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This month is set aside by the Audio Publishers Association (APA) (@AudioPub) to celebrate the important role audiobooks play in a person’s literary life and to mark the overall growth of audiobooks in the market (last year downloaded audiobooks sales rose by 39% to $82 million vs. $59 million in 2009, while physical audiobooks fell 6%, at $137 million for 2010 vs. $146 million for the previous year).

APA has compiled some facts to honor the occasion:

• 25% of Americans have listened to an audiobook in the last year.
• Audiobook listeners are avid readers who use audiobooks as a way of enjoying an author's work when they’re not able to read. 94% of audiobook listeners have read a book in the past year vs. 70% of non-audiobook listeners.
• Many authors love audiobooks. Scott Turow, Janet Evanovich, Judy Blume, Barbara Taylor Bradford, Tom Wolfe, Lisa Scottoline — all listen to audiobooks.
• Most listeners use audiobooks in the car (whether they’re commuting or on driving vacations), but an increasing number of people also report using audiobooks while they’re exercising, cooking, gardening — and even at work.
• The average audiobook listener spends about 5 hours a week listening.
• Audiobooks are great for family listening on the road this summer — nothing ends the "are we there yet blues!" like a great audiobook. Audiobooks keep everyone in the car entertained while also increasing literacy skills; families can even knock out a few of the titles on a kid's summer reading list on the way to vacation.
• Audiobooks are a great tool for building literacy. Teachers and librarians report that listening to audiobooks helps children build better vocabularies and also helps them to read with better expression.

NPR’s Talk of the Nation (@totn) recently featured an interview about audiobooks. Listen to “Audio Book Sales Climb In Spite Of Competition.”

If you love audiobooks, you should read AudioFile magazine (@AudioFileMag). And for your convenience, here’s a Google search on the word “audiobooks.” Let Somersault help you publish audiobooks.

Business Insider (@alleyinsider) highlights charts from a 115-page report on the state of the tablet market by Jefferies analyst Peter Misek. “The tablet industry is set to explode this year and next, becoming a worldwide phenomenon. He expects Apple and the iPad to be the biggest winner, but Samsung is looking like the strongest no. 2 right now.”

Compare book reading with other media consumption on tablets vs. computers:

See the charts.

Also see Marketing Charts (@marketingcharts) “Tablet Users Buy/Browse Online More than Smartphone Users.”

And MobileBeat’s (@VentureBeat) “New York Public Library brings history to your fingertips with Biblion for iPad.”

The New York Times article, “Retailers Offer Apps With a Catalog Feel” tells how new apps are turning tablets into digital catalogs.

Are you publishing content for the tablet market? Let Somersault help.

According to Amazon.com’s (@amazon) list of the Top 20 Most Well-Read Cities in America, Cambridge, MA is at the top for the most books, magazines, and newspapers purchased per capita of any city in the United States. After compiling reading material sales data in both print and Kindle (@AmazonKindle) format since Jan. 1, 2011, on a per capita basis in cities with more than 100,000 residents, the cities are:

1. Cambridge, MA                11. Knoxville, TN

2. Alexandria, VA                 12. Orlando, FL

3. Berkeley, CA                    13. Pittsburgh, PA

4. Ann Arbor, MI                    14. Washington, DC

5. Boulder, CO                      15. Bellevue, WA

6. Miami, FL                          16. Columbia, SC

7. Salt Lake City, UT             17. St. Louis, MO

8. Gainesville, FL                  18. Cincinnati, OH

9. Seattle, WA                       19. Portland, OR

10. Arlington, VA                    20. Atlanta, GA

Read the news release in full.

Publishers, authors, booksellers, and agents are crowded together this week attending the annual BEA (@BookExpoAmerica) (#BEA, #BEA11, #BookExpo) convention in New York City. Read the latest news:

• Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly)
• The Washington Post (@washingtonpost)
• Google News (@googlenews)

Book Business (@bookbusinessmag) reports “preliminary results from an ambitious new book publishing industry survey show growth in both revenues and units sold across the contemporary book publishing landscape.” The "BookStats" survey shows

Growth was seen for publishers of all sizes with medium- and small-sized publishers leading the way. Over 50% of the publishers surveyed were enjoying growth, Kelly Gallagher, vice president of publishing services at RR Bowker, said.

Data is broken down by content categories (trade fiction and non-fiction, juvenile, religious, K-12, higher education, professional and scholarly); formats (physical and non-physical delivery platforms); and distribution channel.

Not surprisingly, hardcover and softcover markets have seen declines, while digital formats such as e-books and apps are growing.

Adult fiction is "a stalwart category" enjoying healthy growth, as are all categories of juvenile titles, Gallagher said. Nonfiction adult, however is "struggling."

While chain bookstores are registering predicable declines, independent bookstores are holding their own, showing stable sales or just slight declines. "I think it's a great story line that the independents are showing some resiliency," Gallagher said.

Book Business also reports on the International Digital Publishing Forum conference at BEA about “surprising new information on consumer and student ebook reading habits.

