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According to a study done by Grey Matter Research & Consulting of Phoenix, AZ, Millennials (18-29 year olds) “are a unique generation in our country’s recent history, in that their religious beliefs are fairly typical, yet their knowledge, experience, and willingness to act on or commit seriously to those beliefs lags other generations. They are not antagonistic toward religious faith, but often have a serious apathy or latency related to their faith.” Here are more excerpts from the report:

Research has long shown that during the transition from teen years to adulthood (from 16 or 17 through the early 20s), Americans have historically tended to move away from religious participation, then often started returning as they mature and have children of their own. What our research suggests is that for Millennials, this transition away from church started happening earlier than it did for other generational groups – as early as junior high school, rather than during the college age years. We hear so much that “kids grow up sooner these days” – apparently this extends to religious participation as well.

Looking back on their religious attendance prior to age 18, Millennials are less likely than other adults to say their childhood involvement made them much more interested in religion as an adult, or to feel it had a highly positive influence on their life today. In addition, Millennials are somewhat less likely to feel their childhood attendance has given them a good moral foundation, provided important religious knowledge, or helped them prepare for life as an adult, according to our research.

• Only 65% of Millennials say their religious faith is very important in their life today, compared to 71% of Generation X, 78% of Boomers, and 80% of Silents
• Just 35% of Millennials agree strongly that they have made a personal commitment to Jesus Christ that is still important in their life today, compared to 41% of Generation X, 51% of Boomers, and 54% of Silents
• Only 26% of Millennials agree strongly that eternal salvation is possible through God’s grace alone; that nothing we do can earn salvation – compared to 31% among Generation X, 32% among Boomers, and 40% among Silents

We find no difference between Millennials and other age groups on things such as the belief that:

• The Bible is the written word of God and is totally accurate in all that it teaches
• They, personally, have a responsibility to tell other people about their religious beliefs
• Jesus was sinless when he lived on earth
• There is such a thing as sin
• God is the omniscient, omnipotent, perfect ruler of the universe

Notice that on issues of belief, Millennials are often quite similar to other age groups. It’s on the issues of importance of their religious faith, on commitment to Jesus Christ, on the absolutism of reliance on grace, and on active affiliation with a religious group or tradition, that they lag other generational groups.

The beliefs are there, but often not in a way that directs Millennials to behave differently or be strongly committed to those beliefs. Religious belief tends to be about as present in Millennials as it is in other age groups, but it is more likely to be latent than active. Religion lives more in the background than in the foreground. It is somewhat more theoretical than real.

Read the study (pdf) in full.

Based on this research, how can publishers, agents, and authors generate content that will inspire Millennials to act on their beliefs? Share your thoughts and let’s discuss.

Chris Ferebee (@caferebee) of Yates & Yates (@yatesandyates) literary agency writes about confusion some published authors have when it comes to trademarks. He asks

Do you know who owns the title to your book? Do you know who owns the right to the name of your quirky, one of a kind character? Do you know who has the ability to license the name of your book, or character name, or any other potential trademark along with the various commercial, merchandising, dramatic and other rights to all of the folks who will come calling after you’ve enjoyed commercial success? Think movie studios for sure, but what about the video game industry? What about graphic novel adaptations? Heard of the new Spider-Man show on Broadway? Who knows, maybe even someone will want to license your character for a lunchbox. Are you, as the author, the one who these folks should be talking to, or is it your publisher?

Read this in full.

Give us your comments on how you strategically think about trademarks.

Editor of PW Religion BookLine Lynn Garrett (@LynniGarrett) reports

The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (@ECPA) has debuted a new consumer-oriented website. ChristianBookExpo.com (@ChristianBkExpo) is the new home for ECPA’s bestseller lists, list of Christian Book Award and sales award winners, and more than 200 author interviews and book trailers. Michael Covington (@m_covington), ECPA information and education director, says the top reason people visit the ECPA website is its bestseller list. So the trade group decided to re-organize its online resources to “cross-pollinate” programs and raise consumer awareness of authors and titles. www.ecpa.org will function as a social networking site for professionals in the Christian publishing community. That site will also be the home in the future of online industry forums, Covington says.

The @ChristianBkExpo Twitter stream is included in the Publishing tab of the SomersaultNOW dashboard.

What are your thoughts about the new ChristianBookExpo.com?

Somersault’s brand & marketing strategist, John Sawyer (@johnasawyer), recommends as reading to ponder Siegel+Gale's (@SiegelGale) just announced first annual Global Brand Simplicity Index™. It answers in the affirmative the question “Does simplicity matter?” The survey of more than 6,000 consumers across 7 countries in North America, Europe, the Middle East, and Asia uncovers the points of complexity and simplicity in people's lives. It also explores the emotional and economic value people place on having a more simplified experience with brands in different industries.

