Barnes and Noble expanding to this Fort Worth suburb as sales surge
Barnes and Noble is set to open a location in Burleson, according to city sources.
The bookseller will take over the space previously occupied by a Party City in the Gateway Station retail complex on the west side of Interstate 35 between McAlister Road and NE Alsbury Boulevard. A representative from Kimco, the property management firm, did not immediately respond to an inquiry asking for an anticipated opening date.
Since opening three new stores in 2020, the retailer’s brick-and-mortar footprint has grown by leaps and bounds. In 2024, Barnes and Noble opened 57 locations, and the company plans to open 60 stores by the end of 2025, according to CNN, Fast Company and Axios.
A decade ago, the company’s demise seemed all but guaranteed. According to a Los Angeles Times report, by the end of 2018, Barnes and Noble had gone seven straight quarters without posting a profit. Between 2008 and 2018, it closed nearly 100 stores.
According to data provided by the Association of American Publishers, sales of physical books have remained strong over the past 10 years despite competition from e-books and digital audio books.
Between 2014 and 2024, physical book sales in the trade space — basically, the types of consumer books that Barnes and Noble carries — grew from $5.1 billion to $7.1 billion. Over the same time span, e-book sales fell from $1.6 billion to $1 billion. Sales of digital audio books skyrocketed by more than 570%, but those products only generated around $1 billion in total, a fraction of the revenue generated by physical media.
Industry experts attribute Barnes and Noble’s resurgence to its adopting strategies used by independent bookstores, including giving store managers and employees more discretion about which titles to stock and how to market those titles.
Experts also trace the enduring popularity of physical books to “BookTok,” a popular hashtag used by content creators on TikTok to share thoughts about their favorite titles. According to Forbes, as of 2025, #BookTok has garnered more than 370 billion views.