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Google Authorship is a service to help you increase the chances of raising your blog’s or website’s ranking in a Google search. By creating and maintaining a Google+ account, an author’s name is tied to all blog posts, articles, and products published under their name. When an author is “searched,” Google will list all the posts, articles, and titles associated with that author. An author photo will also appear that links back to the Google+ account.

Search Engine Land (@sengineland) says, “If a user returns to the search results (after reading an author-tagged search result) for a certain period of time, Google will add three additional links to similar articles from the same author below the originally clicked link.”

Read this in full.

On SEOmoz (@SEOmoz), Jeff Sauer says, “The sooner that you connect Google+ authorship to a new domain, the sooner you will be indexed.”

Read this in full.

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

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.

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.

Alexander Mayor, digital producer at Papercasting (@papercasting), explains his new book service in this article for The Literary Platform (@TheLitPlatform). He says ‘papercasting’ aims to create new hybrid media trailers for books that people can consume on their smartphones, tablets, laptops, or desktops.

For a new generation of readers, music fans, and film lovers, the initial experience of these cultural works is increasingly not a retail space or publishing house but a piece of personal technology – the shop is in your pocket or inside your laptop. Our time is increasingly spent in the company of devices, not books and records. Thus the competition for the reader’s attention is intensified; the opportunity cost of one form of media choice weighs heavily on all the other present options.

The idea at the heart of papercasting is simple: bring to life the premise of books in as imaginative and entertaining way possible and you establish the value of the book and close the sale. Create something for writers and readers to share. Recreate a little of the magic of an in-store event but for a potentially far bigger audience. Make the trailer available from the back of the book jacket. Make it come alive in the shop by harnessing the DIY-media advantages of the digital era – the fact that with the right skills we can now create our own compelling, high-quality media at low-cost and high speed.

Here’s an example of papercasting:

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to produce audio and video book trailers that strategically promote your content and brand.

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.

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.

The Competitive Enterprise Institute (@ceidotorg), a non-profit public policy organization dedicated to advancing the principles of limited government, free enterprise, and individual liberty, produced the above video I, Pencil, a new short film adapted from the 1958 essay by Leonard E. Read, founder of the Foundation for Economic Freedom.

The essay, under its full title, I, Pencil: My Family Tree as Told to Leonard E. Read, had a simple goal: "to show that economics cannot be 'planned' since no one, no matter how smart, can create something as incredibly ordinary as a pencil." Instead, its creation requires a highly complex global industrial network organized not by a master planner but by the spontaneous supply-and-demand workings of the "invisible hand" in the peaceful, voluntary, libertarian, laissez-faire free market.

We include the video here on the Somersault blog only to showcase its creative and fun use of animation in a video (based on what might be a solemn essay) intended to go viral. That, and because authors, perhaps less often these days, have written their bestsellers using only a simple pencil!

Also see our previous blogpost, “The 3 Qualities That Make a YouTube Video Go Viral.”

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.

This article in The New York Times (@nytimesbooks) by Leslie Kaufman (@leslieNYT) describes Goodreads (@goodreads), “a social media site for finding and sharing titles that has 15 million members.” She says it’s “exploding in popularity and rivaling Amazon.com as a platform for promoting new books.”

The site allows passionate readers to share what they are reading, rate books they have already read, and list what they are considering next. They can do this publicly or among only a self-selected network of online friends. The site is also host to roughly 20,000 organically occurring online book clubs for every preference — from people interested in only Proust to those who prefer history and Tudor-period fiction. There are 314 clubs for paranormal romance fans alone.

Goodreads and smaller similar sites are addressing what publishers call the “discoverability” problem: How do you guide consumers to books they might want to read? The digital age has created online retail sites that are overflowing with new books, leaving readers awash in unknown titles.

At the same time the number of bookstores has shrunk considerably, depriving customers of the ability to browse or ask staff members for guidance.

For a long time Amazon, the largest online bookseller, dominated the digital discovery zone through its book reviews, recommendations and displays on its home page. But Amazon has lost some trust among readers recently amid concerns that its reviews and recommendations can contain hidden agendas.

The theory behind Goodreads and its two main — albeit much smaller — competitors, Shelfari and LibraryThing, is that people will put more faith in book recommendations from a social network they build themselves.

Goodreads includes a recommendation engine, author video chats, book giveaways, and a newsletter that fosters a sense of community. The site is the largest source of independent reviews on the Web, with 21 million and counting.

Read this in full.

Also see our previous blogpost, "Findability, Discoverability, & Marketing."

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 PRNews (@PRNews), public relations consultant Arthur Solomon offers tips for authors and others to keep in mind when being interviewed by the media:

1. Keep in mind that the great majority of reporters are cordial people who are not out to harm you. They just want to get a story that will satisfy their editors and go home to their family.

2. Reporters hate when someone misleads or lies to them. Reporters don’t like it when their stories have to be corrected through no fault of their own and because of inaccurate information provided to them.

3. Don’t “wing it.” Come prepared with notes regarding the topic.

4. If you don’t know the answer to a question, tell the reporter that you’ll get back with an answer.

5. An interview is not a legal hearing. It’s okay to tell a reporter that some information is proprietary.

Read this in full.

Let Somersault train you for media interviews. And see our previous blogpost, "What Every Author Should Know About Radio & Television Interviews."

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.

The website BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) offers to re-title a few Dr. Seuss books based on their possible underlying meanings. Perhaps the exercise shows how important the correct title is to the success of a book ☺

The Butter Battle Book ≈ The Tragic Futility of the Nuclear Arms Race!

