We almost said goodbye to Barnes & Noble. Not the men, but the bookstore. Leading up to 2020, the company was posting massive annual losses. Acquired in 2019 by Elliott Advisors in a deal worth about $683 million, the slow turnaround began.
As I tell this story about how Barnes & Noble pulled off a successful comeback, one that will see them open dozens of new stores in 2026, I’ll ask you to think about your business or law firm and how it can benefit from the same general tactics by allowing originality and expression to shine through.
The Near-Demise and Rebound of Barnes & Noble
Oh, the fond memories I have of Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks in You’ve Got Mail. That movie, if you’ll remember, involves a big box bookstore coming in and driving out the local bookseller. Ironically, big bookstores like Barnes & Noble, after having nearly shut down the smaller bookshop industry, nearly met the same fate thanks to the likes of Amazon and the overall shift towards online commerce.
Good news! Bookstores, small and large, are doing better now. In fact, Barnes & Noble plans on opening 60 new stores in 2026, and they’re crediting a major shift in how they run operations for the success, and this shift is where our lessons come in.
Nearly Gone, Now Thriving: How Did They Pull It Off?
Barnes & Noble didn’t claw its way back by discovering some secret growth hack or inventing a new kind of bookstore.
They did something way less flashy and way more effective.
They stopped trying to make every store feel like the same store.
That sounds simple, but it’s a direct reversal of how big retailers usually operate. For years, the instinct in corporate America has been: standardize everything. Same layout. Same tables. Same “recommended reads.” Same decisions made at headquarters by people who don’t live anywhere near the customers.
Barnes & Noble finally admitted what most of us already know: uniformity doesn’t work in a country this big. The reading habits of someone in suburban Phoenix are not the same as someone in downtown Boston or a coastal tourist town in Florida. And when you force every location to run like a clone, you turn your stores into… well… a big-box bookstore.
Which is exactly what people were getting bored with.
So after Elliott bought the company in 2019 for about $683 million, and James Daunt took over, the turnaround strategy was not “become more corporate.” It was closer to: become more local.
Here’s what changed, in plain English.
1) They gave stores more control
Instead of dictating everything in a typical corporate top-down manner, Barnes & Noble pushed decision-making closer to the people actually talking to customers in the store every day. Store teams got more freedom to stock and display what their community actually buys. Really, if you think about it, this makes complete sense. We’re a culturally diverse country. What might work in a Barnes & Noble in Chicago might not work in Columbia, SC, and vice versa.
It’s almost funny that this idea feels revolutionary, because it’s basically: let the booksellers do bookselling. Let the community be a community.
2) They embraced differences between locations
One Barnes & Noble doesn’t need to look like the Barnes & Noble 900 miles away. One store might lean hard into kids’ books. Another might become the local fantasy headquarters. Another might build a reputation as the “weird and wonderful” literary spot. The point is: each store can earn a personality.
That personality is what creates loyalty. People don’t fall in love with “Store #1847.” They fall in love with their store.
3) They cleaned up the merchandising approach
One of the under-the-hood changes was reducing the “pay-to-play” feel in how books got positioned in stores. The focus shifted toward serving readers rather than optimizing table placement like a billboard business. I will say that at my local Barnes, I still have to dodge an unbelievable amount of tables when I walk in, but hey…I love books.
Translation: the stores feels less like a retail machine and more like a place built by humans who read.
4) They made growth realistic again (by loosening the format)
A big reason some chains stall out is they only know how to build one type of store. Barnes & Noble got more flexible about store sizes and formats, which opened the door to expanding into more locations that make business sense.
This shows up in the numbers.
- Barnes & Noble ended 2023 with 609 outlets, after opening about 30 new stores that year.
- By the end of 2025, they reported 702 outlets (including stores added through acquisition).
- They’ve talked publicly about opening 60 new stores in 2026, and coverage of 2025 describes record store openings fueling that momentum.
So the comeback wasn’t magic. It was autonomy, personality, and local intelligence brilliance. Now let’s talk about why law firms and other local businesses should care.
Let’s Apply These Principles to Your Law Firm or Business
If you’re a law firm (or really any business that isn’t trying to become the next Walmart), you’re living in a world where “generic” is getting pummeled from two directions:
- Big brands with big budgets (hello, Morgan & Morgan billboards that can be seen from space).
- AI-generated content flooding the internet with perfectly fine, perfectly bland, perfectly forgettable material.
