Barnes & Noble to Host Grand Re-Opening of Its Gilroy, California, Store.

NEW YORK -- New Bookstore Closed Due to Water Damage Re-Opens On October 13

Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE:BKS), the world's largest bookseller, will re-open its 23,000-square-foot bookstore in Gilroy Crossing at 6825 Camino Arroyo, Gilroy, California, on Wednesday, October 13. The store originally opened on June 2, 2004, but was forced to close on August 6 due to a broken water main pipe.

The public is invited to meet author James Brown as he reads from his memoir, The Los Angeles Diaries, at 7:30 p.m. on Wednesday, October 13. James Brown is an award-winning novelist and his memoir has been serialized in the New York Times Sunday Magazine.

A festive celebration of the Gilroy Barnes & Noble re-opening will be held on Saturday, October 16. Costume character, Peter Rabbit, will be on hand to meet his fans throughout the day. The Gilroy High School Band with its troupe of sixty musicians will perform in the parking lot before heading off to a competition in Fresno. Live entertainment will be provided from 1:30 to 3:00 p.m., as well as complimentary refreshments throughout the store. The afternoon will also include poetry readings with students from San Benito, Anzar, and Gilroy High School beginning at 2:00 p.m. and continuing until 4:00 p.m.

In conjunction with Barnes & Noble's national education week, the Gilroy store will host its Educators Reception from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. Educators will have a chance to receive free materials for their classrooms and register for prizes. Using their Educator Discount Card, teachers will also receive a 25 percent discount on their purchases for that day as well as the entire week of October 16 through the 24.

The Gilroy Barnes & Noble stocks close to 200,000 book, music, DVD and magazine titles and includes a cafe serving Starbucks coffee. The store is open from 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. every day.

Barnes & Noble's bookselling innovations have established it as America's top retail brand for quality. For the third year in a row, the EquiTrend(R) Brand Study by Harris Interactive(R) named Barnes & Noble number-one in quality among the country's retail brands. The store features:

--The Barnes & Noble Membership Program. Designed for Barnes & Noble's best customers, this program gives Members an additional 10 percent off virtually every item in Barnes & Noble stores and 5 percent off already discounted prices online at Barnes & Noble.com. The annual fee is $25.

--Rapid special-order service. Can't find it on the shelf? Barnes & Noble's massive warehouse inventory is available in real-time, enabling its booksellers to order and confirm the availability of over one million titles at the click of a button.

--Large-scale children's departments. Bigger than most typical bookstores and stocking over 15,000 titles in an easy-to-browse environment, "Barnes & Noble Jr." departments are designed to appeal to children, parents, teachers and librarians. Children's story hours are held three times a week.

--Advanced technology music-listening system. The store's music department features RedDotNet, the most advanced listening technology. RedDotNet enables customers to listen to any CD in the store, sampling up to 200,000 music titles by simply passing it under a scanner. Connected to the company's online electronic music catalog, the store's listening stations make "browsing with your ears" a reality.

--Giant Newsstand. The store's newsstand stocks over 2,000 titles, including hundreds of hard-to-find specialty magazines.

About Barnes & Noble, Inc.

Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE:BKS), the world's largest bookseller and a Fortune 500 company, operates 840 bookstores in 49 states. For the third year in a row, the company is the nation's top retail brand for quality, according to the EquiTrend(R) Brand Study by Harris Interactive(R). Barnes & Noble conducts its e-commerce business through Barnes & Noble.com (www.bn.com), which is ranked fifth in traffic among retailers with their own Web site, according to Media Metrix, and the number-one brand among e-commerce companies, according to the latest EquiTrend survey. In addition to its retail operations, Barnes & Noble is one of the largest book publishers in the world. Its subsidiary, Sterling Publishing, publishes over 1,300 new titles a year and has an active list of over 6,000 titles.

General financial information on Barnes & Noble, Inc. can be obtained via the Internet by visiting the company's corporate Web site: http://www.barnesandnobleinc.com/financials.