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The Business & Books (@businessnbooks) section of the International Business Times reports on "Harry Potter" series author J. K. Rowling announcing she will release for the first time the Harry Potter works in ebook form.

Ordinarily, that would not be big news, an author releasing traditional books in ebook format. But Rowling is taking a different path, releasing and selling the books herself through a new website she named Pottermore (@pottermore). In other words, Rowling, one of the bestselling authors in the history of the world, is bypassing not just one traditional channel with her plan but two -- the publisher and the retailer…. Rowling will be bypassing leading ebook distributors Amazon and Barnes and Noble with the direct, do-it-herself model.

All of Rowling's 7 "Harry Potter" books will be released on Pottermore.com in the fall. She's even giving fans who buy the digital books direct from her site a magical treat -- 18,000 more words that will be distributed throughout the series. So it's not just the Harry Potter of old she's selling, but also the new and revised Harry Potter fans can find at Pottermore.com.

Read this report in full.

Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) says "Although some are likely to see Rowling's decision to be her own publisher for her ebooks as a significant one for the industry at large, Potter is a unique franchise. 'Everything is different with Harry,' says one person involved with the Potter books."

Read the Publishers Weekly article in full.

Shelf Awareness (@ShelfAwareness) reports what other media and booksellers are saying. And Fast Company (@FastCompany) has this Infographic about the Potter empire.

For the first time ever, daily time spent in mobile apps surpasses desktop and mobile Web consumption, according to an analysis from Flurry (@FlurryMobile), a mobile analytics firm. Flurry found that the average user now spends 9% more time using mobile apps than the Internet.

As a note of interest, Facebook has increasingly taken its share of time spent on the Internet, now making up 14 of the 74 minutes spent per day by consumers, or about 1/6th of all Internet minutes.

The above chart shows that Games and Social Networking categories capture the significant majority of consumers’ time. Consumers spend nearly half their time using Games, and a third in Social Networking apps. Combined, these two categories control a whopping 79% of consumers’ total app time.

Read the report in full.

Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you create a mobile app that fits your publishing strategy. When you use SomersaultNOW, Somersault’s free online dashboard for publishing and marketing executives, be sure to use the Mobile tab from your smartphone. And read the Somersault Mobile News Daily.

Mike Shatzkin (@MikeShatzkin) says, “It never took me much time to find what I wanted to read next until I started reading ebooks.”

Just about every new book I’d want to read is available for my device of choice (the iPhone) and the digitization of the backlist just carries on going deeper and deeper into publishers’ repositories.

But the merchandising, at least for somebody who shops on the iPhone (it’s a bit better through the ereading devices or PCs), leaves a lot to be desired. My shopping experiences are actually a bit of a random walk. I ask my ebook retailer to show me books by category and, since my categories don’t change much (and haven’t since I was a kid) I tend to see the same books over and over again, far too many of which I have already read....

A short time ago I was shopping for my next read on the iPhone. I started out shopping with Kindle (@AmazonKindle) and then Nook (@nookBN) and a few minutes on each of their mobile sites didn’t turn up anything that moved me. Then at Google Ebooks (@googlebooks) I found Making of the President 1968 by Theodore White. That was definitely one I wanted to read. I bought it and I’m in the middle of it.

There is no particular guarantee that I’ll find my next book on Google. I haven’t found any clear pattern yet among the four stores I shop regularly (Kobo (@kobo) being the fourth). Obviously, if I know I want to read another James Patterson or John Locke thriller, any of them would deliver it to me quickly and painlessly in response to a search. It is when I am hunting by subject that the search returns seem to be pot luck. I’m probably not making it any easier on the retailers by spreading my shopping around; if any of them actually did have a good engine to take my purchasing and reading profile and make the next great recommendation, I’d be screwing it up by spreading around my data.

All of this underscores how difficult is the challenge being faced by Bookish in the US and aNobii (@aNobii) in the UK, two “find what to read next” sites financed by major publishers. And they join a long line of sites that have tried to build recommendations and community conversation around what people are reading: Goodreads (@goodreads), Shelfari (@shelfari), LibraryThing, (@LibraryThing), and the new ebook platform, Copia (@TheCopia).

Read this article in full.

Other book sharing websites Mike doesn’t mention, but you may want to check out, are BookRabbit (@thebookrabbit) and ShelfLuv (@shelfluv).

What are some ways publishers and etailers should help consumers effectively find ebooks?

Adweek (@Adweek) says, “Call them the FB generation.” They consider technology a sixth sense.

McCann Worldgroup’s (@mccann_wg) newly completed global survey “The Truth About Youth,” which polled 16-to-30-year-olds, concludes that millennials live in a new “social economy” in which the power of sharing and recommending brands cannot be overstated. (Past generations defined themselves by material possessions or experiences.)

