somersault

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!

USA TODAY (@USATODAY) reports on one author, Amanda Hocking, who became frustrated in trying to find a traditional publisher to accept her young-adult paranormal novels. So last year she published them herself in the ebook format.

By May she was selling hundreds; by June, thousands. She sold 164,000 books in 2010. Most were low-priced (99 cents to $2.99) digital downloads.

More astounding: This January she sold more than 450,000 copies of her 9 titles. More than 99% were ebooks.

In fact, her Trylle Trilogy will debut in the top 50 of USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list on Thursday! Truly book publishing and distribution is changing. How can Somersault help you navigate these waters?

Read this article in full.

Newsweek (@Newsweek) polled a few literary leaders on their thoughts about where the future of reading is headed, given that the format of books is “evolving at warp speed” thanks to daily digital advances in publishing. Here’s a quote from James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress:

The new immigrants don’t shoot the old inhabitants when they come in. One technology tends to supplement rather than supplant. How you read is not as important as: will you read? And will you read something that's a book — the sustained train of thought of one person speaking to another? Search techniques are embedded in ebooks that invite people to dabble rather than follow a full train of thought. This is part of a general cultural problem.

Read other quotes here.

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.

On The Nervous Breakdown (@TNBtweets), J.E. Fishman (@JEFISHMAN) dedicates this list of publisher blunders to his friend Seth Godin:

1. Knowing their suppliers (authors) better than their customers (readers).

2. Failing to do market research.

3. Thinking big advances produce “heat.”

4. Assuming readers think like them.

5. Worrying more about stealing than about selling.

6. Trying to cut their way to profitability.

7. Failing to teach business principles to English majors.

8. Publishing too few books.

9. Refusing to collude.

10. Forgetting what business they’re in.

Read the article in full.

News Corp. debuted The Daily (@daily) today, a "digital newspaper" designed specifically for the 14.8 million iPads sold since last April and the millions more expected yet to sell. Joined by Apple executive Eddy Cue, the company's Internet division chief, News Corp. CEO Rupert Murdoch unveiled the publication to which his company has committed around 100 staffers and an investment of $30 million.

"No paper. No multi-million dollar presses. No trucks," Murdoch said. "We're passing on these savings to the reader, which is why we can offer The Daily for just 14 cents a day." It represents an opportunity to "make the business of editing and news gathering viable again," he said.

Read this CNN Money article in full.

For a critical review, read “The Daily - stunning but too slow.”

For an alternate review, see “Why The Daily’s Detractors Are Missing The Point.” 

More than 1,200 publishing professionals gathered at Digital Book World 2011 (@DigiBookWorld) in NYC last week for 3 days of forecasting the future of publishing. A quick roundup of news coverage, tweets, PowerPoint slides, and reactions to Digital Book World 2011 (#dbw11) is located on the DBW website. For example, from the Los Angeles Times

In 2010, ebook sales rose by around 400% and pulled in almost $1 billion in sales. Madeline McIntosh, Random House’s president of sales, operations and digital, said her company is working on the belief that by 2015, half the books readers buy will be ebooks.

And from Eric Hellman

“Fear no ebooks” was the message of the conference, and it was a welcome message to many of the participants that I talked to. “I’m just trying to learn about ebooks” and “we’re trying to decide what to do” were phrases I heard more than once.

Read this in full.

Meet Nelson, Coupland, and Alice — the faces of tomorrow’s book. Watch global design and innovation consultancy IDEO’s (@ideo) vision for the future of the book. It explores the new experiences that might be created by linking diverse discussions; the additional value that could be created by connecting readers to one another; and the innovative ways that might be used to tell favorite stories and build community around books. Watch the video.

In 2010 ereader prices fell close to $100 and 10.5 million people in the US own a dedicated ereader. New reading form factors were introduced. Tablets in about 10 million US hands right now – primarily the iPad. A third of the people who own an iPad own a Kindle. Nearly $1 billion was spent on ebooks in the US alone.

In 2011 20+ million people will read ebooks on a reader or tablet. $1.3 billion will be spent on ebooks at the bare minimum. They can’t even forecast the impact on non-traditional eformats.

Are publishers ready? Surveyed publishing execs to find out. 89% optimistic about digital transition; 74% say readers will be better off; 66% say people will read more; 83% say their companies can manage digital transition; 63% say have a digital plan in place; 80% believe their company needs significant retraining.

Read this in full.

 A variety of pundits predict 2011 will be the year of the cable TV cord cutter, the year of the computer tablet, even the year of the vegetable. What were the early sparks through the centuries that ignited the fire for today’s stunning advancements?

We, Somersault Group (http://somersau.lt) - the international publishing strategy and services agency founded by five former Zondervan marketing and editorial executives - see 2011 as a year to recognize and celebrate the significant and life-changing milestones achieved over time in the areas of publishing, technology, and innovation.

To that end, we’ve created the interactive pdf Infographic (that’s even printable) that honors 22 landmark anniversaries this year, such as the King James Version of the Bible (400th), the transcontinental telegraph system in the USA (150th), MTV (30th), the first website (20th), and the iPod (10th).

Somersault Infographic 2011

The Infographic (designed by Scott Schermer, student at Kendall College of Art & Design) is located online at scribd.com/doc/46895274/Somersault-Infographic-2011. If you like it, please blog about it, tweet it, email your friends, tell others about it, and post your comments below. To receive an interactive PDF version (with links to each anniversary’s Web information) by return email attachment, send a request to hello@somersaultgroup.com.

Somersault believes the unprecedented changes occurring in the publishing world aren’t a crisis; they’re a playground of possibilities. We help publishers, agents, ministry partners, and authors adapt to these changes with dexterity.

Our services include brand counseling, editorial direction, research capabilities, marketing strategy, Internet and social media presence, and a comprehensive portfolio of publishing assistance.

Our mission is to change lives by connecting inspirational content creators with readers using exceptional creativity, right-now technology, and old-fashioned personal care.

We look forward to hearing how we can be of service to you. Be sure to follow this blog (http://somersault.posterous.com) and our Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/smrsault). And please “Like” us on Facebook (http://facebook.com/SomersaultGroup).

Happy Innovative Year!