After years on the brink, Barnes & Noble is going for a plot twist

The book chain Barnes & Noble is staging its biggest expansion in over a decade. (Story originally aired on All Things Considered on March 3, 2023. It's been updated for today's broadcast.)

Transcript

ROB SCHMITZ, HOST:

Barnes & Noble was once the biggest of its kind. Then it fell to the brink of extinction. Now this bookseller has its own plot twist - it's expanding once again. NPR's Alina Selyukh reports. And a note - this story has been updated for today's broadcast. It was originally reported in March of last year.

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ALINA SELYUKH: The ghost of Barnes & Noble past meets the spirit of Barnes & Noble future in a single shopping center.

I'm kind of cutting across the small parking lot to go from the old, shut-down Barnes & Noble to the recently opened Barnes & Noble.

...Both in Pikesville, Maryland.

(Whispering) It's really quiet in here, which makes sense. It's a bookstore.

Not quite a library, but close. I'm here to check out the chain's makeover. Inside is lit up and bright with bookshelves arranged, not in rows of alphabetical stacks, but in little thematic rooms so people linger and browse and maybe find something they didn't know they wanted.

(Whispering) Games, puzzles, travel are all in kind of a little nook. There's, like, a whole nook of manga, another nook of books for young readers, graphic novels...

JANINE FLANIGAN: Everything you see in the store will be brand-new.

SELYUKH: Janine Flanigan heads up store planning and design at Barnes & Noble, and she's been busy. After years in survival mode, the chain opened 31 new stores last year and 61 this year, returning to places it had abandoned and even taking over former Amazon bookshops.

FLANIGAN: I would say probably 2006, 2007 was the last time we opened this many stores.

SELYUKH: Barnes & Noble slowly collapsed through the 2010s. What once was an archetypal big-box villain to independent bookstores became lunch for Amazon. Its online store lagged behind while its physical stores got overrun by gadgets and blankets and stuff in pursuit of any kind of sale.

FLANIGAN: We sort of went off the rails, I think, a little bit, and we got away from who we were as booksellers.

SELYUKH: Then in 2019, Barnes & Noble was bought by a hedge fund, which is often a scary development. But it brought along a new CEO, James Daunt, who was famous for leading what seemed like a miraculous turnaround of a British book chain called Waterstones. He pushed for Barnes & Noble stores to, quote, "weed out the rubbish." And the biggest change actually borrowed from the playbook of independent bookshops - giving the local stores much more authority to order what their readers in their area want to see.

SHANNON DEVITO: Which is a huge shift, frankly, in philosophy.

SELYUKH: Shannon DeVito is the senior director of books.

DEVITO: It's not an algorithm. It's very much a, I read this; I loved it. I know this area really gravitates towards beekeeping books, so I'm going to create the best beekeeping display I can.

SELYUKH: The timing of all this proved extremely opportune. Barnes & Noble took advantage of pandemic lockdowns to renovate and recalibrate. Retail bankruptcies created cheaper space for new stores, and the chain relaunched right when people were buying more books than ever.

Barnes & Noble does not disclose financials, but DeVito told me the company's sales have grown consistently for three years straight. That's big in Barnes & Noble land. Cue expansion and new stores like the one I visited, where several shoppers told me coming here was an alternative to waiting on an Amazon order.

KENDRA WALLACE: I do like independent stores, but there's not a lot in this area, I don't think, so...

SELYUKH: Kendra Wallace and her friend Audryana Pitts-Wright said they did notice the nice new interior but remain skeptical of a big-box chain trying to grow a bigger heart.

AUDRYANA PITTS-WRIGHT: It's - they're trying to capture the more intimate independent bookstore feel when it's still just a Barnes & Noble. It feels a little staged (laughter).

SELYUKH: And yet you did walk away with something.

WALLACE: Yeah, I'm a reader, so I enjoy picking up books wherever I can find them. Should I have bought more books for my collection? Probably not. But it is what it is (laughter).

SELYUKH: Barnes & Noble may not have sold them on its new identity, but it did sell them some books.

Alina Selyukh, NPR News, Pikesville, Maryland. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.