Barnes & Noble on Tuesday unveiled a simplified touchscreen e-reader: the Simple Touch Reader. Designed for a "pure and simple" reading experience without buttons, keyboards or complexity, the new compact Nook will be available around June 10th in stores or online.

It's got a 6-inch Pearl E Ink display and weighs in at just under 7.5 ounces, 35% lighter than the original Nook. It's selling for $140, the same price as the Kindle 3, but not as cheap at the $114 Kindle with ads.

The first-generation Nook is available for a discount price of $120 (for WiFi only) and $170 (for WiFi/3G) until supplies run out.

CEO William Lynch announced at a New York press event that the Simple Touch would be the "easiest to use, most portable e-book reader ever." He outlined several advantages to the new Nook over its Amazon rival.

The most impressive feature for avid readers is the device's super long battery life: a whole two months at half an hour a day, or twice as long as the Kindle.

There is also 80% less flashing, or that annoying "ghosting" effect between pages, Lynch claimed.

As with previous models, readers will be able to browse entire e-books in the Barnes & Noble physical stores over Wi-Fi, and share recommendations with friends via Facebook and Twitter.

The display offers 50% more contrast than the first edition Nook, and has a "soft touch," contoured back, presumably to make it comfier to hold. The Android-based device has 2 GB of memory (with an expandable memory slot that could boost it to 32GB).

While the touchscreen turns the new e-reader into more of a tablet than its predecessor, the new Nook does not offer apps or 3G. Those additions would interrupt the "straightforward reading experience," said Lynch. The Simple Touch Reader will cater to a particular segment of the population: people who don’t salivate over newest generation apps and just want the basics, please.

For those who do itch for a little more, the company's popular Nook Color recently got a software update, which includes new apps, support for Flash and built-in email. As it's meant to be the "reader's tablet for all forms of digital content and rich web browsing," the Nook Color is second only to the iPad in tablet sales. More than a million apps have been downloaded since they became available in April.

With these two devices, the world's largest brick-and-mortar bookseller is in a good position to vie with Apple and Amazon for the tablet and e-reading market. Barnes & Noble has already had surprising success since it launched its first Nook in 2009, and now accounts for 25 percent of the digital book market. No doubt this caught the eye of media billionaire John Malone of Liberty Media, who just offered $1billion for a 70% stake in the company.

The e-book market is growing rapidly: Amazon recently announced it is now selling more e-books than print books. Now it's just a race for the best price.