How will we write ebooks in the future? Not write them as authors, but write them in code? There's a great new article on Digital Book World from Nick Ruffilo, the CTO over at Aerbook.com. They are way out in front on cloud publishing, and if anyone knows about what is going on with the new iteration of ebooks, it's him.
First he clarifies that when he says HTML5 he means "the HTML5 stack; HTML5, CSS3, and javascript."
He gives several reasons why, but I think the most compelling is the XML Core. He says, "If done correctly, an HTML document can easily be re-styled for a smaller or larger device, have it’s content searched contextually, or have data intelligently restructured."
Those HTML capabilities make it ideal for every reader out there, and for every publisher. Meaning, those who publish the books can play with it to make them awesome, and those who sell the devices that people read them on can easily get the published books to appear in whatever kind of device they create.
He goes on to say that the future will consist of semaintic markup, responsive design, and enhanced content. I'm less interested in the speculation about what will be important next year (let alone what will be created) because we all have a bad history of predicting the future of anything as volatile as the publishing industry.
What I'm most interested in are the two gems he drops about the world as it is right now:
1. HTML5 Example: "To help showcase some of the wonderful things that HTML5 can do, [Ruffilo] partnered with DBW and created a Web-book of HTML5 examples that you can play with. In addition to showing the live examples, [Ruffilo] provided a cost estimate and business case behind each set of interactions. Check it out here.
2. The Current State of HTML5: As it stands, all of the major ebook software companies (Amazon, Apple, B&N, Kobo, etc) will take EPUB3, which is HTML5 at its core. The only platform that supports Javascript is Apple, and CSS3 support is limited in most platforms except Apple. Amazon does not directly support EPUB or HTML5, but through the Kindlegen application (provided by Amazon), a valid EPUB file will be converted to Amazon’s mobi format. Kobo has stated it will fully support EPUB3 by Q3 of 2013 and Sony already supports much of EPUB3.
Image Source: Eva Rinaldi via flickr
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