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Publishing powerhouses Pearson and Bertelsmann announced today they’re creating a joint venture (JV) to pool their respective consumer publishing businesses, Penguin (@penguinusa) (see its religion titles) and Random House (@randomhouse) (see its religion titles), in a bid to go the distance in the digital age.

Read the news release.

TechCrunch says

Penguin and Random House will combine to form a JV named Penguin Random House, the pair said today, with Bertelsmann owning 53% of the new JV and Pearson owning 47%. They said the combined organization will have a “stronger platform and greater resources to invest in rich content, new digital publishing models and high-growth emerging markets.” They also envisage savings from pooled resources....

In their joint announcement there is no mention of Amazon but the ecommerce giant is the elephant in the room — having disrupted traditional bookselling models, driving down the price of books by selling physical books online, and championing the sale of digital books via its Kindle ereaders. Amazon is also treading directly on publishers’ toes by taking on a publishing role itself.

Read this in full.

According to The New York Times,

Thomas Rabe, chief executive of Bertelsmann, said in an interview that the merger would allow the combined company to invest more in digital operations and emerging markets, where book sales are growing faster than in developed markets like the United States and Western Europe.

Read this in full.

Publishers Weekly reports,

The announcement came after word leaked Sunday that News Corp. was considering making an offer for Penguin, but Penguin Group chairman John Makinson said the Pearson board is committed to the Bertelsmann deal.

Read this in full.

See the letters of reassurance Markus Dohle, CEO of Random House, sent to booksellers, authors, and agents.

Although the two parties have signed the deal, final approval will need to be made by US government regulators; that’s not expected until the second half of 2013. The combination of the two companies will produce a publishing house with worldwide revenue of about $4 billion.

Update: See The New York Times article, "Random House and Penguin Merger Creates Global Giant."

Update: See The Telegraph article, "Rupert Murdoch criticizes Penguin Random House as 'faux merger.'"

Update: Hear NPR's report, "Random House, Penguin To Merge."

Follow Somersault (@smrsault) to navigate the fast-changing book publishing landscape.

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Be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Publishers tab.

In the above video, David Sheets, vice present of sales, explains Snowfall’s program.

Social media connection is rapidly becoming a necessary tool for authors. Authors have a chance to engage their fans like never before. The Snowfall Facebook bookstore application allows authors and publishers to open an e-commerce bookstore right on the Facebook fan-page. Authors can bypass the cost and hassles of other online commerce methods and connect directly with readers and fans. Not only will they be able to browse titles, but also add them to a shopping cart and check out through the PayPal network.

The biggest feature, however, is that authors and publishers won't have to ship them. Leave the printing and shipping to Snowfall Press. Order confirmations will automatically transmit to the Snowfall Press server, and print/ship order directly to the end reader/fan.

Read more information about this new service.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you maximize the communication of your brand’s content through news releases and electronic press kits.

Learn about online marketing with SomersaultSocial.

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Be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Publishers tab, which includes links to self-publishing publishers.

Digital Book World (@DigiBookWorld) reports on new research from Bowker (@Bowker & @DiscoverBowker) that says about 235,000 titles were self-published in the US in 2011; 87,000 of them were ebooks.

While most self-published titles are still print books (some 63%), the ebook category is growing faster. Ebook self-publishing production is up 129% since 2006, versus a gain of 33% for print over the same period.

A handful of larger players dominate the ebook self-publishing market, according to the report. Author Solutions (47,094 titles, now owned by Penguin) and Smashwords (40,608 titles) led the way but Lulu wasn’t far behind (38,005). Outside of these three and Amazon’s CreateSpace, which dominates the print side of self-publishing, no other company has more than 10% market-share.

Read this in full.

Read the news release.

Also, paidContent’s (@paidContent) coverage, “Bowker: Number of self-published books up 287% since 2006,” says “43% of all print books published in the US in 2011 were self-published.”

See our previous blogposts

·         “The Golden Age of Self-Publishing is Driving Title Growth”

·         “Ebooks Projected to Comprise 50% of US Trade Book Market By 2016”

·         “Extensive New Study: The Rise of E-reading”

On a related note, IndieReader’s (@IndieReader) article, “Are Self-Pubbed Authors Killing the Publishing Industry?” by Melissa Foster (@Melissa_Foster) says, “Self-published authors have created a devaluing of the written word, and, some of them are scrambling to see how low they can go to get noticed.”

Read this in full.

And now Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) reports that Random House and Penquin are in merger talks.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you take advantage of today's technology to publish and market your content.

Learn about online marketing with SomersaultSocial.

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

Be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Publishers tab, which includes links to self-publishing publishers.

Writing in The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic), Peter Osnos says, “For all the complexities that publishing faces, the notion that books are somehow less of a factor in the cultural or information ecosystem of our time doesn't hold up to the evidence.”

Whatever else may be happening in this tumultuous period of transition in how books are produced and distributed, the sheer range and quality of so many titles is indisputable proof that our marketplace has writers and readers in impressive numbers....

Instead of the competition among traditional booksellers for the attention of readers that was for so long the way books were sold, publishers now must confront the immense power and reach of tech giants and adapt to their influence. These companies are so much larger than even the biggest of publishers that accommodating their demands on price and promotion is a formidable task and is the reason why it looks (and often feels) that publishers are on the defensive.