The Sneetches and Other Stories ≈ Racists and Other Stories

The Cat in the Hat ≈ The Virtues of Autonomy, Efficiency, and Skepticism

The Lorax ≈ The Importance of Environmental Awareness in Industrialized Society

Yertle the Turtle ≈ Why Hitler is Dangerous and Other Stories

How the Grinch Stole Christmas ≈ The Psychological Implications of Holiday-Motivated Materialism

Green Eggs and Ham ≈ How Fear of the Unknown Hinders the Developmnet of Informed Opinions

Horton Hears a Who ≈ The Inherent Ethical Issues of Isolationism!

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.

O’Reilly’s Tools of Change 2013 (@toc) (#toccon) kicked off Feb. 12 with the first-ever Author (R)evolution Day, cosponsored by Publishers Weekly, designed to inform authors, content creators, agents, and indie author service providers about the promotion of books in the digital age. Blogger and author Cory Doctorow brought up the concept of the “hybrid author” — the author who publishes traditionally and self-publishes.

One of the most talked about points of the day was discovery. During an afternoon panel, Kobo’s Mark Lefebvre started by saying to authors: “Don’t wonder how you will get discovered — think about what you're going to do to deserve being discovered.”

The panelists agreed that author investment is very often tied to author discovery. In relation to social media, Elizabeth Keenan of Penguin’s publicity department said, “It’s a full-time job to make it work.” (See our SomersaultSocial training program for authors.)

Lefebvre said the most important thing in getting someone to buy a book is still the opinion of someone the reader trusts, and all panelists agreed that — especially in the digital age when curation becomes more and more important — getting reviews for your book is essential.

The “power of free” was discussed; attracting your audience by offering them something, whether it be an excerpt or author expertise on a subject, and giving that audience an answer to the question every reader asks when picking up a book: “What’s in it for me?”

Read this in full.

See TOC articles tagged Author (R)evolution Day.

Read coverage by Good E-Reader (@Goodereader).

Also see our previous blogpost, "Guy Kawasaki's New Self-Publishing Instruction Book."

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.

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.

In today’s world of social media and immediate comment, marketers are becoming more proficient in “real-time marketing;” taking promotional advantage of news events as they happen. This is another way book marketers can get the word out on appropriate frontlist and backlist titles.

Advertising Age (@adage) reports that “when Sunday night's Super Bowl was interrupted by a prolonged power outage, brands took to Twitter to riff on the extended delay.”

Bud Light and Speed Stick quickly bid on promoted tweets linked to the words "power outage"; Oreo and Tide posted graphics linked to the blackout; and Audi tweeted an offer to send some LEDs to the Superdome, which it noted was sponsored by fellow luxury auto brand Mercedes-Benz.

Read this in full.

BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) explains how Oreo was able to react so quickly:

At 8:48 pm Sunday night, Oreo tweeted this ad http://twitter.com/Oreo/status/298246571718483968 with the caption "Power out? No problem." Since then, it's been retweeted more than 14,000 times (and the same image on Facebook has gotten more than 20,000 likes) — meaning that the most powerful bit of marketing during the advertising industry's most expensive day may have been free.

"We had a mission control set up at our office with the brand and 360i, and when the blackout happened, the team looked at it as an opportunity," 360i (@360i) agency president Sarah Hofstetter told BuzzFeed. "Because the brand team was there, it was easy to get approvals and get it up in minutes."

The key? Having Oreo executives in the room, ready to pull the trigger.

Read this in full.

PBS also maximized #SuperBowlBlackOut with a tweet inviting Super Bowl viewers to change the channel immediately to watch Downton Abbey, as reported by paidContent (@paidContent):

According to marketing and communications director, Kevin Dando, the timing was fortuitous because PBS was already in the midst of a weekly discussion in which Downton lovers gather on social media to discuss the show. When Dando tweeted the invitation for SuperBowl viewers to come on over, he says his phone almost blew up.

“Within seconds, we saw hundreds, then thousands of retweets,” said Dando,

Read this in full.

The goal of real-time marketing is to capitalize on people helping to spread the word (word-of-mouth marketing). The Wall Street Journal’s article, “Costly Super Bowl Ads Pay Publicity Dividend” explains how “Super Bowl advertisers continue to cite earned media  — unpaid publicity from news, entertainment, and social outlets  — as justifying their growing investments in the big game. Mercedes-Benz values all the talk about its commercial at $20 million, for example, up from Pepsi's estimate of the $10 million benefit it got from the 2002 game."

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.

The book The 10-Second Rule (@The10secondrule) (#T10SR) by Clare De Graaf (@ClareDeGraaf), has just been released by Simon & Schuster (Howard Books). Somersault helped Clare self-publish the book prior to Simon & Schuster taking it on.

Clare explains the book’s origin this way:

Years ago I noticed that during the course of my day I’d have these impressions to do something I was reasonably certain Jesus wanted me to do. It could be an impression to either do something good for someone or a warning about a sin I was about to commit. It might be to stop for a car broken down on the highway, speak to a co-worker about Jesus, or simply turn off my computer before I ended up at a site where no Christian should go.

Almost simultaneously I would sense another voice whispering to me. “You don’t have time to do that – helping that person could get messy – you can’t afford to help them right now – it’s okay, one more time won’t kill you – send it, you’ve been wronged!”

If I listened to this other voice and thought about it long enough, the moment for obedience would pass, often to my relief. It finally dawned on me that by procrastinating, I was unintentionally teaching myself the habit of disobedience. Why is that?

Read this in full.

Congratulations, Clare!

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.