Barnes & Noble Announces Preliminary Bookstore Holiday Comparable Store Sales of 9.7%

Bookstores Achieve Record-Setting Sales Date This Holiday Season

New York, NY — Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller, today reported preliminary bookstore holiday comparable store sales of 9.7% for the nine-week period ending January 1, 2011. Driven by the company’s NOOK eReading device product line, Barnes & Noble bookstores achieved their largest retail sales day ever in the company’s nearly 40-year history on December 23, 2010. Barnes & Noble, Inc. will issue a more in-depth holiday sales release on January 6, 2011.



-----
About Barnes & Noble, Inc.

Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE:BKS), the world’s largest bookseller and a Fortune 500 company, operates 717 bookstores in 50 states. Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Barnes & Noble, also operates 637 college bookstores serving nearly 4 million students and faculty members at colleges and universities across the United States. Barnes & Noble is the nation’s top bookseller brand for the seventh year in a row, as determined by a combination of the brand’s performance on familiarity, quality, and purchase intent; the top bookseller in quality for the second year in a row and the number two retailer in trust, according to the EquiTrend® Brand Study by Harris Interactive®. Barnes & Noble conducts its online business through Barnes & Noble.com (www.bn.com), one of the Web’s largest e-commerce sites, which also features more than two million titles in its eBookstore (www.bn.com/ebooks). Through Barnes & Noble’s NOOK(TM) eReading product offering, customers can buy and read eBooks on the widest range of platforms, including NOOK eBook Readers, devices from partner companies, and hundreds of the most popular mobile and computing devices using free NOOK software.

General information on Barnes & Noble, Inc. can be obtained via the Internet by visiting the company’s corporate website: www.barnesandnobleinc.com.