Amazon.com's Kindle may have the highest profile of any e-reader, but Barnes & Noble seems to be pretty darn serious about its Nook. The New York Times reports that the company is planning to make space for Nook boutiques in its superstores, dedicating a thousand feet of floor space near their cafés to Nooks, Nook accessories, and in-person and video demonstrations.
B&N plans to free up room for Nooks in part by shrinking space devoted to CDs; in this era, you gotta think that it probably would be deemphasizing sales of music on shiny discs no matter what. It says it's not going to carry fewer dead-tree books.
The move presumably means that B&N is in the hardware business for the long haul and already has future generations of Nooks in the works. The first-generation Nook got off to a somewhat bumpy start; its software was slow and buggy, and some promised features weren't immediately available; but the company has improved it through multiple software updates. It's also knocked the price down to $199 and introduced a $149 model with Wi-Fi but no 3G connection.
Barnes & Noble also offers e-reader software for the iPhone, iPad, Android, BlackBerry, PC, and Mac, and it powers the e-book stores for devices from Nook competitors such as Pandigital. The Times doesn't say whether the new boutiques will spotlight any of these other ways to read digital books.
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