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Publishers, authors, booksellers, and agents are crowded together this week attending the annual BEA (@BookExpoAmerica) (#BEA, #BEA11, #BookExpo) convention in New York City. Read the latest news:

• Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly)
• The Washington Post (@washingtonpost)
• Google News (@googlenews)

Book Business (@bookbusinessmag) reports “preliminary results from an ambitious new book publishing industry survey show growth in both revenues and units sold across the contemporary book publishing landscape.” The "BookStats" survey shows

Growth was seen for publishers of all sizes with medium- and small-sized publishers leading the way. Over 50% of the publishers surveyed were enjoying growth, Kelly Gallagher, vice president of publishing services at RR Bowker, said.

Data is broken down by content categories (trade fiction and non-fiction, juvenile, religious, K-12, higher education, professional and scholarly); formats (physical and non-physical delivery platforms); and distribution channel.

Not surprisingly, hardcover and softcover markets have seen declines, while digital formats such as e-books and apps are growing.

Adult fiction is "a stalwart category" enjoying healthy growth, as are all categories of juvenile titles, Gallagher said. Nonfiction adult, however is "struggling."

While chain bookstores are registering predicable declines, independent bookstores are holding their own, showing stable sales or just slight declines. "I think it's a great story line that the independents are showing some resiliency," Gallagher said.

Book Business also reports on the International Digital Publishing Forum conference at BEA about “surprising new information on consumer and student ebook reading habits.

Of consumers surveyed in January 2011, 77.3% are "satisfied" or "highly satisfied" with the price of ebooks.... The feature sets most desired in ebooks are affordability (seen by 75% of respondents as "very important"), followed by readability, ease of acquisition, portability (all over 70%) and speed (over 60%). Searchability and eco-friendliness were important to 35% of respondents, though the later is growing as a factor.

Among reading devices, consumers are most satisfied with Amazon's Kindle (75%) followed by the Nook (70%) and iPad (60%).

Laura Hazard Owen (@laurahazardowen) reports on paidContent (@paidContent) about Barnes & Noble announcing a new WiFi-only Nook and Amazon responding with a cheaper 3G edition of the Kindle.

And Shelf Awareness (@ShelfAwareness) covered the American Booksellers Association's annual meeting, where CEO Oren Teicher called for new business models for the trade; he

dispensed with the usual CEO report reviewing the association's activities of the past year and instead gave a wide-ranging talk outlining how booksellers and publishers "can work more closely together in the common goal of selling more books" and maintaining bricks-and-mortar bookstores' role as "the essential showroom in ensuring the sales of a broad spectrum of titles," a browsing experience no one else can offer.

Also read CBA's coverage, "Ebooks command BEA spotlight, but stores still needed, many say." Then read our wrap-up blog post "BEA, Blog World Expo NY, & BookBloggerCon."

A story in the Los Angeles Times (@latimestech) features Robert Kiyosaki, who’s written more than a dozen titles under his "Rich Dad" brand of financial education books, which together have sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. His new book Unfair Advantage released in stores April 12. It’s also available as an ebook. But the signed ebook version will only be available May 26 during a live chat streamed on the author's Facebook page. The special edition of the book will be available only for Amazon Kindle ereaders and will sell for $9.99.

The new version differs from the standard copy by offering a new page with a digital copy of the author's autograph, as well as a bonus chapter about the "corruption of capitalism" and extra photos.

As soon as the streamed chat is done, the special edition of the book will no longer be available for sale, says Shane Caniglia, vice president of the Rich Dad Operating Co., which hosts financial education seminars focused on the advice published in the "Rich Dad" books.

Read this in full.

Also see our April 28 blog post, “How Authors Can Autograph Their eBooks.”

What are your thoughts about digitally autographing ebook editions?

Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) reports “the number of books produced by traditional publishers rose 5% in 2010, to a projected 316,480, according to preliminary figures released from R. R. Bowker (@Bowker). That number, however, is dwarfed by the growth in output of nontraditional titles, which jumped 169% to 2,766,260. As Bowker notes, the majority of nontraditional titles consists largely of print-on-demand editions of public domain titles. Self-published titles are also included in the figure. Based on the preliminary figures, the combination of traditional and nontraditional books totaled a projected 3,092,740 in 2010, up 132% from 2010.

The Religion category of publishing ranked 5th overall in 2010, behind Fiction, Juveniles, Sociology/Economics, and Science.

Since 2002, the production of traditional books has increased 47%, while nontraditional titles have risen 8,460%.

Read the Bowker news release.

Another report, this one by the AAP (@AmericanPublish), says ebook sales increased 169% in the first two months of 2011 and 146% in March (to $69 million), bringing the total sales for the first quarter of 2011 to $233 million. Religion ebook sales were up 27% in March and up 14% for the quarter. Digital audiobook sales rose 9% in the quarter. Read the Publishers Weekly article.

