Everything iPad

And we are pretty excited by what we are seeing. Just as we saw with The New York Times’ iPad demonstration at the iPad keynote, the content isn’t the only thing that’s going to sell eBooks. It’s the interactivity. When a student is holding the iPad in their hands, looking over their anatomy text, they don’t want to just be holding another book. They want to be able to flip through digital pages, and interact with what they’ve got in front of them. After all, it’s the best way to learn.

Penguin is one of the major publishing players in Apple’s plans for eBook reader domination. However, there’s a bit of a snag in this plan. As it stands, the current “widely used” format for eBooks is the ‘ePub format,’ and that raises up some red flags. The problem is that the ePub format is designed for traditional text. Meaning, it’s not meant for all this flashiness. So, Penguin (and presumably other publishers that want to accomplish the same thing) will need to release these products as HTML-based applications, sold independently through the App Store.

That’s not really a problem though. Even if they could provide the eBooks through the iBookstore, you’d still have to pay for them (unless, obviously, they make them for free). We’re looking at the changing times here, folks. Just as we did with the Wired app. We can certainly say “Thank you,” to Apple for pushing us all into the future, and we’re lucky enough to be bringing the traditional publishing field with us. We’d miss our books, after all.

[via SlashGear]