Cloud publishing is the concept that lies at the base of Inkling. It suffices to log into the Inkling Habitat environment from any web browser, and everything you need to manage product development is at your fingertips. Note that I nor Inkling are talking about “book publishing” but “product development”.
Inkling is a big deal because it re-defines digital or at the very least publishing of textbooks on an iPad. It does away with the book concept — there is no page on an iPad, so there also cannot be a “book” in the sense that we know it — and treats publishing as product development instead.
It does so while offering the actors involved in the development process a cloud based environment, the Habitat, where everyone sees the same content no matter where he/she is. That makes it easy to communicate with authors, vendors and contractors.
Inkling believes cloud publishing — because that is what it is — will dramatically improve the way publishing, creative and technical professionals work together on projects. The biggest novelty Inkling introduces, however, is that it replaces the idea of a page as a content container by the notion of content as software.
Inkling therefore enables creating more interactive content, cross-channel (as long as it’s digital), with easy global collaboration for authors and designers. Inkling is a dramatic move away from platforms like WoodWing Software’s Enterprise and Quark’s Quark Publishing System (and even QuarkXPress’s iPad publishing feature).
Because Inkling treats iPad or digital publishing in general the way it does, it is bound to force traditional publishing platforms and systems out of the textbook market — my opinion is that if magazine and even newspaper publishers are smart, they will keep an eye on Inkling, its success, and the market it is creating. If the Inkling approach will have the success that I for one believe it will have, these publishers too may come to see the advantages of working the Inkling way.
When that happens, the publishing industry could find itself become more successful again, because of the truly rich user experience an Inkling publication delivers.
