It looks like Barnes & Noble is taking a leaf from Amazon’s playbook.

Early this morning the retailer sent out an email to their customers, but rather than pitch ebook deals the email touts a new promo video for the Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 Nook. B&N is widely expected to launch the new tablet next Wednesday, and for once they decided to start promoting the new hardware before it officially launches.

The video regrettably doesn’t share any new details on price or specs, and instead focuses on reactions to the new device (in much the same way that Amazon has used reactions to a new Kindle as part of their launch events). But in spite of the lack of interesting or useful info, this is a good sign for industry watchers. It tells us that B&N isn’t just going through the motions when launching the new hardware; they want it to succeed.

Now if only they could have released a new tablet which had a better screen and performance that the Nook HD, that would be awesome. As it stands, the new Galaxy Tab 4 Nook doesn’t exactly offer a compelling reason to upgrade.

I had a Galaxy Tab 3, and was underwhelmed by the performance, and I also know several Nook HD owners (including Juli Monroe of Teleread) who don’t see why they would want to downgrade their screens.

Still, B&N has had close to two years since their last tablet launch to work on their software; perhaps they will blow us away on Wednesday. We’ll have to wait and see.