somersault

It’s only the occasional billboard that stands out from the crowd because of its superior creativity. Fast Company’s Co.Design (@fastcodesign) singles one out. Located at the USA-Canada border near Vancouver, BC, its objective is to advertise the wonderful, clean air of Blaine, WA. It was designed by the Seattle art and architecture firm Lead Pencil Studio, whose Daniel Mihalyo sheds light on the concept:

Borrowing the effectiveness of billboards to redirect attention away from the landscape...this permanently open aperture between nations works to frame nothing more than a clear view of the changing atmospheric conditions beyond.

Read the article in full and think of innovative ways to communicate your brand today.

In a blog post on Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly), Barbara Vey expresses her frustration at authors who don’t keep their websites updated or worse, don’t have a site at all. She says, “To me, being an author is a business and as a business you need people to see the product. What’s available and what’s coming up at the very least.” She says the site doesn’t have to be complicated. “Just something that says I take my job seriously and here’s why you should read my work.”

The next worse thing is an author having a website that’s not updated. I’m embarrassed for them when I see their latest release showing 2003 when I know they’ve written more since then.  I’m not saying to blog something everyday or even update daily, but once a month would be nice. Just a little something to say, “Hey, I’m still here and working hard on getting out my next exciting book.”...[E]ven saying what they’re reading not only updates the web page, it also helps out a fellow writer.

An even easier way is to attach a Twitter feed box. That way, every time you Tweet something it shows up on your website. Instant updating and you only had to type 140 characters (or less).

Read what else she says.

On TechCrunch (@TechCrunch), Sarah Lacy writes how Amazon is “increasingly offering small features here and there that taken together may start to make a traditional publisher a lot less necessary for authors.”

Amazon recently integrated with Facebook to allow people with Amazon accounts to “like” books. This may seem laughably obvious or passe, but with so much inventory on Amazon, having a high vanity number like “likes” could actually help move sales. As is, the number of reviews makes a huge difference in purchase conversion. Likes is a far easier way to get people to interact with a title and spread it around the Web.

In addition, Amazon’s author pages have the basic social networking features made super easy. For instance you can import your existing blog via RSS and simply click thumbnails of books with your name to select the titles you’ve actually written. It uses your consumer Amazon account to vet that you are really who you say you are, and within minutes, all of the data, reviews and sales figures of your books are imported into your account.

Read this article in full.

It appears iPad users are marking content during the day and consuming it later when they can lean back and actually read. According to Read it Later (@readitlater), from a study of 100 million articles saved using its service, people use browsing and bookmarking to time-shift the consumption of content to whatever would be prime time for them (typically 6am breakfast, 9am commute, 5-6pm commute, or 8-10pm couch time, the latter being the most prevalent).

When a reader is given a choice about how to consume their content, a major shift in behavior occurs. They no longer consume the majority of their content during the day, on their computer. Instead they shift that content to prime time and onto a device better suited for consumption.

Initially, it appears that the devices users prefer for reading are mobile devices, most notably the iPad. It’s the iPad leading the jailbreak from consuming content in our desk chairs.

Read the article in full.

Fast Company’s Co.Design (@fastcodesign) has an article that describes Nike's attention to visual branding techniques. "Oregon is one of the fastest [college football] teams in the nation, and we wanted them to look fast," says Todd Van Horn, Nike's top football uniform designer. So Nike crafted the look accordingly.

Visually, the colorway of the uniforms is meant to bring your eyes to the fastest moving parts of the player's bodies -- the hands, and in particular the shins, which move twice as fast as the thighs do while running. The bright yellow socks, which blended seamlessly into the cleats, drew attention to that fact.

Read the article in full and think how the principles used in this situation might apply to your brand.

Digital Book World (@DigiBookWorld) is celebrating the 40th anniversary of ebooks with the 1st annual Publishing Innovation Awards. The aim is to encourage the creation and distribution of the next phase in ebooks and book apps.

See the nominated titles and publishers for this award.

Michael Hyatt (@MichaelHyatt), Chairman & CEO of Thomas Nelson Publishers, believes we should expect to see the following in ebooks this coming year:

1. Bundled Books.

2. Social Reading.

3. eBook Clubs.

4. e-First Publishing.

5. Free eReaders.

6. Monetization Experiments.

Read his blog post in full.

In our digital age of Kindles, Nooks, iPads, and Kobos, some people still relish the fine art of the bound printed book; they simply may not want to read it! An article in The New York Times tells the tale of using leatherbound books more for decorative wallpaper than for intellectual expansion. It says, “The printed bound book has been given a stay of execution by an unlikely source: the design community.” Here’s an excerpt:

Jeffrey Collé, a builder of vast Hamptons estates that mimic turn-of-the-century designs, wouldn’t think of omitting a library from one of his creations. A 16,800-square-foot Shingle-style house on 42 acres in Water Mill, N.Y., comes with a $29.995-million price tag and a library Mr. Collé had built from French chalked quarter-sawn oak; with about 150 feet of shelf space, there is room for more than 1,000 books.

It’s up to the buyers or their decorator to fill that space, said Mr. Collé, who has collaborated with Bennett Weinstock, a Philadelphia decorator known for his English interiors, on some of his libraries. Mr. Weinstock still shops in London to find just the right leatherbound look, he said. “Some people will insist that they be in English, because they want them to look as if they could read the books,” Mr. Weinstock said. “Others don’t care what language the books are in as long as the bindings are beautiful.”

Even a modernist builder like Steve Hermann in Los Angeles, who makes sleek multimillion-dollar houses for buyers like Christina Aguilera, includes acres of shelves in his high-end spec houses. Mr. Hermann designed a glassy Neutra-like house with a 60-by-14-foot shelving system, which has room for 4,000 books, he said.

“But who has 4,000 books?” he said. “I always stage my houses, so it was up to me to fill the shelves.” He ordered 2,000 white-wrapped books from Mr. Wine and deployed them in tidy, horizontal stacks (watch for the white-wrapped book to become this year’s version of the deer head).

Read the article in full.

USA TODAY (@USATODAY) reports how ebook sales have surged, assumedly due to all the ereaders people received for Christmas. Here’s an excerpt:

USA TODAY's Best-Selling Books list, to be published Thursday, will show digital's new popularity: Ebook versions of the top six books outsold the print versions last week. And of the top 50, 19 had higher ebook than print sales.

It's the first time the top-50 list has had more than two titles in which the e-version outsold print.

Read the full article.

This article in the Atlantic (@TheAtlantic) takes a unique look at the role of e-readers in the expression of one’s faith. Here’s an excerpt:

Many observant Jews do not operate lights, computers, mobile phones, or other electrical appliances from sundown on Friday until three stars appear in the night sky on Saturday. They abstain from these activities because, over the last century, rabbinic authorities have compared electricity use to various forms of work prohibited on the Sabbath by the Bible and post-biblical rabbinic literature, including lighting a fire and building. The difficulty of interpreting the Bible's original intent and applying it to modern technology has rendered electricity use on the Sabbath one of the more contentious topics in Jewish law.

E-readers are problematic not only because they are electronic but also because some rabbis consider turning pages on the device - which causes words to dissolve and then resurface - an act of writing, also forbidden on the Sabbath.

Read this article in full.