Barnes & Noble to Open New Store at 9455 Civic Centre Boulevard West Chester, Ohio; New Bookstore Debuts on March 3.

Business Editors

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Feb. 18, 2004

Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world's largest bookseller, will open a new 25,000-square-foot bookstore on March 3 in the Streets of West Chester at 9455 Civic Centre Boulevard, West Chester, Ohio. Concurrently, the existing store at 895 East Kemper Road in Springdale, Ohio, will close. The new store will stock close to 200,000 book, music, DVD and magazine titles and include a cafe serving Starbucks coffee. The West Chester Barnes & Noble will be open from 9 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day and employ more than 50 people from the community.

The public is invited to a Preview Night Party at the new West Chester Barnes & Noble on Tuesday, March 2, from 6 to 9 p.m. A portion of the Preview Night sales will benefit LifeSpan, a private, non-profit agency dedicated to improving the quality of lives throughout the Ohio Counties of Butler and Warren. Children are invited to have a free photo taken with costume character Clifford the Big Red Dog. Roger Drawdy and the Fire Starters will provide music throughout the evening.

Barnes & Noble's bookselling innovations have established it as the number-one retail brand for quality in America, according to a 2003 study by Harris Interactive. The new store will feature:

-- 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 will be held three times a

week.

-- Advanced technology music-listening system. The store's music

department will feature 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, out of town and even foreign newspapers.

About Barnes & Noble, Inc.

Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS) is the world's largest bookseller, operating 646 Barnes & Noble bookstores in 49 states. It also operates 231 B. Dalton Bookseller stores, primarily in regional shopping malls. The company offers titles from more than 50,000 publisher imprints, including thousands of small, independent publishers and university presses. It conducts its e-commerce business through Barnes & Noble.com (NASDAQ: BNBN) (http://www.bn.com).

Barnes & Noble also has approximately a 65 percent interest in GameStop (NYSE: GME), the nation's largest video-game and entertainment-software specialty retailer with over 1,500 stores.

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.