somersault

Book publishing veteran Mike Shatzkin (@MikeShatzkin) says, “One of the most underappreciated realities of the book business is how hard it is for a retailer to manage an inventory of trade books.”

A bookstore’s inventory is its biggest investment. The performance of inventory — how many times it “turns” in a year and how successfully the store manages to buy what it needs without wasting investment (tying up cash) and incurring margin-destroying revenueless-costs (return freight, probably added to inbound freight, plus wasted labor shelving, removing, packing, and shipping) — is, by far, the single biggest determinant of whether a store succeeds commercially or fails.

As the shelf space for books being managed by retailers that accept the high cost of managing book inventory and commit to doing it effectively continues to decline, publishers need to understand that it will be really hard for non-book retailers to replace them.

Read this in full.

Download our white paper, “Tech, Trends, & Retail Success: See the Future and Act Now,” in which we detail the elements of creating extreme retail in-store experiences.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategically publish and market pbooks, ebooks, and audiobooks.

Learn about SomersaultSocial (@SomersaultHelp), our Web-based author online marketing education modules.

Add our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/SomersaultGroup) & Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/smrsault) to your Flipboard account on your iPad, iPhone, or Android. Or download our blog as an ebook to your ereader (http://goo.gl/3nTtN). 

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Book Discovery Sites tab.

HarperCollinsChristianPublishing, comprised of both Thomas Nelson, Inc. (@ThomasNelson) and Zondervan (@Zondervan), is now making its titles available through On Demand Books’ (@espressobook) growing Espresso Book Machine (EBM) “digital-to-print at retail” sales channel.

Tom Knight, HarperCollinsChristianPublishing senior vice president of sales, says, “The Espresso Book Machine will significantly enhance a customer’s in-store experience by giving bricks-and-mortar retailers the ability to offer an almost endless supply of books.”

The EBM is the only digital-to-print at-retail solution on the market today. With the push of a button, a title can be printed with a full-color cover, bound, and trimmed to any standard size. In a matter of minutes, it emerges from the EBM as a bookstore-quality paperback book, which the customer can pay for and carry out the store immediately.

Content from publishers is fed to the EBM via EspressNet, On Demand Books’ growing digital network of titles (currently numbering over 7 million). Much like an iTunes for books, EspressNet retrieves, encrypts, transmits, and catalogs books from a multitude of English and foreign language content providers, including public domain, in-copyright, and self-published titles. Through the SelfServe software, writers can format, design, edit, and upload their books for printing through the EBM, and for inclusion in EspressNet. SelfServe will soon also be able to convert print files to the ePub format suitable for ereaders.

Read this in full.

See the pdf news release.

See the pdf news release, “Penguin Titles Coming to an Espresso Book Machine Near You.”

Also see our blogposts tagged “Print on Demand” and “A New Publishing Ecosystem Emerges.”

Download our white paper, “Tech, Trends, & Retail Success: See the Future and Act Now,” in which we detail the elements of creating extreme retail in-store experiences.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategically publish and market pbooks, ebooks, and audiobooks.

Learn about SomersaultSocial (@SomersaultHelp), our Web-based author online marketing education modules.

Add our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/SomersaultGroup) & Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/smrsault) to your Flipboard account on your iPad, iPhone, or Android. Or download our blog as an ebook to your ereader (http://goo.gl/3nTtN). 

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Book Discovery Sites tab.

In a new survey of Americans’ attitudes and expectations for public libraries, the Pew Research Center’s (@pewresearch) Internet & American Life Project (@pewinternet) finds that many library patrons are eager to see libraries’ digital services expand, yet also feel that print books remain important in the digital age.

The following statistics pertain to Americans aged 16 and older:

·         80% say borrowing books is a “very important” service libraries provide.

·         80% say reference librarians are a “very important” service of libraries.

·         77% say free access to computers and the internet is a “very important” service of libraries.

·         Online research services allowing patrons to pose questions and get answers from librarians: 37% would “very likely” use an “ask a librarian” type of service, and another 36% say they would be “somewhat likely” to do so.

·         Apps-based access to library materials and programs: 35% of Americans ages 16 and older would “very likely” use that service and another 28% say they would be “somewhat likely” to do so.