And Amazon (@amazon) just announced it now sells more Kindle (@AmazonKindle) ebooks than pbooks – paperback and hardcover – combined. Since April it’s sold 105 Kindle editions for every 100 print books. Read the PW article.

This article by Laura Hazard Owen (@laurahazardowen) on paidContent.org (@paidContent) says a company called Enthrill Entertainment Inc. (@Enthrill) plans to partner with bookstores to sell “physical” copies of ebooks in brick-and-mortar bookstores.

Enthrill’s model will allow bookstore to sell physical cards with an image of the book’s cover on one side and a QR code (which provides access to extras like sample chapters and trailers) and download code on the other side. After consumers purchase the card, they go to Enthrill’s website and use their code to download the book as a PDF or EPUB file, which is readable on any device. If they then download other titles as well, those sales are credited back to the bookstore where the customer made his or her original purchase.

Read the article in full.

Read Enthrill’s news release (pdf).

Enthrill’s explanatory video above looks much like Zondervan’s (@zondervan) Symtio (@Symtio) business model (see video below) when it was first launched in 2008, but then was divided in two in 2010, with the online portion sold to LibreDigital (@LibreDigital) and the in-store portion discontinued (see Christian Retailing‘s (@ChristianRetail) “Zondervan suspends, sells Symtio ebook program”).

Also see our Feb. 10 blog post “Is there hope for small bookstores in a digital age?”.

Do you tend to read at least one review of a book before purchasing it?

Web consultant, blogger, and author Tim Challies (@challies) surveyed his readers to find out where they buy Christian books and why they buy the books where they do. More than 1,800 people completed the survey; 67% of the respondents were male; 82% lived in the USA; 88% identified themselves as Reformed in theology. His conclusions:

First, Christian bookstores are barely competing with one another; they are competing together against Amazon. Even in a relatively niche market Amazon is dominant. Of course books are popular and even a small share of the market is significant, so those Christian bookstores can still make a go of it. But they need to fight this perception that Amazon offers the best prices.

Second, if we are truly committed to good prices, we should shop carefully and compare pricing before hitting the “checkout” button at Amazon. Unless there are other reasons to buy from Amazon (we are Prime members; we want to buy other items at the same time), we should look carefully at the Christian e-commerce stores to see if they offer better pricing.

Third, Christian bookstores need to maintain (or increase) their commitment to ebooks. The market is heading in that direction and the stores will need to be certain that they do not miss their opportunity. The big challenge, of course, is that Kindle owners will almost always get their books from Amazon; the most popular device has pretty much guaranteed that you will also use it to buy your books.

See all the charts in full.

Alberto Vitale was running Bantam Books, the world leader in paperbacks, when the Newhouse family recruited him to become the COO of Random House (@atrandom). In that role, and later as the CEO of one of the world’s top publishing firms, Vitale oversaw huge changes in the publishing industry. In this interview with Stephen J. Kobrin, publisher and executive director of Wharton Digital Press and Knowledge@Wharton (@knowledgwharton), Vitale discusses the rise of digital publishing, the future of bookstores, and the globalization of copyright, among other issues. Among his statements:

Digital technology may allow a lot of individual authors to self-publish. That's the power of digital technology, of the Internet. But still, the role of the publisher will continue [to be] as strong as before. You still have to figure out which book you want to publish. And, how do you want to publish it? There are obvious synergies between paper and digital [media]....

Absolutely [bookstores will survive]. However, they're going to undergo major changes. Three [or] five years from now, up to 70% of the space in [big box bookstores, such as Barnes & Noble] may be dedicated to other products. It makes sense. You have the universe that is digitalized now. You don't need these huge stores anymore....

Everybody's online now. The access to information is tremendously enhanced. But remember, the publishing model will change. And the product will change. The prices of hard cover books are now still $27.95, $26.95, which I find ridiculous. They cannot possibly make ends meet with those prices. They are going to grow to $36.95, $46.95. But the reader will have a much better product to purchase. Better paper, better type, better binding. And so, you will have a book to cherish....

Read the transcript in full, listen to the audio, and watch the video.

Do you agree with his views? Post your comments below.

An article in The New York Times (@NYTimes) describes the solution for authors who want to sign their book on someone’s ereader.  Autography LLC is a media technology firm in St Petersburg, Florida with a patent-pending method for inserting an autograph or other salutation into an ebook. This personalization can take place at the time of purchase or any time afterwards.

Here’s how an Autography eBook “signing” will work: a reader poses with the author for a photograph, which can be taken with an iPad camera or an external camera. The image immediately appears on the author’s iPad (if it’s shot with an external camera, it’s sent to the iPad via Bluetooth). Then the author uses a stylus to scrawl a digital message below the photo. When finished, the author taps a button on the iPad that sends the fan an email with a link to the image, which can then be downloaded into the ebook....

