Former Vice President Al Gore’s new book, “Our Choice: A Plan to Solve the Climate Crisis,” is a $4.99 iOS app designed by Push Pop Press, a startup launched by two former Apple engineers. “This app,” according to Gore, “is a new kind of book that combines text and images, as well as video, interactive info-graphics and my own audio commentary.”
It’s also bullshit, according to Jason Baptiste.
The problem with Gore’s book isn’t the content, but the fact that it’s an app. Baptiste is the co-founder and CEO of a startup called OnSwipe. The company makes a tool that uses HTML5 to enable the quick building of web-based content that looks and feels like an app, but is really just a fancy web site.
The web is better than an app for content, according to Baptiste, because it can be linked to from Twitter, Facebook and other Web sites. Feeds from social sites can be integrated as part of the content experience.
And with HTML5, web-based content can now offer the same look and/or feel as an app-delivered eBook, according to Baptiste.
The OnSwipe tool is one of many that will emerge in the coming year to simplify the application of HTML5 pixie dust to existing sites.
The promise of Web-delivered content appears to solve several problems. First is cross-platform compatibility. Right now, content makers and publishers have to choose between iOS, Android, the BlackBerry Tablet OS, webOS, etc. — or launch and maintain several apps on incompatible platforms. HTML5 enables publishers to create a web site, then transform it into something that “feels” like a glossy magazine or fancy coffee-tablet book. HTML5, of course, also works on a PC or Mac.
Second is profitability. Because Apple, for example, charges app makers one third of the price of the app for “shipping and handling,” content pricing can become a problem. Publishers must either raise the price of content apps, or take less profit — or both. An HTML5-based eBook means publishers keep all the money.
Third, is discoverability. Apps are becoming hard to find. The iPad alone already has more than 80,000 tablet-specific apps in the App Store. If every content publisher followed Gore’s approach to eBook publishing and built an app, the app stores would be overwhelmed by content titles. So how do you get discovered? Putting eBooks and other content online enables those titles to pop up in web searches for content. Search for “global warming,” “climate change” or “books by former vice presidents who lecture everyone on climate change but who themselves maintain enormous carbon footprints” and up pops Gore’s book along with the other results.
So is Baptiste right? Is HTML5 better than apps for content publishing on tablets?
The answer is a resounding “maybe.” For example, a book like Gore’s is definitely better in app form. It does things HTML5 can’t yet do. And Gore has a “platform” — he’s famous, which means discoverability is less of an issue.
I also think books like children’s books are better in app form, because the reader wants maximum interactivity and the parents want minimum off-linking.
But for many kinds of books — especially for non-fiction titles by lesser known authors — HTML5 books built with tools like OnSwipe really could make a lot of sense. Instead of publishing a book over here, a blog over there, and promoting it all with a web site, a Facebook fan page and a Twitter feed the book, blog, web site and social streams are all one thing.
Another scenario that’s probably inconceivable now but won’t be later is: all of the above. As app-building and HTML5-building tools get simpler, even medium size authors and publishers should be able to bang out apps on all platforms, plus HTML5 versions, and have all those variants look and feel more or less the same.
The argument over apps vs. HTML5 is a non-starter. Neither will replace the other. Yes, HTML5 is great. But so are apps. Publishers will have more choice.
I’m looking forward to trying OnSwipe, and I think that the service or others like it could really help transform publishing. But the idea that apps are bullshit is, well, bullshit.
