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A report in Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) says “Barnes & Noble is phasing out its PubIt! self-publishing service and relaunching it as NOOK Press, an upgraded ebook self-publishing platform offering an array of new services to authors and publishers.”

B&N is partnering with the self-publishing platform FastPencil (@fastpencil) to supply NOOK Press with its proprietary online authoring technology, while also offering FastPencil authors access to a variety of marketing opportunities via B&N’s NOOK platform.

While B&N is encouraging PubIt! authors to synch their accounts to new NOOK Press accounts, B&N is also planning to phase out new PubIt! accounts and transition new self-publishers to the NOOK Press platform, which essentially builds on PubIt! by adding new services. Indeed, sales of self-published ebooks continue to grow on the NOOK Platform and the company said they represent about 25% of all ebook sales on NOOK devices. According to B&N, PubIt! titles grow by about 20% each quarter and general self-published titles offering through the NOOK are growing by 24% each quarter.

Read this in full.

Read the news release.

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

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.

In The New York Times Bits Blog (@nytimesbits), tech reporter David Streitfeld (@DavidStreitfeld) interviews Jason Merkoski (@merkoski), a leader of the team that built Amazon’s first Kindle. Merkoski, author of Burning the Page: The Ebook Revolution and the Future of Reading, dispenses with the usual techo-utopianism and says, “I think we’ve made a proverbial pact with the devil in digitizing our words.” And: “Big Brother won’t be a politician but an ad man and he’ll have the face of Google.” And: “It’s hard to love Amazon. Not the way we love Apple or a bookstore.” But he also says:

In 20 years, the space of one generation, print books will be as rare as vinyl LPs. You’ll still be able to find them in artsy hipster stores, but that’s about it. So the great advantage of ebooks is also their curse; ebooks will be the only game in town if you want to read a book. It’s sobering, and a bit sad. That said, ebooks can do what print books can’t. They’ll allow you to fit an entire library into the space of one book. They’ll allow you to search for anything in an instant, save your thoughts forever, share them with the world, and connect with other readers right there, inside the book. The book of the future will live and breathe.

Read this in full.

Also see paidContent’s review, “Former Kindle Exec on Kindle flaws, Nook Strengths, and Google’s Future in Ebooks.”

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.

Scott Turow (@ScottTurow), author, lawyer, and president of the Authors Guild (@AuthorsGuild), writes in his commentary for The New York Times Opinion Page (@nytopinion) that the new, global electronic marketplace is rapidly depleting authors’ income streams. He says, “It seems almost every player — publishers, search engines, libraries, pirates and even some scholars — is vying for position at the authors’ expense."

Authors practice one of the few professions directly protected in the Constitution (Article I, Section 8), which instructs Congress “to promote the progress of Science and the useful Arts by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries.” The idea is that a diverse literary culture, created by authors whose livelihoods, and thus independence, can’t be threatened, is essential to democracy.

That culture is now at risk. The value of copyrights is being quickly depreciated, a crisis that hits hardest not best-selling authors like me, who have benefited from most of the recent changes in bookselling, but new and so-called midlist writers.

Read this in full.

A counter-argument is presented by Jeff John Roberts (@jeffjohnroberts) in paidContent's "No, Scott Turow, Copyright is Not Killing American Authors."

What’s your reaction to Mr. Turow’s assessment? Write your comments below.

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.

Publishing professional Mike Shatzkin (@MikeShatzkin) writes on his blog about the news that Hyperion plans to sell off its “backlist” to focus its attention on new titles it will develop in conjunction with its corporate cousins at Disney and ABC. He says this follows Wiley’s selling a lot of the most bookstore-dependent parts of its list, including the sale of Frommer’s Guides to Google, in 2012.

Both Hyperion and Wiley are showing us what the publisher of the near future is going to look like. They will be more focused. They will be shedding overheads so they can expand or shrink their offerings more readily to respond to opportunities and circumstances. They will be less dependant on the trade bookstore and book review trade networks. And Hyperion’s decision says something more about the future that Wiley’s doesn’t: book publishing will increasingly be an activity operating in tandem with or in service of other objectives of the owning organization. (There is a parallel here in retailing, where Amazon and Google and Apple fit this description, and Kobo and Barnes & Noble do not.)