So if your marketing strategy is “publish what everyone else publishes, but with our logo,” I have some bad news. That method went out the window before AI and is now so far out that we know it’s not coming back.
Barnes & Noble didn’t survive by getting more efficient at being average. They survived by letting each store become more itself. Law firms can do the exact same thing.
And no, I’m not saying your firm needs to start selling lattes and hosting poetry nights (though… never say never because one of our clients DOES do this). I’m saying your firm needs to stop marketing like a big-box chain if your advantage is being local and trusted.
The Barnes & Noble Turnaround Principles (and how they map to law firm marketing)
Bam, you made it here so you’re interested. These apply whether you’re a law firm, a CPA, a home builder, or the best dog groomer in a three-county radius.
1) Decentralize the voice: stop forcing every practice area into the same template
Barnes & Noble got better when corporate stopped trying to micromanage every shelf. Freakin corporate.
Law firms get better when marketing stops flattening every attorney and every practice into the same tone, the same “we are dedicated to excellence,” and the same content outline you could swap with any competitor. Some of the biggest legal marketing agencies do this, and we won’t say it never works, but it’s expensive. When you get local and focus on differentiation, you enter into what we’re calling “surgical SEO.”
That big templated plan for the personal injury firm down the road almost certainly won’t be the same plan for an estate planning firm in a small town in the next state. While that sounds obvious when you read it, this is often what happens when you work with SEO companies. The “strategist” managing your direction has 15 other clients they’re overseeing and it’s just easier to have everyone on the same basic track.
2) Go local on purpose: your community should show up in your content
Barnes & Noble leaned into the idea that different communities want different stores. Law firms should lean into the reality that different communities have different legal problems, court cultures, business ecosystems, and seasonal patterns. Local doesn’t mean “we added the city name to the footer.”
Local means:
- writing pages and articles that reflect how things actually work in your courts and agencies,
- referencing common local industries (construction, healthcare, hospitality, manufacturing),
- answering the real questions local people ask before they ever call a lawyer (hint: go to Reddit),
- showing your face at local events and then turning that experience into content that feels real.
AI can generate “What is probate?” in 2.4 seconds. AI cannot generate the lived details of:
- what families fight about in your county,
- what judges emphasize in your jurisdiction,
- what documentation local businesses routinely mess up,
- what timelines are realistic in your venue,
- stories about how you’ve helped people in similar situations.
That’s where you win.
3) Build a niche reputation, not just “full-service” sameness
One Barnes & Noble can become the best kids’ bookstore in town. Another becomes the sci-fi and fantasy haven. Another might be known as the “best toy location in town.”
Law firms should do the same thing with positioning. Not “We handle all personal injury cases.”
More like:
- “We’re the firm that understands catastrophic trucking litigation inside out.”
- “We’re the go-to for physician contract disputes in this region.”
- “We help local manufacturers stay out of OSHA trouble before OSHA shows up.”
- “We understand how estate planning differs for the LGBTQ+ community.”
That kind of clarity makes you easier to remember, easier to refer, and easier for Google (and AI systems) to understand as a good match.
4) Optimize for humans first, algorithms second
Barnes & Noble moved away from merchandising that felt like a corporate billboard strategy and back toward serving readers. Your law firm should do the same thing with content, and not just SEO content.
When firms chase SEO or social media formulas too hard, the writing gets weird. It becomes a robot trying to impress another robot, and now the robots can write those formula posts faster than you ever could.
So the play is not “pump out more articles.” The play is:
- publish fewer, better pieces that have a point of view,
- show specific experience,
- provide tools people can actually use,
- make it obvious a real attorney was involved.
If your content reads like it could have been written by any firm, it will perform like it belongs to any firm.
What “Being Different” Actually Means for Your Marketing in 2026
Being different does not mean being quirky for the sake of it. It means being specific. Specific about:
- who you help,
- what you believe,
- how you work,
- what you’ve seen,
- and why a client should trust you when the stakes are real.
Barnes & Noble is adding stores again and drawing more foot traffic because they found a way to feel human at scale. Law firms don’t need to “feel human at scale.”
They just need to feel human, period.
Especially now, when the internet is filling up with content that’s technically correct and emotionally hollow.
That’s where we come in. At Blue Seven Content, we’ve build our company around providing some of the best legal content in the business. When other agencies struggle with a client, they know they can turn to out team to get it right. We’d love to discuss how we can help you, whether you’re a law firm, other type of local business, or a marketing agency.
Written by Allen Watson – Co-Founder of Blue Seven Content
