Waterstones’ decision to start selling the Kindle e-reader has come as a surprise to the market, particularly following its managing director James Daunt last year calling the etailer a “ruthless devil”.

The bookseller said it would sell the e-reader and allow Kindle users to digitally browse books and have access to Waterstones’ special offers.

Last December Daunt said in an interview with The Independent that Amazon was a “ruthless, money-making devil” and that it would be creating its own alternative to the Kindle. Fast forward to today and the 300-store chain has caved in and made a pact with the so-called “devil”.

Daunt said: “It is a truly exciting prospect to harness also the respective strengths of Waterstones and Amazon to provide a dramatically better digital reading experience for our customers.”

Conlumino retail consultant Matt Piner believes the deal was a reluctant move by Waterstones. He said: “They are aware of the way things are going in the book market and rather than bury their head in the sand they know that the only way Waterstones will work as a destination is if they offer a comprehensive and offer and acknowledge the Kindle and ebooks.”

Independent retail analyst Nick Bubb said it was a case of Waterstones acknowledging the phrase “if you can’t beat them, join them”.

Data shows that consumer ebook sales in the UK surged 366% last year, according to research from the Publishers Association’s Statistics Yearbook. This is in stark contrast to consumer print sales, which fell by 7% in 2011.

Eoin Purcell, commissioning editor at book publisher New Island wrote in a blog post today that the deal relieves Waterstones of the burden of competing with Amazon and reduces the need for a huge capital outlay on technology R&D.

Purcell said in his post: “It also enables the management to concentrate on making the stores profitable and on selling print books (still the company’s core product). It makes the decision about selling Amazon’s print books easier (I would think that’s a big one for authors). It probably presents more opportunities than it closes off for Waterstones in other words.”

Waterstones is amid a refurbishment programme of its 300-store estate and the move should allow the retailer to focus on the core job in hand.

The surprise deal is hot on the heels of US retail giant Target announcing it would stop selling Amazon’s Kindle.

However, just as recently other retailers have made moves to take a grab of the growing market. US bookseller Barnes and Noble recently announced plans to team up with Microsoft in a £185m deal to make The Nook, the retailer’s e-reader, available to millions of people while WH Smith’s alliance with Canadian e-reader maker Kobo appears to be successful, with plans to open 100 Kobo-branded concessions in stores.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Daunt said there was a possibility that Waterstones could offer ‘Kindle Bundles’, giving discounts on the ebook version of any hardback that a shopper bought. He said: “The whole focus is what can we do to give customers what they want? We have all sorts of ideas and we are talking to publishers about them.”

Although this deal marks Waterstones’ biggest move yet into the e-reader revolution, for some the retailer has got bigger fish to fry. “The bigger deal is what’s Waterstones going to do with its store portfolio? They’ve got more stores than they need to have,” said Bubb.