If you were tuned in to Minnesota Public Radio this morning, you might’ve caught Cathy Wurzer interviewing University of Minnesota Press director Douglas Armato about his thoughts on Apple’s new e-reader, the iPad, its accompanying iBookstore, and the potential that e-readers have to change publishing for students, for publishers, and for the general reading public.
Here’s an excerpt:
I think the digital environment tends to level the playing field for all publishers because everything is available all at once. It isn’t like going into a bookstore that may have copies of one publisher’s book or doesn’t have copies of another. That’s really something that Amazon contributed to the book world — their ambition from the beginning was to have everything. And I think in Apple’s iTunes you saw the same thing — the ambition to make everything available.
For those who missed it, here’s the audio clip:
http://minnesota.publicradio.org/www_publicradio/tools/media_player/js/swfobject.js
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What do you think about the iPad? Do you have an e-reader, and if so, do you like it? Please share your comments below.
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