This group, according to the study, lives outloud, emphasizing public self-definition, life narration, and broadcasting via blogging platforms, digital cameras, and cheap editing and design software.

In the words of one study respondent: “If there are no pics, it didn’t happen.”

The agency’s takeaway: Brands should follow the top 5 traits young people say they look for in their social friends. Advertising should be truthful, genuine, sociable, mature, and humble to connect.

The biggest mistake marketers make? Overestimating their own importance. Young consumers say they quickly tire of brands that clutter up digital feeds with what they see as useless information.

Read the report in full.

Also see ClickZ’s (@ClickZ) coverage by Anna Maria Virzi (@AnnaMariaVirzi), “Study: Millennials Value ‘Social Economy.’”

Another study of millennials, this one by Public Religion Research Institute (@publicreligion) and reported by RNS (@ReligionNewsNow), says a significant majority of that age group believe it’s permissible to disagree with their church teachings on abortion and homosexuality and still remain in good standing with their faith. They’re “committed to availability, conflicted about morality.”

Read the report in full.

Let Somersault help you research your market.

In an article on Digital Book World (@DigiBookWorld), Fauzia Burke (@FauziaBurke) writes,

When authors come to me and say, “I want to reach book bloggers or mommy bloggers,” I often have to tell them that bloggers have very specific tastes. More specific than you probably realize. For example, when reaching out to mommy bloggers, it is really important to know the age of their kids. Pitching a YA novel to a mommy blogger with a baby won’t get you far. Pitching a Sci-Fi novel to a blogger that loves historical romance won’t work either. Sending a WWII book to a blogger that covers the Civil War will make for a cranky blogger, and sending a press release to the wrong person may actually get you black listed.

She lists 8 tips in reaching bloggers:

1. Know Their Beat
2. Search for Blogs
3. Value of Bloggers
4. Make Things Easier
5. Approach Bloggers One at a Time
6. Don’t Push
7. Represent Good Content
8. Perfect Your Publicity Database

Read the article in full.

Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan), editor-in-chief of Search Engine Land (@sengineland), has designed this helpful Infographic (#Infographic) “to visually present the major factors, the biggest and most important things that can help you in gaining [website] traffic from search engines.” As a content creator (publisher, agent, organization, author), you’ll want to print it and either keep it handy at your desk or give it to your IT department. Search Engine Optimization is an important component of strategic Social Media Marketing, a specialty of Somersault.

See the chart.

Another SEO-related new announcement you’ll want to read is MarketingVOX's (@marketingvox) “Google, Bing Take on Open Graph with Schema.org.”

As well as Econsultancy's (@Econsultancy) "SEO 'must-do' tips for SMEs: the experts' view."

Shelf Awareness (@ShelfAwareness) reports that attendance at BookExpo America (@BookExpoAmerica) (#BEA, #BEA11, #BookExpo) last week, including Blog World Expo NY (@blogworld) (#BWENY), was 23,067.

Excluding BlogWorld, whose participants were not included in last year's attendance figures, attendance was 21,664, down just 255, or 1.2%, from 21,919 in 2010. BEA emphasized that this year’s slightly lower number reflected higher standards: the show “strategically vetted more attendee groups to improve the quality of those participating in BEA.” One resulting major change: there were 500 fewer attendee authors this year, authors distinct from those appearing for signings, panels and other events.

Also in Shelf Awareness, Ron Hogan (@ronhogan) recaps the Book Blogger Convention (@bookbloggercon) (#BookBloggerCon) where a blogger speaker is quoted saying: “authenticity, consistency, and generosity [are] crucial to any successful blog.”

More BBC recaps at The Reading Ape (@readingape), write meg! (@writemeg), and As I Turn the Pages (@bookangel224).

And watch the Book Business video "Voices From BookExpo America 2011."

The above chart clearly shows the importance of strategically using the appropriate social media to effectively (and integratively) communicate a brand’s message. 

FYI: Microsoft created the Infographic below (shown vertically at WebProNews) to trace the history of email.

A story in the Los Angeles Times (@latimestech) features Robert Kiyosaki, who’s written more than a dozen titles under his "Rich Dad" brand of financial education books, which together have sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. His new book Unfair Advantage released in stores April 12. It’s also available as an ebook. But the signed ebook version will only be available May 26 during a live chat streamed on the author's Facebook page. The special edition of the book will be available only for Amazon Kindle ereaders and will sell for $9.99.

The new version differs from the standard copy by offering a new page with a digital copy of the author's autograph, as well as a bonus chapter about the "corruption of capitalism" and extra photos.

As soon as the streamed chat is done, the special edition of the book will no longer be available for sale, says Shane Caniglia, vice president of the Rich Dad Operating Co., which hosts financial education seminars focused on the advice published in the "Rich Dad" books.

Read this in full.

Also see our April 28 blog post, “How Authors Can Autograph Their eBooks.”

What are your thoughts about digitally autographing ebook editions?