David Carnoy

Earlier this summer, Penguin Group, long a distinguished major publisher of books, paid $116 million to acquire Author Solutions Inc. A leading provider of self-publishing services, Author Solutions said that since it was formed in 2007, "it has enabled 150,000 authors to publish, market and distribute more than 190,000 books in print and electronic formats." The transaction is a significant breakthrough in what has become a vital factor in the publishing landscape of the digital age.

Takeaway: Bill Detwiler cracks open the Nook Simple Touch with Glowlight and shows you how Barnes and Noble reduced the e-reader’s weight and gave it an integrated light. Not only did Barnes and Noble make the 2012 Nook lighter and give it an antiglare screen protector, they added a killer feature for nighttime reading–an integrated light. In this week’s Cracking Open, I show you what’s inside the new Nook Simple Touch and reveal the secret behind its GlowLight. The Nook Simple Touch with GlowLight has an 800 MHz Texas Instruments OMAP3621 applications processor, 256MB of RAM, 2GB of storage,