After a three-year store opening campaign, Barnes & Noble ended 2025 with 702 outlets, a total that includes the nine stores added from Books Inc., whose acquisition was completed late last year.

“Psychologically, 700 was a nice milestone to hit,” CEO James Daunt told PW from the west coast, where he is on a road trip to visit B&N stores in the region. Final plans for 2026 are still being drawn up, but Daunt said the number of stores to open this year will “start with a five or a six.”

Daunt said the opening program can be maintained because business at existing stores continues to be strong. In 2024, Daunt said sales of books were “fine,” but total sales in that year were driven by other non-book categories. That was not the case last year, which saw solid book sales.

2025 started out with blockbuster sales for Onyx Storm and—with the exception of August—sales did nicely for the remainder of the year. Daunt said a number of books sold well and that he was happiest about the surprise hits of the year including Thomas Schlesser’s Mona’s Eyes, which was named B&N’s Book of the Year.

“No one could conceive of how well Mona’s Eyes would do,” Daunt said. He attributed part of the success of the book to the fact that after it started selling well in a few stores, it “snowballed” across the B&N bookselling universe.

Daunt’s state of the industry

Both Onyx Storm and Mona’s Eyes are published by independent presses—Entangled Publishing and Europa Editions, respectively— and Daunt again stressed he doesn’t care about what the size publishers are, but he “very, very much cares about the quality of the book.” Daunt and B&N faced criticism last year from indie publishers that B&N’s processes make it difficult to work with the bookstore chain.

Daunt acknowledged he doesn’t have any interest in print-on-demand titles (“it’s much easier to work with publishers that are part of the distribution network of established publishers,” he said) as well as generic books from generic publishers. “This idea we are against independent publisher is bizarre,” he said. “We are booksellers and we want to sell the best books possible.”

Like many in the industry, Daunt believes there are too many books being published, and he has faced on-and-off criticism for reportedly favoring trade paperbacks over hardcovers. B&N stock hundreds of hardcovers, Daunt noted, but he allowed that he believes the “lifecycle of hardcovers in the United States is a big problem and needs to be rethought.”

In his view, books in that format should remain on shelves for no more than a year before being replaced. He believes the current practice “inhibits the sale of new books” by keeping hardcovers on the shelves well past the point where they are selling in big numbers. The practice also makes it harder to promote midlist titles, he said, adding that he wouldn’t be unhappy if more books came out first as trade paperbacks.

B&N’s bright horizons

In addition to an increase in book sales, all of B&N’s other departments did well last year. After struggling for a few years, the newsstand business picked up significantly and the toys and games and music and movies departments had a banner year. He believes B&N is the country's largest retailer of vinyl records.

It was the success of movies and music sales that led to a recent deal with A24 with the company creating special sections in certain B&N locations. Similar deals with other companies are being considered, Daunt said.

The company’s online business also “saw a much better improvement” last year, which Daunt attributed to increase marketing efforts to the B&N membership list that now stands at 18 million.

Daunt noted that he is very pleased with the look and layout of B&N’s new stores, with each store designed to meet the needs of the neighborhood it which they are set. He acknowledged it is “especially tempting” to remodel stores that had been operated by a former rival—one of the four new stores in Chicago had been a Borders and one west coast outlet had been an Amazon Books.

Over the last 18 months or so, unions have been formed in several B&N locations, but Daunt believes the company’s relationship with its workforce is good. He said the retailer continues to introduce new processes, more training, and he remains intent on lifting pay. He noted that the opening of so many new outlets has provided opportunities for employees to become managers. “Being successful enough to invest in our people is crucial to our success,” he said.

B&N also is investing in its own infrastructure and supply chain, something that Daunt said limited B&N’s exposure to the delays other bookstores endured in receiving some books over the holidays.

Although he acknowledged being “permanently paranoid,” Daunt said he saw no reason why B&N should not have another good year in 2026, pointing to a strong list of new books, upgrades to the B&N stores’ layout, and the ability of what are generally affluent consumers to afford books.

He said he hasn’t been paying attention to rumors that B&N—possibly along with Waterstone’s, which B&N owner Elliot Advisors also owns—may go public this year. “I have no agency in this,” he said, adding, “I am happy as a bookseller as I have ever been.”