...the current state-of-the-art for merchandising and presentation of books online is not very helpful to backlist. Most retailers return a limited number of books (10 or 20) per screen to any query. Customers have limited patience for refreshing screens, so the number of titles an online purchaser “browses through” is far fewer than the number that would catch the same eyes in an equivalent amount of time in a store. This appears to be pushing sales more and more to newer books and books on bestseller lists.

This problem of concentration will probably just get worse as mobile devices become more ubiquitous and the shopping takes places on ever-smaller screens.

Read this in full.

Also see our previous blogpost, “Publishing Must Reinvent Itself.”

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.

The People’s E-Book (@peoples_e) is a new epublishing service being built by Greg Albers, the founder and publisher of Hol Art Books (@holartbooks) with funds from 920 investors through Kickstarter. It will be a DIY tool anyone can use for free.

The People's E-Book seeks to be a lab, an incubator, an e-book creation platform for artists, authors, and alternative presses who want to try new things, publish new books, and push into new territories. The People's E-Book will handle ebooks of all sizes and scope, but it will excel in areas that no one else has cared to consider — the very small, the quick and dirty, the simple and the experimental.

The People’s E-book is a super-simple online tool with an intuitive visual interface to allow anyone to make e-books quickly and for free. This is barebones ebook publishing. What the photocopier was to zines, we hope The People’s E-book will be to digital books.

Read this in full.

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

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.

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.

BBC Radio 4’s business program The Bottom Line with Evan Davis (@EvanHD) recently (Feb. 9) focused on the sea changes occurring in the world of book publishing.

Like the music industry before it, the print book industry has been turned upside down up by the digital revolution. As sales of ebooks continue to grow, bookshop sales are down from a peak in 2007. So what does the future hold for the bricks-and-mortar bookstore? Will physical books become a thing of the past? And what role will traditional players like publishers, agents, and retailers play in this brave new world?

The program consists of Davis interviewing Jonny Geller, literary agent and joint CEO of Curtis Brown; Victoria Barnsley, CEO and publisher of HarperCollins UK and International; and Michael Tamblyn, Chief Content Officer at Toronto-based ebook retailer Kobo.

According to The Bookseller (@thebookseller), in the program, Barnsley says the idea of the bookshop as a book club, charging customers for “the privilege of browsing, is not that insane,” given the level of threat faced by the general bookshop. Certain shoeshops in the US are already charging customers to try on shoes, she noted.

Barnsley predicted that the level of digital ebook sales would “level off and end up being more like 50/50 [physical books and ebooks] for quite some time, if the physical bookshops survive.” But she said the survival of the physical bookshop was “the big question.” “Readers still do quite like physical books; the question is, will they be able to buy them, actually,” she told Davis.

Listen to this program 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.

Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) reports, “Stepping up its support of self-published and independently published books, the Apple iBookstore has launched a new category called Breakout Books.”

While the iBookstore has always accepted self-published works, the new iBookstore category gives publishers and authors a new platform for marketing and promoting their books and highlights both the growing sales of self-published titles and the increasing significance of the category.

Read this in full.

From The New York Times (@mediadecodernyt):

“Apple is helping to shape a brighter, more democratized future for book publishing,” said Mark Coker, the founder of Smashwords, a leading distributor of digital books.

Read this in full.

The bulk of the titles featured in the Breakout Books promotion are distributed by Smashwords. Read all about it on Mark Coker’s (@markcoker) blogpost, “Smashwords Authors Gain Seat at the Merchandising Table with the Apple iBookstore’s Breakout Books Promotion.”

Also see our previous blogposts, “Can Ebooks Succeed Without Amazon?,” “A New Publishing Ecosystem Emerges,” and “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 Publishers tab, which includes links to Self-Publisher services.

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.