Oh yes release it by all means - the new HTML editor has removed one of the reasons I've been breaking out of NV.
I understand your position on why you want to avoid standard columns.
When I want to edit a book's Comments, I copy it to a custom column (#blurb/Blurb), edit it, and then copy it back to Comments (dc:description) - the presence of a value in both Comments and Blurb is a signal I probably changed the original.
I should take another look at EM
BR