Barnes & Noble unveils Nook Tablet

— -- Barnes & Noble is set to fight fire with fire — Amazon.com's upcoming Kindle Fire tablet that is. At a Manhattan press conference today, the venerable bookseller is unveiling its own brand new 7-inch slate called Nook Tablet.

It's due Nov. 17 or right around the time that Kindle Fire is expected to reach consumers. Barnes & Noble begins taking pre-orders today. While I'll reserve judgment until I've had a chance to do a full hands-on review of both Nook Tablet and Kindle Fire, Amazon is going to have a battle on its hands.

Indeed, I was treated to a private early preview of Nook Tablet and I generally liked what I saw. Nook Tablet will cost $249, $50 higher than the $199 sweet spot that Amazon is charging for Fire. Nook Tablet looks a lot like the Nook Color "reader tablet" that came before it and that Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch says has sold in the "millions.' Nook Color stays in the lineup: Barnes & Noble is dropping the price on it from $249 to $199.

The addition of high definition streaming is what mostly distinguishes Nook Tablet from its predecessor. "What we set out to do here was create the best portable 7-inch media tablet. It is an evolution of Nook Color and a revolution in the 7-inch media category," Lynch says.

Barnes & Noble spent what it says is a ton of money developing a rich, highly readable display with a steep viewing angle and minimal glare. Its 1024 by 600 screen resolution matches the resolution of Kindle Fire.

Nook Tablet weighs 14.1 ounces or about 0.5 ounces lighter than Fire. It can be stuffed into a coat pocket. Inside is a 1GHz dual-core processor, 1GB of RAM, and 16 GB of internal storage. That's double the amount of internal storage offered by its Amazon rival, plus you can expand Nook Tablet's memory via a micro SD memory card slot. Of course, Amazon is stressing "cloud" storage with Fire, and the ability to back up everything you buy through Amazon online, part of an integrated end-to-end solution.

During my sneak peek I saw how fast you can move on Nook Tablet from app to app or from one page to another in an interactive book or magazine. With Fire, Amazon has been touting a speedy browser called Silk.

To help you fly through the contents on the new Nook, you can tap the screen to summon a slider that makes it to jump to any page. Across the home screen, you get one-click access to books, newsstand, video, music and apps. On the content side, Lynch says Barnes & Noble will offer more of the top 100 magazines for subscription and download than any other newsstand service. Overall, the company has more than 250 periodicals on the Nook platform, many with interactive features. "We sell more (physical) magazines in our bookstores than virtually any other retailer—us and Walmart are the number one and number two seller. We've had longstanding relationships with these guys for years. Because of the success of the Nook Color they want in on this."

When Nook Color arrived, Barnes & Noble showcased interactive illustrated kids books with a neat "read to me" narration. Now Barnes & Noble is adding a new kid-friendly "read and record" feature, letting mom and dad -- or the grandparents, say -- record themselves reading aloud to junior. Or your youngster might record his own voice. The record feature works across any kids' book in the entire platform but it isn't enabled for adult-oriented books. (Sorry you can't hear yourself reciting Shakespeare.)

Barnes & Noble is also adding comic books to the content offerings. Nook Tablet will supply preloaded apps from Netflix, Hulu Plus, TV.com, Pandora, among others. The company says it will have thousands of available apps by the holidays, but didn't get more specific than that. Back when Amazon announced the Fire in September, CEO Jeff Bezos said there were 10,000 apps in its Android app store, with more likely coming.

The video quality was excellent on Nook Tablet, at least indoors—I didn't get to check it out yet in the bright sunshine. I watched scenes from Iron Man 2 and The Office, streamed through Netflix and Hulu, respectively. Barnes & Noble says the viewing angle is 89 degrees meaning you can almost see the screen even when the tablet is laying flat on a table.

"Often you'll see when you're watching a movie with your spouse in bed or you're with your children reading a kids' book, that viewing angle is critical because no one is sitting in front," Lynch says. Barnes & Noble developed the display with LG.

As with Fire, Nook Tablet is a Wi-Fi only device — there is no 3G cellular connectivity for browsing or purchasing a book when you don't have Wi-Fi. Barnes & Noble has a deal with AT&T to provide free Wi-Fi access at hotspots in its own stores, as well as in McDonald's, Starbucks and other locales.

Barnes & Noble says the battery will last long enough to let you read a book for 11 ½ hours or spend 9 hours watching movies.

Neither Fire nor Nook Tablet have cameras, unlike the iPad 2.

But while Barnes & Noble has aimed its competitive fire at Fire, Lynch doesn't view the iPad as a direct rival, and he envisions folks buying Apple's tablet and Nook Tablet. "Form factor matters," Lynch says. "Despite the fact (that Apple is) closing in on 40 million iPads in the U.S., the iBookstore is still a much smaller share of the overall market than is the Nook bookstore and the Kindle bookstore. That is because these devices, including Nook Color, have been optimized around the reading experience." Of course, Kindle and Nook apps let you read books purchased through Amazon or Barnes & Noble on the iPad.

For those who want to stick with a dedicated electronic reader, Barnes & Noble also said Monday that it is dropping the price of its Simple Touch E Ink-based eReader from $139 to $99. Barnes & Noble says Simple Touch will be about 25% faster than when the product originally shipped and have an improved display.

All this activity comes at time when most of the momentum in publishing is digital. Lynch points out that in a $22 billion trade book business last year, about $21 billion represented physical books and about $1 billion eBooks. But in 2015, he says, the numbers will be more like $15 billion in physical and $7 billion in eBooks.