Inkling: The Future of Textbooks

The future of education is tech and the future of textbooks is Inkling. Inkling is the creator of university-level textbooks for the iPad. I interviewed Matt MacInnis, the CEO of Inkling, about its textbooks last weeks.

MacInnis explains that Inkling takes a textbook, disassembles all of the component parts, and builds it back up again for the iPad, making use of interactive features, including 3D images and videos, to enhance the reader's experience. Inkling plans to have about 100 titles available by the end of this year and hundreds more next year as their production increases.

Inkling textbooks have edition, page and figure numbers that correspond to physical textbooks. So when a professor instructs you to "Open your books to page 263 and view figure 2-A," you can follow his directions.

Inkling would like to replace traditional textbooks, which would eliminate coordination issues. "We don't want to be constrained by the linear structure of the book, we'd rather be building things that are hierarchical and exploratory. Inkling is built to handle the future."

Updates are free. Once you buy an Inkling book, MacInnis says, "it's always up to date. It's always the latest and the greatest, even if you bought it two years ago. Nobody has to worry about numbers because everyone is always in sync. I think the beauty of it is that it just magically keeps everybody in the world on the same page."

Inkling books are generally less expensive than physical textbooks. To help further manage costs, Inkling offers the ability to purchase chapters individually, usually for $2.99 each. If a professor isn't going to cover every chapter in the textbook, you don't need to buy those chapters.

Inkling More Than Studying Words on a Page from Inkling on Vimeo.

One downside to Inkling textbooks, as with all ebooks, is the inability to resell the books. "Students don't get upset because they're paying less for the content to begin with," MacInnis said. "People purchase the content they need and their access to the content is perpetual but not transferable."

Inkling offers books in which professors have set up their own set of notes and highlights for the class so students can follow along. These books offer "both peer-to-peer collaboration among students and the interaction that the students get with the professor and with experts," MacInnis claims.

"A number of our titles have the author or an authorized expert that lives in that book with the students," he said. "And they are designated by a special color so the students know they're actually having a conversation with the Pulitzer Prize winning author of this history book. Or they're having another conversation with a doctor at a separate med school about the anatomy textbook. You never would have imagined, even a year ago, having a conversation inside a textbook with an expert like that."

Inkling's books are not just for collegians. Check out Inkling's version of The Professional Chef textbook for The Culinary Institute of America.

Inkling released Pro Chef last week in the iTunes App Store for $49.99, or $2.99 a chapter, and gave me a copy of the book to test. Pro Chef is 1,239 pages as a physical textbook and reviews on Amazon.com warn against trying to leave it open as a cookbook on the kitchen counter due to its bulk. No problem leaving it open on the iPad.

If you know someone with an iPad who likes to cook, Pro Chef would make a great holiday present.