Barnes & Noble is adding stores as the #BookTok community continues to provide a tailwind

Barnes & Noble (BKS) continues to expand its retail footprint in the U.S. in a signal that the brick-and-mortar bookstore concept will survive.

Shopping center owner and developer Big V Property Group has announced the opening of three new Barnes & Noble stores at properties in Texas and South Carolina. The locations at Alamo Ranch in San Antonio, Southpark Meadows in Austin, and The Shoppes at Woodhill in Columbia, South Carolina, were all previously home to other retailers and were reconceived and remodeled to accommodate the company’s new, smaller format.

“Watching the reinvention and reinvigoration of Barnes & Noble shows the continued strength of brick-and-mortar retail, and it is now a critical component of our tenant mixes,” stated Greg Ix, executive VP of leasing at Big V. “Small, independent booksellers are a vital part of retail, but there really is only one Barnes & Noble. We are happy to have leased nearly 75,000 sq. ft. and reinvented rare vacant spaces to accommodate them and look forward to continuing our strong relationship.”

The new expansion follows Barnes & Noble (BKS) adding four new stores in April. Earlier this year, the retailer said it planned to open more than 60 new stores in 2025. In 2024, Barnes & Noble opened 57 stores, which was more than it had in the whole decade from 2009 to 2019. Looking further ahead, Barnes & Noble aims to grow its national footprint to over 1,000 stores in the next few years.

The company attributes its turnaround to a strategy that gives local bookstores more autonomy, allowing each store to tailor its offerings to the community it serves. The approach has resulted in robust sales and a renewed sense of relevance, especially as physical bookstores have become popular “third spaces” for socializing and browsing, a trend amplified by the popularity of book-related content on TikTok by the so-called BookTok community. Recent models emphasize the third space theme by providing comfortable seating, modern cafes, and community engagement.

Barnes & Noble was acquired by British private equity group Elliott Investment Management for $683 million in 2019. That deal followed Elliott’s 2018 acquisition of Waterstones, the largest retail bookseller in the U.K. Barnes & Noble Education (NYSE:BNED), the company’s college bookstore division, was spun off into a separate, publicly traded company in August 2015.

Barnes & Noble is reported to be exploring a possible IPO, potentially in London or New York.