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Barnes and Noble Nook Simple Touch Now Offers GlowLight Feature

By: Michelle Maisto
2012-04-13

Barnes & Noble’s newest Nook e-reader is “amazing in bed,” the company said in an April 12 statement, introducing the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight, the world’s “first and only” E Ink Reader that lets users read in the dark. The backlit display, more tablet-like than traditional e-reader, can be activated with the push of a button. (The e-reader’s only button.)

“With a soft, adjustable glow, GlowLight gives bedtime readers just the right amount of light for reading, without disturbing a sleepy spouse,” according to a company statement.

The Simple Touch, B&N added, “eliminates the number-one problem couples have in bed,” the issue of one person trying to sleep while the other person reads. Citing a B&N survey of 1,358 adults, people found someone else using a light to read in bed more disruptive than “a frisky partner’s ‘midnight moves.’”

Let’s stick to the facts. The Simple Touch weighs less than seven ounces, has built-in WiFi and a battery that lasts through a month of reading on a single charge, even given that new light. It also has a 6-inch touchscreen—with a touch, users can turn pages, look up works or change the font size. They can also shop from the Nook and download more than 2.5 million books, magazines and newspapers.

The Nook’s GlowLight also makes it as good for outdoor use—where women are particularly inclined to read, according to its survey—as in low-light conditions.

As of April 12, the Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight, priced at $139, became available for pre-order, with B&N promising it’ll arrive in time for Mother’s Day (May 13).

The day before, B&N’s stock price tumbled 6.4 percent, for a total of 17 percent for the month already, the Wall Street Journal reported. The cause was the Department of Justice’s lawsuit against Apple and five major U.S. book publishers, who the DOJ accused of colluding to keep e-book prices high.

Another way to look at the accusation: they were teaming up keep Amazon from keeping prices overly low. If the DOJ suit enables Amazon to again have greater control of e-book prices, B&N profits may suffer.

“If Amazon wants to be aggressive in pricing e-books and losing money, it will impact Nook’s profitability in the near term,” a Janney Montgomery Scott analyst told the Journal, which additionally cited analyst expectations that B&N will post a $62 million operating loss during its fiscal year ending April 28.

In launching its suit—which now only includes Apple and publishers Macmillan and Penguin, following immediate settlements by Simon & Schuster, Hachette and HarperCollins—the DOJ say it sought to help booksellers like B&N.

“If approved by the court, this settlement would resolve the Department’s antitrust concerns with [Apple and the publishers] and would require them to grant retailers—such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble—the freedom to reduce the prices of their e-book titles,” U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder said in an April 11 statement, preceding a press conference on the suit.

Apple, Macmillan and Penguin have since defended their actions, with Apple calling the price-fixing accusations “simply not true” and the publishers defending Apple’s pricing model as essential to keeping competition alive amongst booksellers.