Barnes & Noble might be first to market with this round of integrated lighting, but I expect its competitors to follow in the company's footsteps soon enough with their own 2012 refreshes. Already, , and it's not like Sony hasn't been down this road before, just at a time when e-readers were more expensive to make and first gaining traction.

Ultimately, e-reader manufacturers need to do something to keep up interest in dedicated e-readers, given the growing challenge from multipurpose tablets. Tablets like , , and even all entice shoppers with their brightly lit, color displays. And then there's the seemingly unstoppable and its deep app universe. Meanwhile, dedicated appear to be struggling: Digitimes Research recently reported that it expects global shipments of e-book readers to reach only two million units in the first quarter of 2012, a 78 percent decrease from shipments in the fourth quarter of 2011.