[W]ithin the year consumers should expect to see a variety of advances in digital signing, including ebooks that are sold with blank pages for that purpose. Some devices already have their own solutions, like Sony’s Reader, which enables authors to use a stylus to sign a page on its screen.

Read the article in full.

Four in 10 US consumers interact with retailers through social networking sites, according to a new survey from Deloitte (@DeloitteBA). Data from the 2011 Spring Consumer Pulse Survey (pdf) also indicate out of this consumer subset, 63% interact to find out about promotions and 56% browse products on retailer social networking pages. In addition, 38% of shoppers who interact with retailers through social networking sites review recommendations. And 43% of smartphone owners surveyed say they've used devices in stores to assist in their shopping.

Read the article in full.

These statistics reinforce the strategy of using QR codes on product packaging or in-store merchandising to communicate with consumers. But how you do it makes all the difference. In his MobileInsider column, Steve Smith critiques brands’ mobile marketing from a real-world perspective in the article Down the QR Code Rabbit Hole.

[I pull out my phone] in the aisles of Barnes and Noble [to click a QR code:] a Microsoft Tag was on back of an historical thriller Stardust that looked intriguing. Again, it kicked me over to a very attractive trailer — that wanted to go on for 7 minutes. Seven minutes! “Stop that,” my fiancée said. “Would you bring a TV to watch in the middle of a bookstore?” Worse, am I really going to sit in a bookstore and watch a 7-minute video in order to find out what the book is about?

Read this article in full.

You’ll also want to read The New York Times article, “Retailers Retool Sites to Ease Mobile Shopping.”

Let Somersault help you create an effective mobile strategy for your brand.

According to a study conducted in March by OnCampus Research (@CampusResearch), the research division of the National Association of College Stores, college students continue to increase their usage of e-readers, but most still prefer print textbooks. The survey of 655 students finds a 6% increase in ebook purchases in March compared to a study conducted in October, and more students are reading materials on dedicated reading devices while fewer are using laptops or netbooks. While only 15% of students say they own an e-reader, 39% report they use one, up from 19% in the October study. The number of students owning a dedicated reader in October was 8%.

Of those now owning a digital e-reader, the Amazon Kindle was the most popular, with 52% of college students owning one, compared to 32% five months ago. Other top e-reader devices included Barnes & Noble’s Nook (21%), Apple iPhone (17%), and Apple iPad (10%).

Students interested in purchasing a new e-reader are most interested in the iPad and Kindle (both 27%), followed by the Nook.

Print textbooks continue as the preferred media option among this demographic. Fully 75% of the college students in the March 2011 survey said that, if the choice was entirely theirs, they would select a print textbook. This is similar to the findings of the October 2010 e-reader survey, as well as one done in the fall of 2008.

Read the news release.

Grand Rapids, MI (Apr. 1, 2011) – International publishing strategy and services agency Somersault Group™ (http://somersaultgroup.com) (@smrsault) announces it has purchased the naming rights to the International Christian Retail Show (ICRS) (http://www.christianretailshow.com) (@ICRShow), being held this year July 10-13 in Atlanta, GA.

The 5-year deal marks the first change in name for the 61-year-old conference since it became ICRS in 2005. Beginning this year it will be called Somersault International Christian Retail Show (SICRS).

“There’s no truth to the rumor that the pronunciation of the acronym is ‘sickers,’” says Jonathan Petersen, Somersault word-of-mouth evangelist. “It’s pronounced ‘sycrus,’ which is ancient Greek for ‘to buy.’”

In keeping with previous CBA initiatives, such as More from the Core and “What Goes Into the Mind Comes Out in a Life”™, the convention name change is intended to inject energy and focus into the Christian retail sector.

“SICRS is the opportunity for Christian retailers from around the world to join together and learn from each other,” says Nautida Konventsiooni, chair of the annual convention. She says it’s also a time when retailers can button-hole publishers about the crazy decisions they’ve made in the previous year.

“I’m pumped about the new SICRS name,” says Artificielle Nom, owner of the 50,000 square foot Nom de Plume independent Christian store in Dighton, NM. “It’s going to rejuvenate the entire industry!”

Included in the name change deal is the agreement to locate all Christian “schtick” products to a far corner of the exhibit hall and make certain to direct all media reporters covering the convention away from that area.

About Somersault

Somersault Group™ (Somersault™) is a partner-managed LLC with offices in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA. The company’s purpose is to enable publishers, agents, ministries, organizations, and Christian authors to quickly leverage rapid changes in communication technology, emphasize excellence in branding and marketing communication for an author’s business development, and extend the highest editorial standards to achieve the goal of helping people experience God’s kingdom. Somersault’s mission statement: to change lives by connecting inspirational content creators with readers using exceptional creativity, right-now technology, and old-fashioned personal care. To that end, Somersault has created SomersaultNOW, the online dashboard to keep publishing and marketing professionals informed. For more information about Somersault, visit somersaultgroup.com.