The story
Founded by Gilbert Clifford Noble, Leonard Riggio and William Robbins Barnes in 1873, in New York City.1
19th century: foundations
A major part of what would become Barnes & Noble was founded in 1886 as a bookstore called Arthur Hinds & Company, located at 4 Cooper Institute in the Cooper Union Building in New York City. In the fall of 1886, Gilbert Clifford Noble from Westfield, Massachusetts, who had graduated from Harvard College earlier that year, was hired to work there as a clerk.
In 1894, Noble was made a partner, and the name of the shop was changed to Hinds & Noble.
1900–1919
In 1901, Hinds & Noble moved to 31–35 W. 15th Street. In 1917, Noble bought out Hinds and entered into a partnership with William Barnes, son of his friend Charles Barnes; the name of the store was changed to Barnes & Noble soon after. Charles Barnes had previously founded an Illinois bookstore in 1873 that would later evolve into the Follett Corporation after William Barnes left the company. Barnes and Noble's official history cites this 1873 Illinois bookstore founding as part of its history.
1920–1939
In 1930, Noble sold his share of the company to William Barnes's son, John Wilcox Barnes. Noble died on June 6, 1936, at the age of 72. In 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, the bookstore moved its flagship location to 18th Street and Fifth Avenue, which served as the company's flagship location until its closure in 2014. The Noble family retained ownership of an associated publishing business, and Barnes & Noble opened a new publishing division in 1931.
1940–1959
In 1940, the store was one of the first businesses to feature Muzak. It underwent a major renovation the following year. That decade, the company opened stores in Brooklyn and Chicago. William Barnes died in 1945, at the age of 78, and his son John Wilcox Barnes assumed full control. The company underwent a significant expansion between the 1950s and the 1960s, opening an additional retail store on 23rd Street in Manhattan, as well as shops near the City University of New York, Harvard, and other Northeast college campuses.
1960–1979
John Barnes died in 1964, and the company was sold to the conglomerate Amtel two years later. The business was purchased in 1971 by Leonard Riggio, who has been credited as one of the founders, for $1.2 million. By then, it consisted only of "a significantly reduced wholesale operation and a single retail location—the flagship store at 105 Fifth Avenue." The publishing operation was sold separately by Amtel to Harper & Row. In 1974, Barnes & Noble became the first bookstore chain to advertise on television, and a year later, the company became the first bookseller in the United States to discount books, by selling The New York Times best-selling titles at 40% off the publishers' list price. Between the 1970s and the 1980s, Barnes & Noble opened smaller discount stores, which were eventually phased out in favor of larger stores. They also began to publish their own books to be sold to mail-order customers. These titles were primarily affordable reissues of out-of-print titles and selling them through mail-order catalogs allowed Barnes & Noble to reach new customers nationwide.
In November 1974, editors of the British-produced Guinness Book of Records, claimed on the BBC One television program Record Breakers that the Fifth Avenue store of Barnes & Noble had overtaken that of London's Foyles bookshop to become the world's biggest bookstore.
1980–1999
Barnes & Noble continued to expand throughout the 1980s, and it purchased the primarily shopping mall-based B. Dalton chain from Dayton Hudson in 1986, for an estimated $275 million to $300 million. Solveig Robinson, author of The Book in Society: An Introduction to Print Culture, wrote that the purchase "gave [Barnes & Noble] the necessary know-how and infrastructure to create what, in 1992, became the definitive bookselling superstore." The acquisition of the 797 B. Dalton bookstores turned the company into a nationwide retailer, and by the end of fiscal year 1999, the second-largest online bookseller in the United States. B&N's critics claim that it has contributed to the decline of local and independent booksellers. The last B. Dalton stores ceased operations in January 2010.
Read the full text
In 1989, Barnes & Noble purchased the 22-store chain Bookstop.
In September 1993, Barnes & Noble became a publicly traded company by issuing $77 million worth of stock on the New York Stock Exchange under the BKS ticker symbol. The company remained on the stock exchange until competition from Amazon decreased their stock value and in August 2019, Elliott Management purchased all of the company's stock and took the company private.