·         Access to technology “petting zoos” to try out new devices: 35% would “very likely” use that service and another 34% say they would be “somewhat likely” to do so.

·         GPS-navigation apps to help patrons locate material inside library buildings: 34% would “very likely” use that service and another 28% say they would be “somewhat likely” to do so.

·         “Redbox”-style lending machines or kiosks located throughout the community where people can check out books, movies or music without having to go to the library itself: 33% would “very likely” use that service and another 30% say they would be “somewhat likely” to do so.

·         “Amazon”-style customized book/audio/video recommendation schemes that are based on patrons’ prior library behavior: 29% would “very likely” use that service and another 35% say they would be “somewhat likely” to do so.

·         Offering a broader selection of ebooks: 53% say libraries should “definitely do” this.

·         73% of library patrons in the past 12 months say they visit to browse the shelves for books or media.

Read this in full.

Read the full report (pdf).

See Publishers Weekly’s (@PublishersWkly) article, “Libraries: Good Value, Lousy Marketing.” And Salon’s (@Salon) “Bring back shushing librarians” by Laura Miller (@magiciansbook).

Also see our blogposts, “Libraries See Opening as Bookstores Close” and “The Digital Bookmobile,” and others tagged “Library.”

Download our white paper, “Tech, Trends, & Retail Success: See the Future and Act Now,” in which we detail the elements of creating extreme retail in-store experiences.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategically publish and market pbooks, ebooks, and audiobooks.

Learn about SomersaultSocial (@SomersaultHelp), our Web-based author online marketing education modules.

Add our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/SomersaultGroup) & Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/smrsault) to your Flipboard account on your iPad, iPhone, or Android. Or download our blog as an ebook to your ereader (http://goo.gl/3nTtN). 

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Book Discovery Sites tab.

Members of Somersault were pleased to give the keynote presentation Jan. 9 at the CBA Next 2013 (@ICRShow) event held in cooperation with AmericasMart Atlanta (@AmericasMartATL) in the Atlanta gift mart.

We distributed our white paper, “Tech, Trends, & Retail Success: See the Future and Act Now” and our Christian Bookstore Customer Satisfaction Survey. Both are available online.

We encouraged Christian retailers to brand themselves as more than sellers of product, but as experts in Christian publishing. And to declare their expertise by referring to their bookstore as a “Books Bistro” with “Publishing Einsteins,” so when a customer wants to learn about a Christian topic or write about one, the first expert advisor he or she should think of consulting is their store.

Christian Retailing (@ChristianRetail) covered our presentation:

Seventy percent of Christian store shoppers say they would buy an ebook at a Christian retail store, with many options now available to Christian market retailers, according to publishing strategy and services agency Somersault Group....

Creating an in-store experience that will draw traffic is critical. The panel urged Christian retailers to cultivate an atmosphere that promotes relaxation, provides real-time marketing and offers information openly that reassures customers in their purchase decisions. Stores were also encouraged to assign a staff member to event management and another to digital communication.

“Be the Christian hub of your community,” the panel told NEXT attendees. “Christian booksellers are no longer only in the bookselling business. You are in the community-building, personalized-service, outcome-based-solution-provider, experts-in-all-things-publishing-related and technology business with a spiritual emphasis.”

Read this in full.

Learn more about this retail report in the upcoming March issue of Christian Retailing.

Download our white paper, “Tech, Trends, & Retail Success: See the Future and Act Now,” in which we detail the elements of creating extreme retail in-store experiences.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategically publish and market pbooks, ebooks, and audiobooks.

Learn about SomersaultSocial (@SomersaultHelp), our Web-based author online marketing education modules.

Add our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/SomersaultGroup) & Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/smrsault) to your Flipboard account on your iPad, iPhone, or Android. Or download our blog as an ebook to your ereader (http://goo.gl/3nTtN). 

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Book Discovery Sites tab.

In the Los Angeles Times (@latimesbooks), Carolyn Kellogg (@paperhaus) reports that Circle City Books in Pittsboro, NC, “has just completed an eye-catching mural” of 48 huge, spine-out books along the outside of its store building.

See the list of titles and read this in full.

