Weighing in at 11 ounces, and with a price tag of $259.00, Barnes & Noble’s, (NYSE: BKS) Nook represents the latest entrant in the growing ebook category.

Although portable ebook readers have been available for several years, Amazon.com (NASDAQ: AMZN) jump-started the category with the Kindle, a dedicated reading device that unlike its predecessors included two break-through technologies: the first, a unique gray scale imaging display manufactured by E-Ink of Cambridge, MA, allows readers to comfortably read and scroll through text, without the annoyance of a back-lit display. The second is a wireless transfer capability that allows hundreds of thousands for books to be downloaded in under a minute, regardless of page length.

Barnes & Noble will enter the ebook reader fray next month with the Nook, a new ebook reader that embeds many technologies used by the Kindle, and raises the ante in some areas. The Nook features the same digital display as the Kindle (made by E-Ink), as well as a wireless connection that enables fast downloads of ebooks. A novel yet controversial feature will be the Nook’s ability to share books between various electronic devices, for a period of up to 14 days, though the details on how this will work are still sketchy. The Nook will be powered by Google’s Android operating system, which has lately been appearing in a number of smartphones.

In a sense, Barnes & Noble may suffer from being the third entrant into the category, in the sense that Amazon may have shipped close to one million Kindles already, and Sony, for its part, has said it has shipped close to half a million of its ebook readers.

Amazon’s Kindle 2, the second incarnation of AMZN’s e-book reader, is lighter, faster, sleeker and less expensive than its predecessor, and began shipping in February, 2009, with a price tag of $359. AMZN recently reduced the price to $259.00, its second price cut in four months. Most Kindle books are priced at $9.99, regardless of page length, and are priced at a steep discount to their hardcover brethren. Through the Kindle, Amazon hopes to control, or at least influence, sales of digital books, newspapers, magazines, and play an even bigger role than it does in the delivery of hardcover and paperback books.

At first glance, Barnes & Noble’s strategy appears to be a well-thought out way in which to build store traffic over the holidays. No doubt having the device in the store will give consumers an incentive to play with it. Additionally, the Nook will display various in-store promotions when it used inside any of Barnes & Noble’s bookstores. With Google powering the operating system, don’t be surprised if advertisements are flashed while using the device.

Not surprisingly, the Nook will not support books formatted for the Kindle.