What To Do With Downtown Naperville’s Barnes & Noble

I’ll be honest, this is a bit of a shocker. When I envision downtown Naperville in my head, the giant Barnes & Noble storefront is part of that vision. When I think of Barnes & Noble, their downtown Naperville location is the one I think of.

Now, according to NCTV17, the giant green and white book retailer is packing up its bags and moving to Oswego. Word on the street is that the property owner decided not to extend the lease, but that’s rumor for me at this point. Haven’t heard anything definitive.

While this is being looked at as generally bad news, there has to be at least one person excited to see the book behemoth leave Downtown Naperville! Anderson’s Bookshop is set to become the sole book store serving the area. Anderson’s has done well even while sharing the area with B&N. They are not only known for their selection, but also the guests and celebrities they bring in for book signings. I’m not sure if they feel that having B&N as their neighbors was a good thing because of shared gravity, or a bad thing because of competition, but we’ll see how it goes for Naperville’s local book store!

To me, this seems like a great marketing opportunity for Anderson’s! All this news about a book store leaving could be a chance to get their name out even more, but I have not seen anything on social media from Anderson’s in regards to the B&N closings.