Barnes & Noble, Inc.

Who owns Barnes & Noble?
Barnes & Noble is owned by funds advised by Elliott Advisors (UK) Limited, the UK arm of Elliott Investment Management. Elliott acquired the company in August 2019 for approximately $683 million and took it private. Elliott also owns the British bookstore chain Waterstones.

Is Barnes & Noble publicly traded?
No. Barnes & Noble traded on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker BKS from 1993 until August 2019, when it was acquired by Elliott and delisted. It now operates as a private company.

When was Barnes & Noble founded?
The company's roots trace to Charles M. Barnes's book business founded in 1886 in Wheaton, Illinois. The Barnes & Noble name dates to 1917, when William Barnes and G. Clifford Noble opened their New York City bookstore. Leonard Riggio acquired the company in 1971 and built it into a national chain.

Who founded Barnes & Noble?
Charles M. Barnes founded the original book business. His son William Barnes formed the Barnes & Noble partnership with G. Clifford Noble in 1917. Leonard Riggio is the architect of the modern national chain.

What is Barnes & Noble's market position?
It is the largest retail bookseller in the United States, with approximately 600 stores in all 50 states, and the only remaining national bookstore chain of scale. Its primary competitor is Amazon for overall book sales, along with thousands of independent bookstores.

Who makes NOOK devices?
Barnes & Noble owns the NOOK brand through its Nook Digital subsidiary. Current NOOK e-readers are manufactured by Netronix, and NOOK tablets are manufactured by Lenovo under a partnership arrangement.

The Barnes & Noble story begins in 1886, when Charles M. Barnes opened a book printing business in Wheaton, Illinois. The modern company took shape in 1917, when his son William Barnes partnered with G. Clifford Noble to open a bookstore on West 23rd Street in New York City under the Barnes & Noble name. The business grew into a significant New York bookseller, and its flagship store on Fifth Avenue became a city institution.

The company's national expansion began under Leonard Riggio, who acquired the Barnes & Noble trade name and flagship store in 1971 and merged it with his own college bookstore business. Through the 1970s and 1980s, Riggio pioneered the bookstore superstore concept, acquiring B. Dalton Bookseller in 1986, which made Barnes & Noble the largest bookseller in the United States almost overnight. The company went public on the New York Stock Exchange in 1993.

The 1990s and early 2000s were the company's peak years. Barnes & Noble superstores expanded into hundreds of communities, and the company launched BN.com in 1997 to compete with a then-small Amazon. The rise of online book retail and then e-books reversed the company's fortunes. In 2009, Barnes & Noble launched the NOOK e-reader, its attempt to contest Amazon's Kindle, and briefly captured roughly a quarter of the US e-book market. The NOOK business, organized as NOOK Media with investments from Microsoft and Pearson, burned through cash and never reached profitability. Microsoft exited the partnership in 2014, and NOOK was folded back into Barnes & Noble in 2016.

Store closures, falling sales, and failed strategic reviews defined the 2010s. In June 2019, the company agreed to be acquired by funds advised by Elliott Advisors (UK) Limited for $6.50 per share, approximately $683 million including assumed debt. The deal closed on August 7, 2019, ending 26 years as a public company. Elliott already owned Waterstones, the largest British bookstore chain, and installed its CEO, James Daunt, to run Barnes & Noble as well.

Daunt's turnaround strategy rejected centralized merchandising in favor of local control, letting each store's manager decide what to stock. The company closed underperforming locations, remodeled survivors, and invested in new stores in affluent suburban markets. The result was a rare physical retail recovery: by 2024 and 2025, Barnes & Noble was opening roughly 60 new stores a year and reporting renewed profitability. In 2025 and 2026, the company continued its expansion while also refreshing the NOOK line with new e-reader editions.

Barnes & Noble's sustainability work is modest in scale compared with large consumer goods companies, reflecting its retail business model. The company publishes supplier conduct standards covering labor practices and product safety across its merchandising supply chain, and its store operations have adopted standard efficiency measures in lighting and logistics.

The company does not hold B Corporation certification. Its most visible social contribution is structural: supporting physical book retail, literacy programming, and local author events in communities across the country, a role frequently cited when evaluating the company's cultural footprint.

Barnes & Noble's most significant controversies predate the Elliott era. The NOOK division's multi-year decline destroyed substantial shareholder value during the public years, and the company's Microsoft partnership ended in litigation-free but acrimonious separation. In the 2010s, the company faced criticism over workplace scheduling practices and, like many retailers, over book curation decisions.

Under Daunt's leadership the company has attracted a different controversy: periodic disputes over stocking decisions for politically sensitive titles, which arise for any large bookseller. No major regulatory actions are on record against the company in recent years.