Penguin and the iPad
Strong, no-nonsense language from Penguin’s CEO John Makinson:
The iPad represents the first real opportunity to create a paid distribution model that will be attractive to consumers.We will be embedding audio, video and streaming in to everything we do.The definition of the book itself is up for grabs.Asked how he felt about Apple’s 30-percent cut:
This is better than the equivalent print agency model, in which publishers let retailers keep 50 percent.
Strong words indeed. It’s refreshing to see a publisher excited about a new platform like this. Most of them seem stuck trying to figure out how to get people to do what they were doing 50 years ago.