Also see The Bookshop Blog’s (@BookshopBlog), “Beautiful Mural at Circle City Books.”

And see the fun photo on our previous blogpost, “A Book Cover for an Eyesore.”

Download our white paper, “Tech, Trends, & Retail Success: See the Future and Act Now,” in which we detail the elements of creating extreme retail in-store experiences.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategically publish and market pbooks, ebooks, and audiobooks.

Learn about SomersaultSocial (@SomersaultHelp), our Web-based author online marketing education modules.

Add our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/SomersaultGroup) & Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/smrsault) to your Flipboard account on your iPad, iPhone, or Android. 

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Book Discovery Sites tab.

This article in The New York Times (@nytimesbusiness) says, “Reviews on Amazon are becoming attack weapons, intended to sink new books as soon as they are published.”

Books used to die by being ignored, but now they can be killed — and perhaps unjustly killed,” said Trevor Pinch, a Cornell sociologist who has studied Amazon reviews. “In theory, a very good book could be killed by a group of people for malicious reasons.”

...The retailer, like other sites that depend on customer reviews, has been faced with the problem of so-called sock puppets, those people secretly commissioned by an author to produce favorable notices. In recent months, Amazon has made efforts to remove reviews by those it deemed too close to the author, especially relatives. The issue of attack reviews, though, has received little attention....

Attack reviews are hard to police. It is difficult, if not impossible, to detect the difference between an authentic critical review and an author malevolently trying to bring down a colleague, or organized assaults by fans. Amazon’s extensive rules on reviewing offer little guidance on what is permissible in negative reviews and what is not....

Read this in full.

Download our white paper, “Tech, Trends, & Retail Success: See the Future and Act Now,” in which we detail the elements of creating extreme retail in-store experiences.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategically publish and market pbooks, ebooks, and audiobooks.

Learn about SomersaultSocial (@SomersaultHelp), our Web-based author online marketing education modules.

Add our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/SomersaultGroup) & Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/smrsault) to your Flipboard account on your iPad, iPhone, or Android. 

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Book Discovery Sites tab.

Christian Retailing (@ChristianRetail) reports David C Cook (@David_C_Cook) has launched a digital-first book line with The Most Important Thing Happening by Mark Steele (@steelehousemark), a writer for VeggieTales and president of Steelehouse Productions (@Steelehouse).

Cook's director of digital content Michael Covington (@m_covington) says,"By offering books initially in digital formats, we can be more creative in terms of how that content is packaged and distributed. Additionally, it's our aim to make many of our digital-first titles available in print via print-on-demand technology, so bookstores and readers wanting a bound copy should be able to place orders via Ingram or their favorite retailers, respectively."

Read this in full.

Cook also has a free ebook website: dccebooks.com.

Another Christian publisher with a digital-first line is Zondervan (@zondervan), with its ZondervanFirst (@ZondervanFirst).

Also see our previous blogposts “Mardel Acquires Espresso Book Machine; Zondervan Creates Direct to Digital Imprint; Alive Launches Bondfire” and “Bookselling Redefined by Kodak and On Demand Books Deal.”

Download our white paper, “Tech, Trends, & Retail Success: See the Future and Act Now,” in which we detail the elements of creating extreme retail in-store experiences.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategically publish and market pbooks, ebooks, and audiobooks.

Learn about SomersaultSocial (@SomersaultHelp) our Web-based author online marketing education modules.

Add our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/SomersaultGroup) & Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/smrsault) to your Flipboard account on your iPad, iPhone, or Android. 

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Book Discovery Sites tab.

The online business journal Knowledge@Wharton (@knowledgwharton) scrutinizes the possible future of Barnes & Noble (@BNBuzz), which operates 689 bookstores in 50 states and 674 college bookstores.

The chain is caught between the need to bolster its in-store experience, and the drive to keep up in an ever-growing tablet market as readers increasingly turn away from printed books.

Barbara Kahn, director of the Jay H. Baker Retailing Center (@whartonretail) says Barnes & Noble's merchandising isn't giving consumers much of a reason to visit stores. "The best retailers are experiential," she says. "Online retailers can provide big assortments and better prices. If a retailer focuses on price and category, online [retailers] will always win. Barnes & Noble has to ... do what online can't do -- social interaction, physical presence, and experience."

