So highly anticipated is that expansion that many already have their “celebrate” hats on to consider that it has certainly ushered in extensive celebrations among book lovers in America as their resource Barnes & Noble is now embarking on its most ambitious expansion program in over a decade. The chain of iconic bookstores opens more than 60 new locations in 2025, marking a phenomenal turnaround for a company that only a few years ago seemed destined to join the other chains like Borders into extinction.
From near-death to renaissance
Currently, the growth by this retail giant is also one of the most phenomenal comebacks in retail history. After more than 15 years of a decline in store numbers during which time the mega chain closed over 150 stores, it opened, in a single year, no less than 57 stores in 2024. This number surpassed all totals of new openings in the entire previous at least 10 years, from 2009 to 2019. Barnes & Noble is today in what the CEO James Daunt refers to as “tremendous growth” with plans to open over 60 other stores in 2025.
It all started here in 2019 when the hedge fund Elliott Management picked up the struggling retailer for a sum of $638 million and put in Daunt, who had previously made success with an obscure reversal of fortune fomented at the British book chain Waterstones. The company has just opened 34 more stores this year and plans another 31 locations to begin operating by December.
That story is told in the numbers: From 2015 to 2019, the Barnes & Noble store experienced annual declines of $700 million. Today, this retailer boasts sales growth in the mid-single digits, operates approximately 600 stores nationwide, and has become the largest bookstore chain in the United States.
BookTok phenomenon driving growth
Barnes & Noble is banking, however, to a large extent on BookTok, the rapidly growing popularity of a part of TikTok devoted to loving books with more than 100 billion global views. This social media phenomenon has proven to be extremely transformative for physical bookstores, with Barnes & Noble crediting BookTok for helping drive customers back to brick-and-mortar locations.
Walk into just about any branch of Barnes & Noble today, and you encounter immediately a BookTok table featuring “It Ends With Us” by Colleen Hoover, “The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo” by Taylor Jenkins Reid and other such viral titles. These social media-driven recommendations have created a new generation of voracious readers, particularly among Gen Z, who are purchasing physical books at unprecedented rates.
The statistics speak volumes. Books that had been placed on the BookTok shelf made more than $760 million in sales in 2022 alone; in addition, the nest egg was able to crow about a 14% increase in book sales in 2020, the same year BookTok started. The chain has taken this up enthusiastically, creating its own TikTok account @BNBuzz with almost 125,000 followers, and giving prime real estate in stores to BookTok selections.
The third space
Aside from BookTok trends, the renaissance of Barnes and Noble is a reflection of a growing trend in culture to demand those “third places”—social gathering sites that fall outside home and work. They have even been defined by the sociologist Ray Oldenburg, from America, as sparsely populated locations designed to encourage informal interaction, belonging, and social connection.
In the post-Covid era, Barnes and Noble has grown to house important facets of community centers where friends come together, study, or socialize. Most locations carry Starbucks cafés found within them, acting as gathering spaces, while the stores themselves have transformed into a popular hangout for teens and young adults in search of social activity outside of an online environment.
The trend toward third spaces is particularly effective for younger generations subjected to digital fatigue and in search of authentic interaction rather than one at the end of a screen. The representatives of Barnes & Noble have said, “During the pandemic recovery period, our stores became a safe and welcoming space to meet up with friends and explore the stacks”.
Business strategy changes
That success of the chain can be traced to the fundamental alteration of their operational philosophy – under his command, Barnes & Noble goes local, empowering the individual booksellers to gather inventory as well as create store designs tailored to the preferences of community customers.
This localization strategy has yielded dramatic results. The company reduced returns from publishers from 30% to just 7% by eliminating the previous system where publishers paid for premium shelf placement regardless of customer demand. Instead, local booksellers now stock titles based on actual community interests and reading patterns.
The transformation extends to store design and customer experience. New locations feature innovative layouts that blend traditional bookstore elements with modern retail concepts in ways where browsing and social interaction become facilitated. Recent openings have drawn crowds that “wrap around the building” for ribbon-cutting ceremonies, demonstrating renewed consumer enthusiasm for physical bookstores.
Nationwide expansion details
This is the geographical breadth of the 2025 expansion of Barnes and Noble: stores, and more stores in prime real estate that used to belong to other chains. Recent openings included a chain of former Office Max spaces that have been transformed in Austin and San Antonio, Texas, and a store in South Carolina that fits snugly into a former Bed Bath & Beyond harbor.
The company, Barnes & Noble has signed leases for additional stores across 17 states, including California, Florida, Texas, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, Colorado, Washington, Connecticut, Arizona, New Hampshire, Maryland, Kansas, Illinois, Nebraska, Virginia, Louisiana, Tennessee, Idaho, South Dakota, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Minnesota, and the District of Columbia.
Notable new stores include a new flagship in Georgetown, Washington, D.C.’s, upscale neighborhood and several stores returned to communities where Barnes & Noble once operated. For example, the new Naperville, Illinois store opened just up the street from the chain’s previous location, with CEO Daunt commenting, “We are very happy to return to Naperville, where for 25 years we were a community staple”.
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