The ePaperback

The new e-paperback is here. Barnes and Noble announced their new $139 Nook.

The new Nook is more compact than rivals and predecessors, with a 6-inch Pearl screen and no keyboard. The display's contrast is 50 percent better than the original Nook, the company said.

While the technology media focuses on the tablet market (some analysts had expected the new Nook to be a tablet product), book distributors like Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Borders Group have sold large unit volumes of eReaders by keeping prices low. In the end, eReader devices are designed to suck up ebooks from online stores, not to run supercomputer calculations.

Here's what is similar between the eReader and tablet markets: differentiation through online services. The same way that tablet buyers need to evaluate Apple's and Google's respective app markets and online applications before buying an iPad or a Android tablet, eReader buyers should look at how Amazon, B&N and Borders sell you ebooks. The book distributors host their own online ebook stores with different DRM (Digital Rights Management) systems, pricing and selection.

The new Nook is slim on features, except the features you'd want while reading a book: great contrast, seven font sizes, six font types, and long (2 month!) battery life.

As book distributors learned from the success of the paperback book format: it's the price, stupid.





Last chance to buy the old Nook (prices reduced):