Digital textbook startup Inkling has raised $17 million in funding to grow their company, which works with textbook publishers to create interactive iPad versions of their books. The funding comes from Tenaya Capital, Jafco Ventures, Sequoia Capital and Pearson Education. Inkling is already working with publishers like McGraw Hill and Pearson. [GigaOM]

Amazon is now offering Kindle Textbook Rental, giving students digital textbooks for up to 80% off. TechCrunch reports that the service allows students to customize their rental, so they only pay to have the book as long as they need it—anywhere from 30 to 360 days. In addition, Amazon’s Whispersync technology allows students to keep their notes in the Amazon Cloud, and Amazon offers to continue this storage past the end of a rental period.

Inkling is a digital textbook startup company that has raised a multi-million dollar round of funding from McGraw-Hill, Pearson, Sequoia Capital, Felicis Ventures, Kapor Capital, and Sherpalo Ventures. Inkling had previously raised an undisclosed Series A round of funding in August 2010. Inkling’s technology has the ability to deliver interactive textbooks. Users can collaborate, add multimedia, and chat with each other within the specific content. Some of the dynamic content included in Inkling’s technology is 3D objects, videos, quizzes, etc. [TechCrunch]