Barnes and Noble Nook

If Amazon.com wants a price war, Barnes & Noble is ready to play. The struggling real-world bookseller announced this week that it's offering an 8-gigabyte version of its Nook tablet for the same $199 price point as Amazon's Kindle Fire. Meanwhile, Apple is widely expected to unveil the iPad 3 early next month.

The Amazon.com tablet is finally happening. The online retailer showed off its Android-powered device this morning. Kindle Fire should be a hot item this holiday season, but let's go ahead and break this down into five important takeaways, as you ponder the decision to buy or pass on Amazon's latest gadget.

Shares of the Barnes and Noble rose nearly 15% last week, after the bookseller posted healthy growth for its Nook e-reader. But the quarter itself was a mess: The company posted a steep loss, and non-digital sales fell by 11%. If only there were a company with a stronger e-book business that could run an online store profitably...

It has been a tumultuous year for Barnes & Noble, the country's largest bookseller, and its quarterly earnings report reflects that. Total sales for the quarter were $1.9 billion, a bit less of a gain than analysts had predicted, while earnings were a net loss of $12.6 million, also worse than expected.

Investors hammered Amazon over it's underwhelming second-quarter results. That's no biggie for the online retailer, though. When it comes to e-books, Amazon remains top dog, and it looks very likely to stay that way.

Amazon.com released a statement Monday saying that November was so far the "best sales month ever" for its portable electronic reader, Kindle. Does that mean that Amazon actually released sales numbers? Well, no. Despite phrases in a press release like "flying off the shelves" and "#1 bestselling...