Before Barnes & Noble created its official website, it sold books directly to customers through mail-order catalogs. It first began selling books online in the 1980s through an early videotex service called "Trintex", a joint venture between Sears and IBM, but the company's website was not launched until May 1997. BarnesandNoble.com went public in 1999.
2000s
In 2004, it was reported that the reading of books was on the decline in America, with the number of non-reading adults increasing by 17 million between 1992 and 2002. Despite this, Barnes & Noble said that its retail store business was expanding in the book market. Beginning in 1999, Barnes & Noble owned GameStop, a video game and electronics retail outlet. The company distributed its shares in GameStop in late 2004, spinning it off into its own company in an attempt to simplify its corporate structure.
CEO Leonard Riggio stepped down in 2002, naming his younger brother, and former acting chief executive of BarnesandNoble.com, Stephen Riggio, to succeed him. Some corporate governance experts noted that this appointment could cause a conflict of interest, but the company board noted that Riggio's experience at the company made him the right person for the job. Stephen Riggio stepped down from the position in 2010.
2010s
In 2010, website president William Lynch was named CEO. He began development toward the company's electronic book store and the introduction of its electronic book reader, the Nook. Steve Riggio stayed on as vice chairman. When Lynch resigned in mid-2013, he was replaced by Chief Financial Officer Michael Huseby early the next year. Following the spinoff of Barnes & Noble Education, Huseby departed to head the new firm; his place was filled in mid-2015 by Ronald Boire, who departed one year later. Demos Parneros was named Barnes & Noble's Chief Executive Officer in April 2017 after having joined the company as Chief Operating Officer in November 2016; however, he was fired in July 2018 for "company policy violations" without severance and was immediately removed from the company's board, at the advice of a law firm hired by Barnes & Noble. On August 28, 2018, Parneros filed a lawsuit against Barnes & Noble, claiming wrongful termination.
After the bankruptcy and closure of its chief competitor, Borders, in 2011, Barnes & Noble became the last remaining national bookstore chain in the United States. This followed a series of mergers and bankruptcies in the American bookstore industry since the 1990s, which also saw the demise of Waldenbooks, Barnes & Noble's own subsidiary B. Dalton, and Crown Books, among others. Barnes & Noble's largest physical bookstore rival is now Books-A-Million, which does not operate in the Western US. Barnes & Noble also faces competition from general retailers, especially from Amazon.com, and from regional and independent booksellers. Amazon has even opened its own physical bookstores, once again creating a second national bookstore chain.
Barnes & Noble began reducing its overall presence in the 2010s, closing its original flagship store in early 2014. In mid-2014, the company announced it would separate its Nook Media division from its retail store division.
In 2018, the company closed 400 of its retail locations, as its business seemed to be going through a decline. In February 2018, Barnes & Noble permanently laid off 1,800 full time employees at an annual cost savings of $40 million per year. According to TechCrunch, the company essentially fired their entire full time staff at all their stores, who would be making an average of $22,000 per year (~$11 per hour), and were replaced by part time workers earning close to minimum wage.
In the 2018 fiscal year that ended in July, the company's overall losses reached $17 million.
Some media accounts noted the retail chain's apparent loss of focus, with one article noting:
While it's easy to blame Barnes & Noble's troubles on Amazon.com, the fact is the book industry has been on a roll. According to the American Booksellers Association, a trade group representing independent bookshops, year-to-date sales through August 6 actually rose 5% among its member sellers.
A visit to Barnes & Noble's flagship New York store in Union Square may offer some clues. The CD and DVD sections, which still occupy a sizable chunk of store space, are often deserted and unmanned whenever I visit, most recently Wednesday night. The same goes for the Nook area, which, despite displays of some Nook devices, was mostly taken up by an array of other items like yoga mats and Brookstone weighted blankets.
Elsewhere in the store, alongside bestsellers, signed copies and books sorted by category are more examples of mismatched merchandise: journals, toys, candles and diffuser sets, tea and chocolate selections. In the kids' area, backpacks and other school merchandise were marked 50% off among the expanded toy aisles. The café traffic also showed little sign of helping drive sales elsewhere in the store. At the end of the visit, one couldn't help but wonder: What does Barnes & Noble stand for, and what does it want to be?
