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"Dammit, Jim, I'm a bookseller, not an Amazon!" - Dr. "Barnes" McNoble, Star Trek - The Next Degradation
As someone whose first E-Ink device was the venerable NST, and whose first Android tablet was the venerable Nook Color, I'd like to see B&N suddenly wake up and smell the e-coffee. May not happen, but....
FWIW, here's what I'd recommend, if anyone at B&N was listening. The Nook can't be Amazon, Jr., so why not shoot for another niche? The NST had an older version of Android. What if our fantasy NST 2.0 ran a newer version of Android (KitKat or Lollipop)? What if it were open in the sense that you could install other e-reader apps? What if Nook had an E-Ink friendly app, and a curated app store that had only apps that were certified compatible with our new NST device? What if Nook could sell this as an eye-friendly way to use apps like Pocket, Instapaper, or any app that uses mainly text? What if the existence of such a device inspired developers to make E-Ink-friendly versions of their apps? What if this device had a nice frontlight, an SD card slot, a minimum 250 dpi, and 16 gigs of interior space? I have a couple of Chinese efforts at such a device. But Nook, with its existing infrastructure, could easily do all these things in a new device and probably sell a respectable number of them, to boot. What if Nook really focused on the reading experience in all its aspects, not only eBooks?
Too much to ask? Probably. But we'll never know unless we ask.
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