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Dawn of a new era: Barnes & Noble cuts Nook price by 63% in the U.K.

Published May 1st, 2013 4:20PM EDT
Nook Price Cut

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Cor Blimey

— beginning on Wednesday, British consumers are staring at a huge 63% price cut of the cheapest Nook eReader. The Nook Simple Touch price has plunged to £29 from £79. The Glowlight version has dropped to £69 from £109. This is not a permanent price cut, but a part of the Get London Reading literacy campaign. Nevertheless, the move is eye-popping.

The best-selling biography of Margaret Thatcher is currently selling for £15 at Amazon.co.uk. This means that Barnes & Noble is now selling its cheapest eReader for less than twice the price of a popular hardcover book in the U.K. The era of an eBook reader as an impulse buy has now truly dawned.

This is another nasty setback for Kobo, which continues hawking its own device for £99. The exotic niche of doomed consumer electronics devices in Great Britain will no doubt be dominated by the Nook this spring.

After launching mobile game company SpringToys tragically early in 2000, Tero Kuittinen spent eight years doing equity research at firms including Alliance Capital and Opstock. He is currently an analyst and VP of North American sales at mobile diagnostics and expense management Alekstra, and has contributed to TheStreet.com, Forbes and Business 2.0 Magazine in addition to BGR.