[pittendrigh]

Someone above, who claimed to be a multimedia professional, actually said a series of still images and diagrams do a better job than video for instructional purposes. I have many hobbies. Try demonstrating that in the (fishing) fly tying and lure making context.

Is phone memory big enough to store video? Sure for a few, but not for much video. For what ever reason video is not well supported yet, in the ebook context. It could be. It will be. In the meantime HTML5 is an interesting idea that has a largely unfulfilled niche market.

Here's one more argument NOT yet mentioned. I don't know about book publishing in the general context. I do know a lot about fishing books. I'm an author with perhaps 20 publications in glossy, nationally distributed fishing magazines (which are all dying now as we speak). I'm working on a book. It's about half written now. In the fishing book industry unproven authors who write a book typically swing a deal with a paper technology publisher to make a first printing of 6000 books, where the author gets $1 dollar ro $2 dollars per book sold. That makes an upper bound gross profit of $12,000.

What were your expenses? Did you travel in order to write this book? Did it take you four years to complete your project? This isn't very good money.

I have been selling blue prints and written boat building instructions since the late 1980s. I used to have blueprints made plus a spiral bound notebook of smaller diagrams and written instructions. I sold my blueprints for $135 dollars as late the late 1990s.

As a guy who earned a CS degree late in life I was an early adopter of the internet. I now sell a password for $25 dollars that grants access to several hundred pages of how-to-do-it boat building instructions, diagrams, photographs, downloadable generic cad files and to growing extent video. I make a lot more money than I ever did packaging up paper blueprints. All of this is presented in a book-like format with Next Page, Previous Page and Return to Last Read Page buttons, plus a Table of Contents that collapses and expands with a mouse click. A searchable keyword index will happen this winter. That's almost trivial with mysqlite. Other features will evolve. Steadily. This winter I will write a few pages of Python code that runs from cron, that will create a downloadable version of my book in epub3 format. For those who want it.

If I sold an HTML5 book online, about something other than boat building (I'm working on it now) I will sell it for $25 dollars too, and I wlll get all $25 dollars, not the $1.50 a publisher would dangle at me.

There is a need for book-like HTML. I'm not arguing it will replace epub. It won't. It will, however, be very useful in some contexts. It already is. I use it and sell it every day. Because of Social Media advertising I sell more online boat plans every year. Because I present it in book-like fashion my customers are all happy. I offer a no-conditions refund to every new customer. "I don't need a reason (for a refund) my order form says. "Just a request." .................I get one refund request every two years or so. No problem. There is nothing for anyone to package up. These are digital assets. It all happens with a mouse click.