The Index generates a rating of each brand on the simplicity/complexity of their interactions and communications relative to their industry peers. It lists the following implications from the findings:

• Communicate directly, clearly, and without jargon
• Save consumers’ time with increased convenience and accessibility
• Reduce consumers’ stress by providing savings/value
• Make it easy for consumers to use and interact with your brand
• Enable consumers to get more from life: deeper relationships, easygoing lifestyles

Read the PDF report.

We hope you’re finding our online dashboard for publishing and marketing professionals, SomersaultNOW (http://netvibes.com/somersault), to be useful in staying current with the latest important news and information relating to your work. (Read our announcement about SomersaultNOW.)

We created the dashboard tabs to reflect Somersault's focus on book publishing, editorial oversight, innovation, leadership, branding, marketing/PR, social media, and research for the publishing community. We also included a tab to quickly read breaking religion news stories, another tab to help you monitor your brand every day, and another with links to sites for reading on your mobile device.

One of Somersault’s values is to be flexible and nimble. We’re keeping our eye to the horizon to anticipate the next change-wave coming. So we’ve added to the dashboard the new tab “Future,” where articles by futurists can be read as a way to help you prepare for future technology, future cultural norms, future reading habits, etc., that will impact your publishing strategies and sustainable growth. We hope you’ll benefit from it.

Book publishing can be a guessing game. Publishers are presented daily with hundreds of manuscripts from enthusiastic authors who believe theirs will be the most sought-after book of the century. Acquisition editors and publishers have to decide which manuscript has bestselling potential from the many that don’t.

We’d like to hear from you. What do you consider to be the best criteria for a book to reach the bestseller stratosphere? Write your ideas as a comment below and let us know. We plan to compile them into a list for a future post (along with our own ideas). Let the comments begin!

Here’s insight into buying behavior. According to a new study reported in TIME (@TIME), people whose surnames start with letters late in the alphabet may be the fastest to buy. What could possibly explain this weird phenomenon, which the study authors dubbed "the last-name effect"? The research didn't provide a definitive reason, but the authors offer an intriguing theory.

Since America's obsession with alphabetical order often forces the Zs to the back of the line in childhood, they suffer. They were always the last to get lunch in the cafeteria — sorry, Young, the other kids bought all the chocolate milk again — and had to beg for the teacher's attention from the back of the classroom. So later in life, when the Zs — and even onetime Zs who became As through marriage — see an item they really like for sale or are offered a deal, they jump on it, afraid that supplies won't last. The chocolate milk is finally in front of them. So they grab it.

What implications would this have for your brand?

Read this article in full.

Interested in a free website that collects in one location the links and RSS article and news feeds from more than 300 media sources written for publishing, editing, and marketing professionals, and provides multiple services for monitoring a brand’s online word-of-mouth? Created by international publishing strategy and services agency Somersault Group™ (http://somersaultgroup.com) especially for publishing executives and content creators, the SomersaultNOW dashboard (http://netvibes.com/somersault) is intended to be used as an Internet start-up page, browser homepage, bookmarked favorite, or mobile portal.

You can use the dashboard as is, or customize it for your personal needs by registering a free account with Netvibes.

==> If you find this free online dashboard useful, please tell others about it on your blog, in your tweets, on your Facebook updates, by email, etc. Please include the hashtag #SomersaultNOW in your tweets. Here's a suggested tweet you may want to use: Check out the new #SomersaultNOW free Web dashboard created for #publishing & #marketing professionals http://bit.ly/fLYNYe .<==

The site contains news feeds and links divided into 9 tabbed categories: Publishing, Editing, Innovation, Leadership, Branding, Marketing/PR, Social Media/Word-of-Mouth, Research, and Religion News. Two additional tabbed sections consist of resources to assist users who want to monitor their brands’ current online and social media buzz, and selected links to publishing and marketing content designed to be read on mobile devices using Wi-Fi connections.

Among the daily RSS feeds on the SomersaultNOW dashboard are those from such media as Publishers Weekly, The New York Times bestseller lists, Shelf Awareness, American Booksellers Association, CBA bestseller lists, ECPA, The Association of American Publishers, Digital Book World, mediabistro.com, and Seth Godin’s blog. Direct links are included to websites like BookWire.com, Chicago Manual of Style Online, and Common Errors in English Usage. The dashboard even has the daily edition of the Dilbert comic strip, and words-of-the-day from Oxford English Dictionary, Dictionary.com, and Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

The dashboard’s “Monitor Your Brand” tab offers the ability to conduct real-time Twitter searches as well as back-tweet and hashtag searches, Addict-o-matic and BoardTracker searches, image and video searches, and services including MonitorThis, Social Media Fire Hose, Google Alerts, and TweetBeep.

“We created the SomersaultNOW dashboard to help users leverage the swiftly shifting landscape of today’s publishing world by staying informed about it,” says Jonathan Petersen, Somersault’s social media evangelist. “Our dashboard assembles quickly accessible collective knowledge in one convenient place.”

Somersault Group™ (Somersault™) is a partner-managed LLC with offices in downtown Grand Rapids, Michigan. The company’s purpose is to enable publishers, agents, ministry 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. For more information, visit somersaultgroup.com.

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.