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Just in time for the holiday season, Barnes & Noble will release its nook e-book reader on November 30. Its $259 price is competitive with Amazon’s Kindle, which also costs $259—or $279 with international wireless capability. The Nook’s features are designed to rival the Kindle as well.

According to Barnes & Noble, the nook is the first Android-based e-book reader. It’s also the first such device to offer a color touchscreen for navigation. It provides 3G wireless access for instant content downloads via AT&T’s mobile broadband network as well as Wi-Fi at Barnes & Noble stores.

About the size and weight of a paperback book, the Barnes & Noble nook uses the E Ink Vizplex display for clear reading and a color touchscreen to access navigation and other features.

“We asked our customers what they wanted in an e-book reader and specifically designed nook to be the most full-featured, fun, stylish, and easy to use e-book reader on the market,” said William J. Lynch, president of Barnes & Noble.com. “With our nationwide footprint, Barnes & Noble customers can see, touch, and hold nook.”

The nook is about the size and weight of a paperback book. There’s no glare or backlight in its E Ink Vizplex display, which looks as clear as a printed book. Text size is adjustable for comfortable reading as well. The lower touchscreen serves up cover art and other graphics in color while presenting a virtual keyboard, controls, and other navigation tools only when they’re required (see the figure).

Also, the nook’s LendMe technology allows users to lend a selection of e-books to friends free of charge for up to 14 days at a time. Users simply choose the book they want to share and send it to their friend’s nook or any iPhone, iPod touch, select BlackBerry and Motorola smart phones, or PC or Mac equipped with Barnes & Noble’s eReader software.

With the nook’s Reading Now virtual bookmark, readers can start right where they left off in whatever book they’re reading. And thanks to the eReader software, users who don’t have their nook with them can continue anyway through their smart phone or laptop, including annotations. When it’s time to use the nook again, the Reading Now page will be updated and ready to go.

The nook can store up to 1500 e-books and other printed content. It offers an expandable memory slot, so 16-Gbyte MicroSD Cards can add another 17,500 e-books. More than 1 million e-books, newspapers, and magazines are already available, with most bestsellers and new releases for $9.99. In fact, the first 10,000 customers to pre-order the nook can get Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point for free.