Why the New #Nook isn't DOA and it has nothing to do with hardware...

Barnes and Noble has one large advantage over Amazon in the e-reader wars that may seem as a disadvantage to the professional observer like me.

Barnes and Noble started as a #brick-and-mortar enterprise. They understand the pleasure of finding an entire catalog of works, not just the ones that sell best, from a new author a reader has become enamored by. So they will have the obscure sophomore effort by Salman Rushdie, for example, while Amazon, may not have it available to download, because it doesn't sell, you see, and Amazon is about choice, sure, but Mr. Bezos and company are also about profit margins above breadth of back catalogs.

Barnes and Noble are the specialists, they actually have helped create the demand for books in the first place. They know their customer. Amazon is still learning the habits of the highly voracious reader, a species switching rapidly to the e-publishing medium. Should be an interesting contest till Amazon buys Barnes and Noble's back catalog rights, and then, my friends, it will all be over...