...One of Barnes & Noble's core assets may be the people on its sales floor. "The more the retailer can provide service with a face on it and provide amenities, the better chance it has of surviving," says Wharton management professor Daniel Raff. "You can create a destination for merchandise and prices, but service and a response to your desires will get you ambiance.... If Barnes & Noble is just about buying books, customers can get that online. But what if it can also provide customers with insights from, and conversations with, people who understand the experience? Barnes & Noble has to figure out what makes it a good retailer and play to its strengths."

Read this in full.

In an interview in The Wall Street Journal ("B&N Aims To Whittle Its Stores For Years"), CEO Mitchell Klipper says that, while B&N still sees growth left in the physical book business, it plans to close about 1/3 of its stores over the next decade, bringing the total remaining shops to around 450 to 500. Klipper says less than 20 of B&N's total retail stores are money losers. Overall, the retail stores still make solid profits; enough to offset losses from the Nook business.

Be sure to download our white paper, “Tech, Trends, & Retail Success: See the Future and Act Now,” in which we explain how 7 Cs – Casual, Current, Convenient, Communal, Collective, Convivial, Confident – can help retailers create an extreme in-store experience for customers.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategically publish and market pbooks, ebooks, and audiobooks.

Learn about SomersaultSocial (@SomersaultHelp) our Web-based author online marketing education modules.

Add our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/SomersaultGroup) & Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/smrsault) to your Flipboard account on your iPad, iPhone, or Android. 

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Book Discovery Sites tab.

In the above video, Athena Dean of BookJolt (@BookJolt) explains the concept behind the website BookJolt, a new channel of book discovery and distribution. She says ebooks are offered for free http://bookjolt.com/hey-authors/ while the author shares in revenue made through banner advertising in BookJolt’s “free-embeddable-viral-book-reader-widget.”

See the website.

Download our white paper, “Tech, Trends, & Retail Success: See the Future and Act Now,” in which we detail the elements of creating extreme retail in-store experiences.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategically publish and market pbooks, ebooks, and audiobooks.

Learn about SomersaultSocial (@SomersaultHelp) our Web-based author online marketing education modules.

Add our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/SomersaultGroup) & Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/smrsault) to your Flipboard account on your iPad, iPhone, or Android. 

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Book Discovery Sites tab.

Leadership Journal (@Leadership_Jnl) has selected 10 books as the best of 2012 to nurture ministry leaders’ souls while equipping them for more effective ministry.

The Leader’s Inner Life category:

·         Pastoral Graces: Reflections on the Care of Souls by Lee Eclov (Moody)

·         Sifted: Pursuing Growth through Trials, Challenges, and Disappointments by Wayne Cordeiro (@waynecordeiro) (Zondervan)

·         The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg (@cduhigg) (Random House)

·         Adventures in Churchland: Finding Jesus in the Mess of Organized Religion by Dan Kimball (@DanKimball) (Zondervan)

·         Dangerous Calling: The Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry by Paul Tripp (@PaulTripp) (Crossway)

The Leader's Outer Life category:

·         Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City by Tim Keller (Zondervan)

·         Deep & Wide: Creating Churches Unchurched People Love to Attend by Andy Stanley (@AndyStanley) (Zondervan)

·         Pursuing God's Will Together: A Discernment Practice for Leadership Groups by Ruth Haley Barton (@TransformingCnt) (IVP)

·         Your Church Is Too Safe: Why Following Christ Turns the World Upside-Down by Mark Buchanan (Zondervan)

·         Vision: Lost & Found: The Story of a Church That Got Stuck but Didn't Stay There by Tim Stevens (@timastevens) (Exponential)

Read this in full.

Also see our previous blogpost: “The 2013 Christianity Today Book Awards.”

Download our white paper, “Tech, Trends, & Retail Success: See the Future and Act Now,” in which we detail the elements of creating extreme retail in-store experiences.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategically publish and market pbooks, ebooks, and audiobooks.

Learn about SomersaultSocial, our Web-based author online marketing education modules.

Add our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/SomersaultGroup) & Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/smrsault) to your Flipboard account on your iPad, iPhone, or Android. 

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.