From embracing indie authors to publishing collector’s edition releases to creating BookTok section suggestions in stores, Barnes & Noble is tapping into the power of culture to drive customers toward its products and stores through an attentive social listening strategy. Though some are shocked to see stores like Barnes & Noble thriving, its intentional approach to consumer engagement has kept others interested in this otherwise traditional form of entertainment.
According to Rival IQ, Barnes & Noble isn’t just surviving the digital age but is thriving in it. Through its social listening strategy, the store has entered a rapid growth period, which has led to 187 new store openings from 2023 to 2025. How?
It’s jumping on the wave of consumer interest from the TikTok subculture – BookTok. We’re retelling the tale of how this bookseller learned to embrace a hungry community by acknowledging its social presence (and desires). From bringing online content inside its physical stores to profitable partnerships with BookTok influencers, it’s a social listening strategy full of exciting twists and turns.
Down and (Almost) Out
In the midst of steady decline, Barnes & Noble suffered its worst sales year in more than a decade in 2017. And as the book retailer was reeling, the ensuing COVID-19 outbreak seemed like the nail in its coffin – until the hedge fund group Elliott Investment Management purchased the company outright. This acquisition allowed Barnes & Noble to utilize the shutdown as a time to rethink and retool its brick-and-mortar stores with the help of new CEO James Daunt.
Under his leadership and vision, the company took a bold new position: “putting books first.” Daunt repositioned the company back to providing its customers with books rather than losing focus on pop culture trinkets and merchandise. Instead of catering to non-readers, Barnes & Noble rediscovered how it could connect with its original book-loving community. Once the position was clear, it was time to consider an effective social listening strategy.
As part of the overall strategy, Barnes & Noble actively tracked and responded to customer feedback on all its social platforms and review sites. The social team was monitoring feedback and utilizing that information to help inform choices in-store with displays, book promotions, and events, while also responding to reader comments. The interaction and utilization of feedback helped bolster Barnes & Noble’s connection across the book community.
Weathering the Storm with e-Commerce
The COVID shutdown saw a spike in online book sales, but many retailers were still left wondering if the trend would continue once things “went back to normal.” Barnes & Noble was the exception.
Leading the online sales pack was (of course) online retail giant Amazon. Yet as the need for sourcing goods through e-commerce surged, Amazon placed its book orders at the bottom of its shipping priority list in favor of other items like kitchen gadgets, exercise equipment, clothes, and face masks. So, what did Barnes & Noble do? It seized the opportunity by offering fast, reliable shipping on all orders. As a result, the bookseller gained attention with pandemic readers, setting the stage for its successful social listening strategy.
While the shutdown allowed for a restructuring of its stores, it also gave Barnes & Noble the space to find a grassroots community of readers built around the hashtag #BookTok. The social media community is built around fan experiences, reviews, and recommendations regarding books and their authors. This subculture of TikTok content experienced rapid growth and an active consumer base. Community members carried a high degree of trust in other readers’ authentic reviews and personal experiences with books.
As a result, many Gen Zers and Millennials put down their phones and picked up books, leading to a profound return to reading. Even the form of reading signaled a complete return to the old-fashioned approach. It was no longer a wave of Kindles, but a push for “physical” books. The movement even spurred the desire for experiential moments with the return of Book Clubs, where close social groups could gather and share their experiences in-store, setting the stage for an almost cosmic alignment.
BookTok was ripe with millions of reels, videos, and other engaging content, and like the e-commerce opportunity, Barnes & Noble didn’t hesitate to engage with a TikTok social listening strategy. It dove right in once again.
Optimizing Social Listening Strategy to Cultivate an Expansive Customer Experience
Barnes & Noble employed social listening strategy as the foundation to unlocking relevance. By studying and replying to customer interactions on platforms like TikTok, the book retailer gained a complete understanding of consumer desires within the book-loving community. Barnes and Noble then brought these customer requests, suggestions, and excitement into the physical stores, showcasing its ability to listen. The book retailer is a strong example how social listening strategy can help to inform a more impactful direction for brands and ultimately orient overall marketing strategies for success.
Today, BookTok and “bookish” content make up more than 50% of all content on TikTok, with an audience reach composed of 48% U.S. users and 53% Canadian users following the hashtag. This movement has led to an upswing of 60% more people reading books over the last two years. In 2021, BookTok even helped sell 20 million books, which equated to 2.4% of total book sales that year.
None of these facts escaped Barnes & Noble, which ranks first against its competition in terms of social media presence, from audience size to engagement between 2024 and 2025, according to Rival IQ. Reaching this high-performance social listening strategy started with maximizing the retailer’s own engagement with the content. From there, Barnes & Noble joined the BookTok community by featuring content with staff picks and author highlights on its social media accounts during the lockdown. Once they reopened, local stores even built sections in stores that featured trending BookTok authors and titles, bridging the gap between online presence and in-store experiences.
Utilizing the #BookTok hashtag alongside its own branded tags more than 3 million times throughout 2024 and 2025, Barnes and Noble’s BookTok content consistently performed 1.65 times better than other book retailers, with its monthly engagement totalling over 20,000 impressions and earning more than a million followers. The strong metrics bolstered Barnes & Noble’s trust that its social listening strategy was successfully impacting the minds of customers.
With 80% of Millennials and Gen Z involved in BookTok, this trend still shows no signs of slowing. Gen Z, in particular, has even eagerly undergone the transition from online to in-store shopping with companies that they feel have built an authentic relationship with their customer base. It seems that the groundwork that Barnes & Noble has laid with the community through its social listening strategy has provided the same connection.
The bookseller has also doubled down on this effort by offering other bridges between social content and the in-store experience by hosting events to attract the BookTok community. Focusing these efforts as part of its strategy, Barnes & Noble began bringing in BookTok famous authors like Sarah J. Maas and Rebecca Yarros for collector’s edition book signings, meet and greets, and even pop-up photo booths that allow customers to take selfies in the stores with themed props. Customers would then post on their personal social media accounts using the #B&N and #BookTok hashtags.
Barnes & Noble’s latest social listening strategy tactic has been the BookTok Challenge, which has been ongoing throughout 2025. The challenge invites participants to read 52 books in 52 weeks, with books pulled from BookTok suggestions. Once readers purchase the novels at their local Barnes & Noble stores, the customers are encouraged to read and review the books using the #BnNBookToChallenge on TikTok. Users then have the chance to win in-store prizes over the course of the year and be featured on Barnes & Noble social media channels.
Barnes & Noble Turns the Page with Positioning
As we look beyond 2025, Barnes & Noble is poised to continue to maximize the benefits of its social listening strategy. Time will tell if this brand sticks to its positioning strategy and the perceptions of its bookwyrms’ (customers’) minds.
Projections aside, the heart of this success story isn’t just an impeccable social listening strategy, an unexpected, incredible reading revival, or a pandemic trend. It’s the triumphant return of Barnes & Noble’s original position of “putting books first” (a leadership position). Despite the perception that reading was “outdated” or a bygone pastime, moments like the pandemic and a bold leadership team willing to execute the strategy gave Barnes & Noble the space to confidently double down on its original position. Only once it embraced its position, did this brand find success.
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