senior director of books, said working at Barnes & Noble used to feel like “turning your brain off” and impeded the biggest pleasure of being a bookseller: talking books with customers. Once Barnes & Noble got rid of the so-called “pay-for-display” system, individual stores could choose and promote books as they saw fit, free from any diktats from headquarters. After all, readers in Flint, Michigan are buying different books from those on Manhattan’s Upper East Side, and local stores need to reflect that. Barnes & Noble has returned to many of the markets it left in its 2010s spiral thanks to its improving fortunes, and there have even been reports that an IPO could be on the horizon. All in all, it’s a fascinating story about a company that thought it was losing to Amazon—but needed to get out of its own way and put the booksellers back in charge.*Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com* ### Top leadership news **Fidji Simo on why she left OpenAI** Former OpenAI executive Fidji Simo [told Fortune](https://fortune.com/2026/08/03/fidji-simo-discusses-pots-diseases-chroniclebio-ai-startup-openai/) she stepped down after a seven-year battle with POTS, revealing she'd already founded ChronicleBio, a startup aiming to use AI to research the condition. **Palantir’s blowout quarter ** Palantir [blew past Wall Street's targets](https://fortune.com/2026/08/03/palantir-earnings-guidance-beat-revenue-profit-ai-demand/) in its second quarter, with revenue up 93% year-over-year to $1.94 billion and net income of roughly $1.1 billion, sending its stock surging 13% in after-hours trading. The company raised its full-year 2026 revenue guidance up to as much as $8.158 billion, fueled by a 149% jump in U.S. commercial revenue. **The NFL takes on Europe—again ** The NFL is [staging](https://fortune.com/2026/08/04/nfl-cmo-tim-ellis-europe-expansion-uk-australia/) a record nine international games this season across four continents, including its first competitive game on French soil, as it works to convert casual overseas viewers into lifelong fans. CMO Tim Ellis told *Fortune* that unlike past failed ventures, the league now knows "markets don't reject the product, they reject the translation.” ### The markets **S&P 500** futures are up 0.08% this morning. The last session closed up 1.48%. **The** **STOXX Europe 600** was up 0.38% in early trading. **The U.K.’s FTSE 100** was up 0.28% in early trading.** Japan’s Nikkei 225 **was up 0.32%.** South Korea’s KOSPI **was up 1.62%. **China’s CSI 300 **was up 1.27%.** Hong Kong’s Hang Seng** was down 0.60%.** India’s NIFTY 50 **was down 1.20%. **Bitcoin** was up at $64K. ### Around the watercooler [Sea’s MariBank wants to export its Singapore digital banking playbook: First stop, the Philippines](https://fortune.com/2026/08/03/sea-maribank-singapore-philippines-digital-bank/) by Angelica Ang [Kalshi CEO clashes with disgraced former Congressman George Santos in latest prediction market controversy](https://fortune.com/2026/08/03/kalshi-ceo-disgraced-former-congressman-george-santos-prediction-market-controversy/) by Camila Grigera Naón [Go ahead, make fun of Tommy Bahama. The CEO is happy to join you, and he’s probably not a fan of your preppy shorts](https://fortune.com/2026/08/03/tommy-bahama-ceo-doug-wood-on-clothing-fashion-having-fun/) by Catherina Gioino [PwC U.S. CEO advises young workers to say yes a lot, even if it means working on the weekends—‘That person climbs into the next role’](https://fortune.com/2026/08/03/pwc-us-ceo-paul-griggs-say-yes-a-lot-even-if-it-means-working-on-weekends-that-person-climbs-next-role/) by Emma Burleigh CEO Daily is curated and edited by Joseph Abrams, Jason Ma, Claire Zillman, and Lee Clifford.