The iPad: Leveling the playing field for publishers


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.

Photo: James Martin/CNET


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