Sanders Kleinfeld: HTML5 is the future of digital publishing. If you’re a publisher who’s interested in staying competitive in the ebook landscape, it’s quite crucial that you understand what HTML5 is all about.

Sanders Kleinfeld: The term “HTML5” is indeed used very fluidly in tech discourse, and it has really become a signifier for a constellation of different technologies, some only loosely related to actual HTML markup. When people refer to HTML5, they’re usually talking about some combination of the following next-generation web technologies: Canvas, geolocation, native audio/video, local storage, and CSS3.

Sanders Kleinfeld: The <canvas> element allows you to embed an interactive sketchpad into your web or ebook content. You can control it with JavaScript. Because the canvas is scriptable, it opens the door to everything from computer-generated drawings to animations and full-fledged games. If you’re interested in “app-ifying” your ebook (i.e., adding the kinds of interactive features that are the hallmark of iPhone or Android Apps), the <canvas> element and its associated API are the tools that are going to allow you to accomplish that.

Sanders Kleinfeld: Much as websites like Google already customize search results and advertisements based on users’ locations, geolocation enables publishers to tailor their ebook content based on where their readers are currently located. This seems particularly beneficial to publishers of travel or restaurant guides, as they can sort and customize hotel/dining reviews based on proximity to the reader’s location, suggest points of interest nearby, and perhaps even offer directions from one locale to another.

In “HTML5 for Publishers,” I explore the possibility of geolocated fiction, where the reader’s current location actually figures into the text of the story. [Click here to see an example of this in action.]

More avant-garde uses of geolocation in ebooks might extend to interactive activities and games like geocaching.

Sanders Kleinfeld: Prior to the finalization of EPUB 3, the EPUB format already had a huge amount of momentum behind it, as an open standard supported by nearly every major ereading platform: iBooks for iPhone/iPad, Nook, Sony Reader, Adobe Digital Editions, etc. — Amazon’s Kindle is really the only notable exception. The release of the EPUB 3 standard, which designates HTML5 as the language to be used for ebook content documents, firmly aligns the format with next-generation web technology. I think it’s going to serve as one of the primary catalysts for publishers to get into the HTML5 game and for the major ereading platforms to adopt robust HTML5 support. Publishers are clamoring to enhance their ebooks with interactive and multimedia features, ereader manufacturers want to support these features, and EPUB 3 provides a clearly defined path forward.

We’re already beginning to see support for HTML5 features emerge on some of the most popular ereaders. Both iBooks and the Nook Color already support HTML5 audio and video, as do cloud platforms like Ibis Reader. IBooks also supports many <canvas> features. I think it’s just a matter of time before other ereaders follow suit.

Sanders Kleinfeld: Kindle Format 8 (KF8) is Amazon’s answer to EPUB 3. It’s a proprietary standard for Amazon’s ereader platforms that adds support for HTML5 and CSS3. Amazon recently published a list of KF8’s new capabilities.

Prior to KF8, Kindle’s CSS support in Mobi 7 was rather rudimentary, which posed many challenges to ebook publishers with highly graphical content that demanded sophisticated, precise layout. KF8 provides the necessary tools for producing these types of books. It will facilitate the creation of children’s books, comic books, and other graphically rich content for Kindle.

More generally, KF8 is also going to make it easier for publishers to make “prettier” ebooks for Kindle, and I think it’s important not to dismiss the value of aesthetics to the ereading experience. With the release of the Kindle Fire, Amazon is clearly looking to establish itself as a player in the tablet market, and I think KF8 is going to help Kindle keep pace with iBooks.

That said, while I’m encouraged to see Kindle adopt greater HTML5 support, as a staunch open source advocate and sometimes-beleaguered ebook developer who would love all ereaders to unite behind one file format, very little would make me happier than seeing Amazon adopt the EPUB 3 standard.

