Announcing the Barnes & Noble Cookie Bake-Off! A Unique New Contest Where Customers Can Submit Their Cookie Recipes for a Chance to Win Fantastic Prizes and Other Exclusive Opportunities

Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE:BKS), the nation’s largest retail bookseller and the leading retailer of content, digital media and educational products, today announced the ‘Barnes & Noble Cookie Bake-Off,’ a unique contest where customers can submit their own cookie recipes for a chance to win fantastic prizes and other unique opportunities. The contest will begin tomorrow, to coincide with National Cookie Day, and the overall winner of the contest will receive $2,500 and will have their cookie produced and sold at Barnes & Noble Cafés during the 2015 holiday season. The bakers responsible for submitting the top 3 recipes will all win a trip to New York City to bake their cookies with a renowned chef and then have it judged by a panel of celebrity chefs. In addition, the top 75 recipes will be featured in The Barnes & Noble Cookie Bake-Off Book, coming in 2015 from Sterling Publishing.

To enter this one-of-a-kind contest, customers can visit any Barnes & Noble store to pick up a submission form, which can be placed in a special ballot box in either the Café or customer service counter. Customers can also see how to submit their entries online at BN.com/Café. The contest runs from December 4, 2014, through January 1, 2015, and all submissions will be reviewed by a culinary team and narrowed down; first to the top 75, then the top 10 and finally the top 3 finalists. The 3 finalists will win a trip to New York City to make their cookies with a chef at a private kitchen and then present their cookie to a panel of celebrity chef judges at the Barnes & Noble Union Square location on February 9, 2015. For more information and full terms and conditions, customers can visit BN.com/Café.

“There is something so incredibly amazing about taking a recipe created in your kitchen and sharing it with people around the country. With the Barnes & Noble Cookie Bake-Off, we are leveraging the power of our Cafés and Sterling Publishing, who will publish the recipe book, to help share that experience with the most important people to us, our customers,” said Jason Giagrande, Vice President of Café Operations at Barnes & Noble. “We’re all very excited to see what kinds of unique and interesting recipes we receive and we’re thrilled to have the support of a group of leading chefs who will help judge the recipes. They’re all as excited as we are to discover what our customers have created!”

The Barnes & Noble Cookie Bake-Off will be judged by a panel of renowned chefs and food writers, including Joey Campanaro (The Little Owl), Jonathan Waxman and Heather Miller (Barbuto), Johnny Iuzzini (author of Dessert FourPlay and Sugar Rush), Jimmy Bradley and Sharon Vanegas (The Red Cat) and Sandy Solmon (CEO and Founder of Sweet Street Desserts), along with food experience writers Gennaro Pecchia and Alan Watts from Men Who Dine.

Here’s what they celebrity chefs had to say about the contest:

• Joey Campanaro: “Cookies make people happy, holidays represent them, they're gifts, the house smells like chocolate chips, I'm on my way, I will be there, can I have a glass of milk?”
• Jonathan Waxman: “Cookies are my delicious downfall, especially shortbread cookies with milk chocolate coating.”
• Heather Miller: “I literally eat cookies for breakfast (don't tell my kids)! I'm ready to taste whatever you've got!”
• Johnny Iuzzini: “IUZZINI and COOKIE have the same number of vowels. This is not a coincidence. I’m ready to get my sweet tooth on!”
• Sharon Vanegas: “Life is better with fresh baked cookies, I feel like a kid again.”
• Jimmy Bradley: “Rug, egg, cookie. You can beat a rug and you can beat an egg. But, you can’t beat a fresh-baked cookie.”
• Sandy Solmon: “Think interesting textures: chewy, crispy crunchy and soft, and multiple flavor notes: salty sweet, slight edges of bitter from interesting chocolates or umami from browned butter - the wider the range of tastes and textures, the more compelling to all of us foodies.”
• Gennaro Pecchia: "I double chocolate dare You to bring out the Cookie Monster in Me!"”
• Alan Watts: “I've got a fever and the only prescription is cookies… bring it on!”

For more information on the Barnes & Noble Cookie Bake-Off and all of the great holiday offerings at the Barnes & Noble Café, customers can visit BN.com/Café. At the Barnes & Noble Café, customers can relax and enjoy delicious food and drinks in a welcoming Café setting, including Starbucks beverages, desserts from the Cheesecake Factory Bakery, fresh-baked cookies and scones, soup, sandwiches, pizza, quiche and more.

About Barnes & Noble, Inc.

Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS) is a Fortune 500 company, the nation’s largest retail bookseller and the leading retailer of content, digital media and educational products. The Company operates 658 Barnes & Noble bookstores in 50 states, and one of the Web’s largest e-commerce sites, BN.com (www.bn.com). Its NOOK Media LLC subsidiary is a leader in the emerging digital reading and digital education markets. The NOOK digital business offers award-winning NOOK® products and an expansive collection of digital reading and entertainment content through the NOOK Store® (www.nook.com), while Barnes & Noble College Booksellers LLC operates 705 bookstores serving over five million students and faculty members at colleges and universities across the United States. General information on Barnes & Noble, Inc. can be obtained by visiting the Company's corporate website: www.barnesandnobleinc.com.

Barnes & Noble®, Barnes & Noble Booksellers® and Barnes & Noble.com® are trademarks of Barnes & Noble, Inc. or its affiliates.

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