We started with a vision for a better textbook: one that was interactive and engaging, one that took advantage of the opportunities afforded by new media like iPad. But we aren’t just reinventing publishing, or reinventing the book. We’re reinventing the way people learn.

Inkling began in the living room of our founder and quickly grew to a handful of designers and engineers in a tiny office in San Francisco’s startuppy SoMa district. Here, ideas and sketches were translated into a touchable textbook experience, designed to make the most of iPad.

Now, in our freshly renovated loft space in downtown San Francisco, we’re working hard to bring even more of our ideas to life with a more perfect union between left brain/right brain thinking. Every day, talented engineers and designers work closely with content and education experts to reimagine the world’s best learning material.

Our investors, too, have helped us along the way, starting with our earliest angels and growing to include world-class partners like Sequoia Capital and top publishers McGraw-Hill and Pearson.

The Thinking Behind Inkling

When we set out to design Inkling, we thought about the assumptions people make, usually unconsciously, each time they create or consume a book.

Take the concept of a page, for example. A page is a block of content divided by what “fits” into a given physical space. If you’ve ever done an essay for a course, you’ve probably changed the amount of content on a page by changing the line spacing or changing the font size. But the page itself rarely represents a semantic break in the content. That is, a page is a page not because it makes sense for the content itself, but because that’s just what happened to fit.

Enter iPad. There’s no such thing as a page. There’s a 1024 by 768 screen that can change in response to your fingers. There’s a display instead of ink. There’s memory instead of paper. There’s a world of new opportunities, and whole new set of constraints.

Guess what! The iPad isn’t a book.

Publishing in this new era will cast aside the constraints of the printed book and embrace the opportunity of multitouch devices