WHSmith, the UK high street bookstore and stationery chain, has hit a new low in e-reader retailing—price-wise—with a deal on the Kobo Mini e-reader for just £29.99 ($47.07), down from its original £49.99 ($78.45) retail price. WHSmith, known to Brits as just Smiths, is also handing out £5.00 ($7.85) gift vouchers on till receipts to take the price down even further, to £24.99 ($39.22). This compares to a current U.S. price for the Kobo Mini of $79.99 at BestBuy, and follows a similar cut on the Nook Simple Touch last month to £29.00 which led to the device selling out at...

I hope you'll pardon me as I jog my ocean air- and sun-addled brain back into something resembling normal functioning with a story from my just-ended honeymoon. On Saturday, my newly minted wife and I got back from Tulum, Mexico, where we spent a week on the beach relaxing and—if we're being completely honest—recovering from the exhausting, months-long process of planning and throwing, as a friend described it, the biggest party we'll ever throw. In anticipation of this rare week-long block of reading time (electricity is limited in Tulum and, as a result, so, gloriously, are televisions), I'd loaded up my Nook...

My e-reader sits on the bookshelf, dust growing on it every day. My Nook Simple Touch used to be one of my favorite gadgets—I carried it everywhere, even just to sneak a couple of pages here and there. I’ve replaced my e-reader with a tablet. I ordered a Nexus 7 last July (a birthday present) when the first batch was ready to hit the market. I use it to surf the 'net, check Facebook and Twitter, play games and, of course, read. I’m definitely not the only one. The Book Industry Study Group recently released information from the Consumer Attitudes Toward E-Book Reading survey...

You're probably wondering why I didn't trumpet "Deal Alert" in my headline on this "great" deal, which by the way, runs from March 24 to the end of the month. Because it's a terrible idea and the wrong approach to their problem. Yes, B&N: We know you purchased too much inventory over the holidays. Your sales weren't what you hoped for, and now you have warehouses full of Nooks, gathering dust. So you're giving them away. This move reeks of desperation. It telegraphs lack of confidence in your current business model. (Not that you haven't telegraphed it enough over the past few...

Pitchers and catchers report to spring training this week. For baseball fans, this marks the beginning of a rocky ride with tumultuous feelings that crush or elevate you throughout a season. And it’s wonderful. But what baseball fans love are ways to show their pride. Nothing says you’re a big New York Yankees fan than having an outlandish tattoo somewhere on your body. However, there are easier and less painful ways to show off your team pride. Companies have created several types of baseball-themed e-reading accessories, including covers for some of the more popular tablets. Look at this hard shell case for Kindle Fire...

  By Brian Howard and James Sturdivant I own a Nook Simple Touch. Maybe it's because I root for underdogs or maybe it's because I chafe at platform lock-in and proprietary file formats, but I've been quite happy with life on the B&N ebook platform. Then, on Friday, Amazon announced its Stephen King Kindle Single exclusive, "Guns." In the short essay, King, whose book Rage had been linked to several instances of school violence, weighs in on the gun control issue. (King penned Rage as a high schooler. The book was published under his Richard Bachman pseudonym and has since been taken out of print  at the author's request.) I forked over the 99...

Here's a snippet.  Full review is here. I just received a review unit from B&N and hope to have a review up sometime next week. The Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight™ (hereinafter the Nook GL) is the first e-ink reader with a built-in light since the Sony 700. The Sony was a great idea, poorly executed. Since then those of us who read in bed or in other places with low light have had to make do with clip-on lights, lights with built-in covers, or bright lamps that annoy the people around us. I’ve tried all of the above, in many...

From an article in Time Techland: ... Illuminated E Ink isn’t a new idea: Sony released one of its Readers with a lit screen back in 2009. But in that version, the lighting hurt the clarity of the screen. The company dropped the feature in later models. Judging from my demo of the Nook with GlowLight, Barnes & Noble has figured out how to make the idea make sense. This Simple Touch is essentially the same as its appealing predecessor — which remains available — except that when you press and hold the e-reader’s “N” button, LEDs along the edge of the display...

From the press release.  It's $139 and is available for pre-order now.  Ship date is listed as May 1: Barnes & Noble, Inc. (NYSE: BKS), the leading retailer of content, digital media and educational products, today introduced NOOK Simple Touch with GlowLight, the world’s first E Ink device with patent-pending lighting technology that eliminates the number-one problem couples have in bed – having their sleep interrupted, or being prevented from...

Barnes & Noble is offering an amazing deal via eBay, that I would grab up in a heartbeat if I weren’t $80 overdrawn at the moment: a refurbished Nook Color (the first-generation tablet, not the Nook Tablet) for $129, plus a refurbished Nook Simple Touch for $20 more. It’s not clear how long this deal will last; they’ve already sold 4,000 of them. If you’re interested, you might want to jump in fast. (Found via CNet.)...

Laptop Magazine has a side-by-side comparison of these two ereaders.  Very useful for someone who is undecided.  Here's a snippet: Design and Ergonomics Side by side, these two gray rectangles display some striking differences in look, shape, and feel. At 6.5 x 5 x 0.5 inches the Nook Simple Touch is closer to square than the Kindle Touch (6.8 x 4.7 x 0.4 inches). We found the charcoal color of the Barnes & Noble eReader more attractive, and the shape gave us the impression that it was smaller and lighter. We also preferred the soft-touch coating that makes the Nook feel rubberized,...