We are in a whirlwind of change. A writer with the ambition to reach a maximum audience needs at least some understanding of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, blogs, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GoodReads, and Google+ (a hat tip to my colleagues at the Perseus Books Group who are making significant headway in providing guidance to our authors in all these marketing tools). But even in the midst of so much change, the main challenge of publishing remains the same: finding and supporting good books and then working closely with authors to identify and reach their readers through every way possible. With all the hubbub of today's technology and media landscape, that still is the best route to success.

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you take advantage of today's technology to publish and market your content.

Learn about online marketing with SomersaultSocial.

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

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

The above (humorous) Infographic by WritersMarket is in the Nov/Dec 2012 issue of Writer’s Digest (@WritersDigest).

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you publish and market your digital and print content.

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

Christian Retailing (@ChristianRetail) says, “Christian retailers are reporting good sales and positive feedback for CBA's 3rd annual Christian Store Week (@CSW_2012)” Sept. 28 – Oct. 8.

More than 400 Christian stores nationwide — including 134 independent retailers and the Family Christian Stores (@FCstores) chain — partnered with World Vision (@WorldVisionUSA) to raise awareness of the need for hunger relief among American children as part of CSW, an effort to spotlight Christian bookstores and drive traffic, CBA said.

Read this in full.

See our previous blogpost, “This is Christian Store Week.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you reach the Christian store market with your brand message.

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

Reporter Laura Hazard Owen (@laurahazardowen) writes on paidContent (@paidContent) about the new ebook selling and marketing Web service launched today, Ganxy (@Ganxy). She says, “In just a few minutes, anyone can create a “showcase” for a book that includes its cover, description, video and other marketing materials, and purchase options.”

Authors and publishers can sell books directly through the showcase or simply provide links to retailers. The entire showcase can then be tweeted, embedded in a blog, website, or Facebook page, or can just stand alone as a website....

It’s free to create a showcase, but Ganxy makes money in two ways. The company takes 10% of each sale when an ebook is sold through a showcase (authors and publishers can choose whether they want to sell ebooks directly). Ganxy also makes money through the affiliate links to retail sites that are embedded in the showcase. An author can also request to use his or her own affiliate links in the showcase; in that case, Ganxy displays its affiliate link 25% of the time and the author’s 75% of the time.

Ganxy also wants to appeal to readers. When someone buys an ebook directly through a Ganxy showcase, it’s added to his or her library and can be downloaded in any format (EPUB, iOS, Kindle and so on). All the ebooks Ganxy sells directly are DRM-free. (Publishers who don’t like that can just display retail links and not sell ebooks directly.)

Read this in full.

Read the news release.

And read our previous blogposts:

·         “How Ebook Buyers Discover Books”

·         “Sites That Facilitate Book Discovery”

·         "Family Christian Stores Now Selling Its Own Tablet"

·         "Parable, Mardel Latest to Launch Ebook Sales; Ebooks Now at 500+ Christian Stores"

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategically plan your book’s disoverability.

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.

US Dept. of Education (@usedgov) Secretary Arne Duncan is calling for America to move as fast as possible away from printed textbooks and toward digital ones. “Over the next few years, textbooks should be obsolete,” he declared last week at the National Press Club (@PressClubDC).

Referring primarily to grades K-12, but having implications on the college level as well, Duncan says he’s concerned about competing with other countries whose students are academically leaving behind their US counterparts.

South Korea, which consistently outperforms the US in educational outcomes, is moving far faster than the US in adopting digital learning environments. One of the most wired countries in the world, South Korea has set a goal to go fully digital with its textbooks by 2015....

The transition to digital involves much more than scanning books and uploading them to computers, tablet devices or e-readers. Proponents describe a comprehensive shift to immersive, online learning experiences that engage students in a way a textbook never could.

Read this in full.

The Secretary has made the call before, as reported by the San Francisco Chronicle in September.

Read Hack College’s coverage, “Education Secretary Calls for Print Textbooks to Become Obsolete.”

Also see our previous blogpost, “USA Goal: A Digital Textbook for Every US Student.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you plan your textbook publishing and marketing strategy.

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

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

Barcodes are a standard application on books today. BBC News reports that October 7 is the 60th anniversary of the barcode patent, filed in the US in 1952.

However the distinctive black-and-white stripes did not make their first appearance in an American shop until 1974 - because the laser technology used to read them did not exist.

[Standardization entity] GS1 UK (@GS1UK) says the QR code was not a threat to the traditional linear barcode.

A QR (Quick Response) code is an image made up of dots, which can contain more data than a barcode.

"They have different purposes - the barcode on the side of a tin of beans is for point-of-sale scanning. It ensures the consumer is charged the right amount and updates stock records," said Gary Lynch, chief executive of GS1 UK.

"The QR code's main purpose is to take the person that scans it to an extended multi media environment. Technically you can combine the two but nobody's asking for that right now."

The first item to be scanned by a barcode was a packet of chewing gum in an Ohio supermarket in 1974.

Read this in full.

Above Infographic is by Aptara – Transforming Content into Knowledge