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1. Special Offers. The Nook will have to offer some of these to get the price down; a lot of shoppers are very price sensitive when it comes to e-readers. Which is why the K3 KSO wifi ($114) is the current Kindle bestseller. Added to this is the fact that, I assume, the Special Offers are bringing more to Amazon than they expected - while the original SO's only gave a $25 discount, on the new line there are discounts of up to $50 - and even the cheapest Kindle has a $30 discount for special offers.
However, the KSO has been out for a while, and B&N has had the chance to see how it works...so I would be surprised if they *haven't* been working on something similar. Although they may have done so under the assumption that an appropriate discount would be $25 and not more. Still, they need to add something like this, and in time for Christmas - when grandma sees that she can buy junior a Kindle for $79 or a Nook for $139, she will probably go for the Kindle. (And you know that "Kindle, starting at $79..." is going to be heavily advertised.)
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What B&N could do: partner with a third party. How about this:
" B&N announces an historic partnership with Groupon to bring you the NTGO (Nook Touch Groupon Offers) and the NCGO (Nook Color Groupon Offers). Groupon offers will show up on your screensavers and you will get the same great deals every day that you once had to go the the Groupon website to get. In addition, the NTGO will be offered for the low, low price of $99 and the NCGO will be offered for $199."
Game on at that point, especially if Netflix comes to the B&N App Store.
I think that the bottom-line Kindle will not do well, simply because even if people are attracted to the price, the clumsy interface is just going to be too big of a turn-off. People will not sacrifice that much convenience for cheap.