Barnes & Noble is the Leader in the Specialty Retail Category for Customer Satisfaction for Third Year in a Row, According to the 2009 American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI)

Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller, led the specialty retail category for customer satisfaction for the third year in a row, according to the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), research conducted in the fourth quarter, 2009. With a score of 84, Barnes & Noble is the top bookseller in the survey and is ranked significantly above the specialty retail category average of 77.

"We are delighted to receive an industry leading score in the fourth-quarter survey, and we owe it all to our customers. Our customers want and deserve the highest quality customer service, which is what our booksellers strive to deliver every single day,” said Steve Riggio, chief executive officer of Barnes & Noble, Inc. "People consider Barnes & Noble the ultimate specialty retail destination where they can shop and browse, visit our café and enjoy complimentary WiFi, enjoy exclusive in-store content on nook our new eReader device, and meet favorite authors and performers at one of our many community events.”

About Barnes & Noble, Inc.

Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the world’s largest bookseller and a Fortune 500 company, operates 775 bookstores in 50 states. Barnes & Noble College Booksellers, LLC, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Barnes & Noble, also operates 636 college bookstores serving nearly 4 million students and over 250,000 faculty members at colleges and universities across the United States. Barnes & Noble is the nation’s top bookseller brand for the sixth 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 hundreds of thousands of titles in its eBookstore (www.bn.com/ebooks). Customers can buy and read eBooks on a wide range of platforms, including nook by Barnes & Noble, the iPhone and iPod touch, BlackBerry® smartphones, as well as most Windows® and Mac® laptops or full-sized desktop computers.

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

nook is a trademark of Barnes & Noble, Inc.

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About ACSI

The American Customer Satisfaction Index is a national economic indicator of customer evaluations of the quality of products and services available to household consumers in the United States. It is updated each quarter with new measures for different sectors of the economy replacing data from the prior year. The national ACSI score for a given quarter factors in scores from about 200 companies in 44 industries and from local and federal government services over the previous four quarters. The ACSI was developed at University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business and can be found on the web at www.theacsi.org.