Barnes & Noble has cut prices on three models of its Nook e-reader and tablet devices as rival Amazon.com is preparing to launch a new version of its Kindle Fire tablet.

Barnes & Noble managed to take 27 percent of the US e-books market thanks to the Nook has slashed the retail price of its Nook tablet with 16 GB of memory to $199 from $249. Barnes & Noble took $20 off its 8 GB version of the tablet to $179 and lowered the price of its Nook Colour by $20, bringing it to $149, the latest reduction for that model.

Nook has done rather well, but Barnes & Noble is worried about the coming Kindle Fire tablet which seems to be arriving as Nook revenue has fallen. So far the Fire has only appeared in the US where it has some content available for it.  In the EU the main rival to the Nook is the Kindle and Google's Nexus 7.