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I'd be careful with Barnes and Noble.  Fundamentally, the Company is a mess.  It has negative operating margins, it is hemoraging cash, and while at quick glance, it seems like it has $0.8 billion shareholders equity, it has almost $1.1 billion of goodwill and intangibles.  That puts its tangible net book value at negative $0.3 billion, not good from a financial position perspective, especially with $0.3 billion of debt as well 

Also, it is going heads up against Amazon, not an enviable position to be in.  Brick and mortar bookstores are a dying business, and unfortunately, that makes up a much larger percentage of Barnes and Noble's sales than its online sales.  Unless they find a way to quickly re-invent themselves, I'm not sure I'd want to be long here.

Full disclosure, I am actually short BKS and will be for the foreseeable future

For my portfolio and investing strategy, being short a stock is not a long term position.  I went short at $15.43, I was able to close out today at $10.24.  That is about a 33% return in less than a month.  On a short position, there is also the law of diminishing returns.  From this point, the stock would need to decrease by about 50% to double my return (the opposite of being long). 

Every investing decision needs to be made with probability and statistics, and how that plays into valuation, in mind.  Just because a company's fundamentals are attrocious, doesn't mean it definitely goes bankrupt.  The risk is just significantly higher.  Do I think there is a realistic shot it does go bankrupt down the line?  Sure. Do I think it happens anytime soon?  No.

In terms of this specific decision, while I don't like BKS as a long position, I actually believed that the market overreacted a bit to the news, and I think BKS will drift back up in the short-term.  Why stay short a stock that I think will go up and I can short at a higher price down the road?  If I am wrong, I still have my initial gains to fall back on.  If I am right, I get a better entry point to re-establish a full position, as opposed to the position that had been accreted by 33%.

Every investor has their own style.  Some like to ride a short all the way down to zero.  To me, that just leaves you open to a lot of excess risk.  I prefer to take my gain, back off for awhile, and re-examine at a higher price down the road if the opportunity arises.

And I don't actually open a ton of short position, (I just have a couple to hedge a primarily long portfolio), but when I see a Company with an unexplainable valuation (it makes no money so you can't even develop a P/E), attrocious fundamentals, competing in an industry with a lot of current risks, I give it a look.

If you decide to go long, I wish you the best of luck.  I just wanted to pass along some information I happened to have on this particular stock as I've spent a good amount of time researching it.  The timing on this particular down day was more a coincidence than anything

In my public accounting days, I never actually had a retail client, so take this with a grain of salt, but logically, I'm pretty sure your entries are:

Upon sale of gift card:

DR: Cash

      CR: Deferred revenue (or possibly some other liability account)

Upon utilization of gift card:

DR: Deferred revenue

DR: Cost of Goods Sold

      CR: Revenue

      CR: Inventory

If the gift card's expiration date expires and the card is never redeemed, you recognize the revenue on the date of expiration (assuming the policy is firm and there is no longer a liability associated with it) and there is just no COGS component (i.e. a 100% profit margin)

If the card has no expiration date, I'm pretty sure the liability remains and you don't recognize revenue.  There may be some sort of study a Company can do to determine at what point the likelihood that the gift card will never be used becomes almost 100%, but I think that would be a pretty agressive position, and probably challenged by the external auditors.  But, this is where someone with more retail specific audit experience would probably be able to shed a little more light