Sanders Kleinfeld: In “HTML5 for Publishers,” I provide an overview of the HTML5 technologies I believe will be most important to the next wave of ebook innovation, along with sample code and demos showing these HTML5 features in action. No formal knowledge of HTML or programming is necessary to appreciate “HTML5 for Publishers,” but if you’re interested in diving in and developing your own HTML5 content, some background in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript will most certainly be helpful. I provide links to additional HTML5 resources throughout the book for those looking to learn more.

Sanders Kleinfeld: As with every new technology, I think it’s important for publishers to take a step back and not allow the hype to distract from practicality.

Consider what aspects of HTML5 might benefit and enhance your ebook program, and employ them judiciously. For example, if you’re publishing a series of foreign language guides, embedding HTML5 audio/video content throughout your ebooks will likely be received as a welcome enhancement to readers. But if you’re publishing serious literature, adding lots of audio and video may be a distraction. Don’t be afraid to be innovative, but always put your readership’s needs first.

This interview was edited and condensed.

Laura Dawson: With the Internet, nothing really dies anymore. By creating good metadata and describing your books thoroughly and accurately, you can make sure consumers can always find your books.

It pays to go back and revisit old metadata as well. Search engines are always updating their algorithms, and consumers are constantly finding new ways to search. If you can update an older title with newer keywords, that will ensure continued relevance.

Laura Dawson: Pretty much the same way it does for print workflow — you’re describing a book. You initially describe the title one way at acquisition, and you continue updating that description as you move through the publishing process. By the time the book gets to marketing, you’ll have richer descriptions, such as categories, keywords, a synopsis, and a book jacket image, that are very consumer-friendly. The only difference with digital is that you’re describing a file rather than a physical object.

Laura Dawson: Ideally, publishers should not need a separate workflow for publishing ebooks. We preached about that in the “Start with XML” project. But of course, that’s not truly the case. Up until the book is ready to be published — in whatever format — the process is basically the same: acquisition, editorial, crafting the marketing messages, and figuring out special sales, if there are any. The different skill sets come into the picture when it’s time to actually publish the book, when a file goes out to the printer, and another file goes out to a conversion house.

At that point, a publisher has to run quality assurance (QA) on the conversion. And this is where things get a bit hairy. Do you do a line-by-line QA? What happens when you find a formatting error — do you go in and fix it yourself, or do you outsource fixes to the conversion house? Publishers have to weigh the cost/benefit of having certain skills in-house versus outsourcing those tasks. This is going to vary from publisher to publisher, depending on what sorts of books they’re publishing, what sort of volume they’ve got, and what their readers’ expectations are.

Laura Dawson: Consumers are much savvier about metadata than they used to be. They have certain expectations about what they want to see online. If a book’s metadata is obviously error-ridden or incomplete, consumers are not going to trust the description of the book, and they’ll steer away from it until they can somehow find out more — if they get around to trying to find out more. They very well may not.

Metadata is the first line of defense in the signal-to-noise ratio. Given that this ratio is only going to increase over time, there’s a huge role for metadata to play. I see a lot happening with keywords, expanded taxonomies, and identifiers over the next few years. It’s the only way we’ll be able to sort things out as publishing gets easier and, in turn, more content gets published.

Laura Dawson: Rather than groaning about how maintaining good metadata is a chore, publishers should instead look at metadata as a series of tools. You sharpen your knives so you can cut a tomato without squashing it; you put gas, oil and wiper fluid in your car so you can get where you need to go; you protect your computer with anti-virus software so you can work without interruption. Taking care of your metadata means you can publish and sell your books with greater ease than you could with poorly-maintained metadata.

Laura Dawson: SEO utterly relies on metadata. Publishers that describe their books explicitly and well can guide consumers to those titles.

As for the future, we need distinctive taxonomies that sort books — and chunks of books — into precise groups. Right now, all we have to work with are the BISAC categories, which have the subtlety of a sledgehammer. I know BISG wants to work on this. I’m also really interested to see how metadata evolves in response to Google Books. That will be fun to watch.