In early July 2018, Barnes & Noble fired CEO Demos Parneros for an unspecified violation of company policy, which it was later revealed was based upon sexual harassment claims. It accused Pareneros of breaching his duties of loyalty and good faith and acting as a "faithless servant" by sexually harassing the female employee, bullying subordinates, and attempting to "sabotage" a potential acquisition of the New York-based company, and asserted that the company should therefore be entitled to claw back his salary, bonus, and other benefits during the period of his "disloyal conduct".
On October 3, 2018, the board of directors announced that they would entertain offers to buy the company. Among the potential buyers was Leonard Riggio, who owned at the time approximately 19% of Barnes & Noble stock. As a result of the news, the company's stock price jumped by nearly 30%.
In August 2019, Elliott Investment Management acquired the company for approximately $683 million with James Daunt, the managing director of London-based Waterstones Booksellers Ltd., becoming CEO. James Daunt was to become CEO of both Waterstones and Barnes & Noble and was to relocate from London to New York. On August 7, 2019, Barnes & Noble became a privately held, wholly owned subsidiary of Elliott.
In March 2020, Barnes & Noble announced that it would temporarily stop selling magazines and, likewise temporarily, close 400 of its 620 stores due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Approximately 12 Barnes & Noble stores had closed completely following Elliott Advisors' takeover of the company. Daunt announced intentions to overhaul the acquisition procedure, opting for centralized and reduced initial frontlist orders compared to previous years. In 2021, the company acquired Paper Source.
Retail resurgence in 2020s
In April 2022, The New York Times reported the company used the temporary closure of stores during the pandemic to refurbish them, and credited Daunt with turning around sales both in store and online. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Barnes & Noble saw up to a 500% increase in graphic novel and manga sales.
As of 2023 Barnes & Noble was the biggest national chain of bookstores in the United States. It has over 660 retail stores, with locations in all 50 states. It operates 700 college bookstores, and has more than 34,000 full-time employees. Its retail store in Union Square in New York City is the second-biggest bookstore in the USA.
In 2023 the CEO, James Daunt fostered a new approach to retail, allowing stores greater autonomy in choosing their layout, and also making them more similar to independent stores, in atmosphere and in layout. The Wall Street Journal cited Daunt's background running Daunt Books, an independent bookseller in the UK, as one major basis for his approach as CEO to new strategies for developing the retail business. Daunt encouraged Barnes & Noble buyers to limit the scope of their research, cut out "boring" and "tedious" books, and source books primarily from larger publishing houses; many indie publishers alleged that their business was dropped and they lost contact with Barnes & Noble buyers after Daunt became CEO. The article asserted "The idea behind the new Barnes & Noble is to make the national chain more like a collection of 596 local indies. The famous one in my neighborhood [Upper West Side of Manhattan] used to symbolize the company's past. Now it offers a peek at its future. 'If we can do it here,' Daunt said, 'we can do it anywhere.' "
The company's retail operations had a major expansion in 2023, and it moved ahead with plans to open thirty new stores.
The company opened 60 new locations in 2024. Media accounts cited coverage on social media and by influencers as one reason for Barnes & Noble's popularity and success.
In an article entitled "Barnes & Noble is making a comeback," CNN noted that the new CEO James Daunt had implemented a strategy with the physical storefronts that involved curating each store's selection, leading to a reported 7% increase in traffic.
In June 2024, the company announced the purchase of The Tattered Cover, a small Denver-based independent chain of bookstores, for $1.83M. The deal kept the current branding, locations, and most employees. The sale was approved by a bankruptcy court in July 2024.
In September 2025, Barnes & Noble announced it would acquire San Francisco Bay Area chain Books Inc. for $3.25 million. Books Inc. had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in January 2025.
In 2026, Barnes & Noble announced its plans to open sixty new stores. The CEO, James Daunt, stated that he would be not be opposed to Barnes & Noble selling AI-written books as long as they "[don't] pretend to be something else and [aren't] ripping off somebody else," and there is customer demand for them.
From Wikipedia’s article on Barnes & Noble, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.7