Controversies
In November 2008, Waterstones cancelled a book signing event by poet Patrick Jones at its Cardiff store. Christian Voice had described the book as "obscene and blasphemous" and commented "Just the knowledge that we were on our way has put the fear of God into the opposition." Jones said he was not going to be "beaten down" by religious activists and signed copies for a small group of people in the street, arguing "There shouldn't be censorship of this sort." Waterstones said the event was cancelled "to avoid potential disruption to our store," saying that the safety of its booksellers was its main priority, and pointing out that the book remained on sale throughout its branches.
Waterstones banned internet access to the trade magazine and its website, The Bookseller.com from all stores in October 2009. According to the store intranet, Gerry Johnson claimed this was due to the magazine not being needed to run "daily business activity" at the company and could be "misleading". However, others have suggested that this was due to an article printed by The Bookseller which ran negative publicity on the performance of the new "Book Hub" central distribution centre. Following the departure of Johnson from the business, Waterstones reversed its decision.
Following the decision to remove the apostrophe in the name in January 2012, Waterstones was subject to criticism by members of the public. John Richards, of the Apostrophe Protection Society, said that the change was "just plain wrong" and "grammatically incorrect" while the move sparked outrage on Twitter, involving debate on whether the move was grammatically incorrect or not. James Daunt however stated "Waterstones without an apostrophe is, in a digital world of URLs and email addresses, a more versatile and practical spelling". Linguist David Crystal on his blog added: " ... if Waterstone's wants to become Waterstones, that's up to the firm. It's nothing to do with expressing possession or plurality or anything to do with meaning."
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