With just a tap, Boulder-based Beneath the Ink helps readers get more out of their e-books

by Julianne Tveten
January 23, 2015

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On a regular basis, tech startups introduce zippy, monosyllabic quasi-words to the English corporate lexicon. Lyft. Waze. Ping. And now, one more has emerged: Bink.

The Bink, a small unit of relevant information embedded within electronic text, is the heart of e-book enhancement startup Beneath the Ink. By incorporating Binks into e-books, Beneath the Ink aims to give readers insight into the characters, history, concepts, geography, and words that populate the pages they turn.

“Both myself and my co-founder (Sherisse Hawkins) are avid readers and insatiably curious,” said co-founder Alex Milewski. “We have both read on digital devices like Kindles and iPads for years, and have always wanted more from the content we are reading.”

The Boulder startup, which was founded in Australia and graduated from the Innovyz accelerator program in 2012, targets traditionally published and self-published authors of e-books looking to supplement the content in their work. Using the Beneath the Ink user interface, they can manually add tappable Binks within the Beneath the Ink platform, regardless of the genre in which they write.

“Binks are like food condiments: of course you would never put catsup on a pancake (or research data in a fantasy book), but that's what syrup (and character Binks) is for,” Milewski explained.

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While authors have the option to create the content in their Binks, the startup provides external API resources (such as Google Maps, Photobucket, and etymology and dictionary apps) that they can use to import information.

Binks, Milewski maintains, can also be an asset to education, both for textbooks and for literature programs. “[We] are currently in conversation with multiple Universities and educators. We did a recent project with the University of Texas and they created a fabulous document using our platform.”  

In addition to Binks, the company — which employs seven and has raised $750,000 in addition to a $250,000 grant from the state — provides e-book preview software and a proprietary Web-based reading format.

Milewski is planning “a lot of major tech upgrades” for 2015, including additional plugins for e-book enhancement and new titles in the library (currently, there are five). “In the more distant future, we plan on building out our Web reading environment, creating a full-featured mobile reader, and releasing partner-apps that continue to better the e-Ink and paper book reading experiences,” he said.

With these developments, Milewski and Hawkins hope to redefine the way literature is consumed. “We know that people won't read the same way in ten years. We want to be the new way.”

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