Wikibon’s financial commentator Gerald Hallaren has posted a short piece outlining how publishers can use HTML-5 to get around Apple’s requirement that e-book and other e-publishing apps use the App Store to sell publications, and pay 30% of the price to Apple, rather than having in-app sales capabilities. In recent months Apple has forced the major e-book distributors including Barnes & Noble (Nook) and Amazon (Kindle) to rewrite their e-book apps for the iPad to take out their built-in links to their book sales sites.

Hallaren says that publishers can create HTML-5 services to replace the purchasing buttons with a dedicated Web address that takes users to a direct link to the purchasing service on the Internet. If true, and both Kobo and The Financial Times apparently are building HTML5 versions of their apps specifically to take advantage of this, it could save publishers a great deal of money, at Apple’s expense.

HTML5 is a trend we’ve been following closely this week, with several developments from Adobe and Google, and Sprout, an HTML5 application platform, gained interest as an acquisition target. The programing language is gaining traction as connected devices grow in relevance, and it’s evident Apple and other platform owners want to leverage its evolving standards in every way possible.