E-Textbooks Zip into College Market

Inkling, a San Francisco company unlike many eBook publishers that simply digitize paper books, is rebuilding college texts from the ground up. The texts include embedded sound and video, links to primary sources, search capabilities and a memo function that doubles as a social media network, allowing students to communicate with experts and text authors, as well as professors and students around the world who are studying the text.

“I was surprised by how much I liked it,” said Cathy Giunta, who taught a marketing class at Seton Hill University last fall with an iPad e-textbook from Inkling.