This interview was edited and condensed.

The idea here is simple: refreshable rather than static content. The actual dimensions of the page aren’t what’s elastic; instead, it’s what’s being presented that’s continuously changing. In some ways, the home page of a newspaper’s website serves as a good example here. Visit The Boston Globe half a dozen times over the course of a week and each time you’ll see a new serving of news. (Haven’t seen that paper’s recent online makeover yet? Definitely worth checking out, and make sure to do so using a few different screen sizes — laptop, big monitor, mobile phone ... each showcases a different version of its morphing, on-the-fly design.)

Ever seen that great short video, “The Power of Ten”? It’s where the shot begins just above two picnickers on a blanket and then proceeds to zoom out so that you see the same picnic blanket, but now from 100 feet up, and then 1,000 feet, and on and on until you’ve got a view from outer space. (After the zoom out, the process reverses, and you end up getting increasingly microscopic glimpses of the blanket, its fabric, the individual strands of cotton, and so on.) Here’s a presentational canvas that adds new levels of meaning at different magnifications. So, the viewer doesn’t simply move closer or further away, as you might in a room when looking at, say, a person. As you get closer, you see progressively deeper into the body. Microsoft calls this “semantic zooming” (as part of its forthcoming touchscreen-friendly Metro interface). Bible software maker Glo offers some interesting content zooming tools that implement this feature for readers looking to flip between birds-eye and page views.

A printed page is a 2-D rectangle of fixed dimensions. On the infinite canvas, the possibilities vary widely, deeply, and as Will Ferrell’s character in “Old School” might say, “in ways we’ve never even heard of.” Some possible shapes here: a 3-D cube with content on each side, or pyramid-shaped ebooks (Robert Darnton wrote about those in The New Age of the Book, where he proposes a multi-layered structure for academics with excess material that would bust the bindings of a printed book).

I just got a wonderful print book the other day called “Finish This Book.” It contains a collection of fill-in-the-blank and finish-this-thought creative exercises. It reminded me that one thing digital books haven’t yet explored much is leaving space for readers to compose their reactions. Sure, every ebook reader today lets you take notes, but as I’ve written before, these systems are pale replicas of the rich, reader-friendly note taking experiences we get in print books. Job No. 1 is solving those shortcomings, but then imagine the possibilities if digital books are designed to allow readers to compose extensive thoughts and reactions.

Print book lovers (I’m one of ‘em) wax on about their beloved format’s special talents: the smell, the feel, its nap-friendly weight. But touchscreen fans can play that game, too. Recall, for starters, the first time you tapped an iPhone or similarly modern touchscreen. Admit it: the way it felt to pinch, swipe, flick, and spread ... those gestures introduce a whole new pleasure palette. Reading and books have heretofore primarily been a visual medium: you look and ponder what’s inside. Now, as we enter the age of touchscreen documents, content becomes a feast for our fingers as much as our eyes. Authors, publishers, and designers are just beginning to appreciate this opportunity, making good examples hard to point to. I do think that Erik Loyer is among the most interesting innovators with his Strange Rain app, a kind of mashup between short fiction and those particle visualizers like Uzu. It’s not civilian-friendly yet, I don’t think, but it points the way for artists interested in incorporating touch into their creations.

A movable viewport lets your audience pan across massive content panoramas. Some of the possibilities here are photographic (Photosynth, Virtual History ROMA). Others have begun to explore massively wide content landscapes, such as timelines (History of Jazz). One new example I just learned about yesterday: London Unfurled for iPad, a hand-illustrated pair of 37-foot long drawings of every building on the River Thames between Hammersmith Bridge and Millennium Dome, complete with tappable backstories on most of the architecture that’s on display.

These are just a few of the possibilities that I’ve spotted. What comes to mind when you think about the infinite canvas?

Photo: masterpiece by 416style, on Flickr