Barnes & Noble Inc., the largest U.S. bookstore chain, introduced a Nook e-reader with a screen that glows in the dark, challenging Amazon.com Inc. at a time when prices for digital books may soon start falling.
Both companies have touted page turn speeds, battery life and weight to attract customers. Now Barnes & Noble has added an adjustable light to the screen on its Nook Simple Touch. That’s easier than connecting a light to Amazon’s Kindle Touch, which can’t light up, and offers benefits such as helping a wife keep reading in bed while her husband sleeps, said Chief Executive Officer William Lynch.
A good idea, but the Nook trails the Kindle platform in sales and how it is perceived by the public.
Barnes & Noble, based in New York was best known for it's retail stores, has anchored its future to the fast-growing digital book market by investing in the Nook at the expense of profits as more readers adopt the technology. Less than three years after introducing the Nook.