Of consumers surveyed in January 2011, 77.3% are "satisfied" or "highly satisfied" with the price of ebooks.... The feature sets most desired in ebooks are affordability (seen by 75% of respondents as "very important"), followed by readability, ease of acquisition, portability (all over 70%) and speed (over 60%). Searchability and eco-friendliness were important to 35% of respondents, though the later is growing as a factor.

Among reading devices, consumers are most satisfied with Amazon's Kindle (75%) followed by the Nook (70%) and iPad (60%).

Laura Hazard Owen (@laurahazardowen) reports on paidContent (@paidContent) about Barnes & Noble announcing a new WiFi-only Nook and Amazon responding with a cheaper 3G edition of the Kindle.

And Shelf Awareness (@ShelfAwareness) covered the American Booksellers Association's annual meeting, where CEO Oren Teicher called for new business models for the trade; he

dispensed with the usual CEO report reviewing the association's activities of the past year and instead gave a wide-ranging talk outlining how booksellers and publishers "can work more closely together in the common goal of selling more books" and maintaining bricks-and-mortar bookstores' role as "the essential showroom in ensuring the sales of a broad spectrum of titles," a browsing experience no one else can offer.

Also read CBA's coverage, "Ebooks command BEA spotlight, but stores still needed, many say." Then read our wrap-up blog post "BEA, Blog World Expo NY, & BookBloggerCon."

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.

Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) reports “the number of books produced by traditional publishers rose 5% in 2010, to a projected 316,480, according to preliminary figures released from R. R. Bowker (@Bowker). That number, however, is dwarfed by the growth in output of nontraditional titles, which jumped 169% to 2,766,260. As Bowker notes, the majority of nontraditional titles consists largely of print-on-demand editions of public domain titles. Self-published titles are also included in the figure. Based on the preliminary figures, the combination of traditional and nontraditional books totaled a projected 3,092,740 in 2010, up 132% from 2010.

The Religion category of publishing ranked 5th overall in 2010, behind Fiction, Juveniles, Sociology/Economics, and Science.

Since 2002, the production of traditional books has increased 47%, while nontraditional titles have risen 8,460%.

Read the Bowker news release.

Another report, this one by the AAP (@AmericanPublish), says ebook sales increased 169% in the first two months of 2011 and 146% in March (to $69 million), bringing the total sales for the first quarter of 2011 to $233 million. Religion ebook sales were up 27% in March and up 14% for the quarter. Digital audiobook sales rose 9% in the quarter. Read the Publishers Weekly article.

And Amazon (@amazon) just announced it now sells more Kindle (@AmazonKindle) ebooks than pbooks – paperback and hardcover – combined. Since April it’s sold 105 Kindle editions for every 100 print books. Read the PW article.

Do you tend to read at least one review of a book before purchasing it?

Web consultant, blogger, and author Tim Challies (@challies) surveyed his readers to find out where they buy Christian books and why they buy the books where they do. More than 1,800 people completed the survey; 67% of the respondents were male; 82% lived in the USA; 88% identified themselves as Reformed in theology. His conclusions:

First, Christian bookstores are barely competing with one another; they are competing together against Amazon. Even in a relatively niche market Amazon is dominant. Of course books are popular and even a small share of the market is significant, so those Christian bookstores can still make a go of it. But they need to fight this perception that Amazon offers the best prices.

Second, if we are truly committed to good prices, we should shop carefully and compare pricing before hitting the “checkout” button at Amazon. Unless there are other reasons to buy from Amazon (we are Prime members; we want to buy other items at the same time), we should look carefully at the Christian e-commerce stores to see if they offer better pricing.

Third, Christian bookstores need to maintain (or increase) their commitment to ebooks. The market is heading in that direction and the stores will need to be certain that they do not miss their opportunity. The big challenge, of course, is that Kindle owners will almost always get their books from Amazon; the most popular device has pretty much guaranteed that you will also use it to buy your books.

See all the charts in full.

According to the US Census Bureau (@uscensusbureau), the US population is 308,745,538. And it says the exact midpoint of America’s population has now moved to Plato, Missouri. Researchers determine the country’s center as the place where an imaginary, flat, weightless, and rigid map of the United States would balance perfectly if all residents were of identical weight. CNN (@CNN & @cnnbrk) reports the news this way:

Plato is a quaint and rural place in a nation that, according to the 2010 Census, is becoming less so, as more people move to urban areas, especially the suburbs and exurbs.

Forget big-city lights and traffic jams. Here, you can drive through town in 1 minute and 9 seconds, going the speed limit of 40 mph. On that drive, you’ll pass two churches, several fields of horses, a post office, a school, and five businesses....

...Plato feels different from other places, too. No one here is in a hurry. It’s a place where people still use “visit” as a verb that refers to the act of chatting with neighbors for hours on end with absolutely nothing pressing to discuss. People here get “tickled” by things like fishing, baseball games, turkey hunts, town gossip, and wading in the local streams....

...Plato very well may be stuck in a Norman Rockwell painting that the rest of us decided to toss in the garage decades ago. But this tiny community is more central to 2011 America than it might seem. America sometimes wishes it were a little more like Plato....

Read this in full.

Average people in average, America. How are you publishing and marketing to meet their needs?

MobileMarketingWatch (@MobileMW) reports on the findings of a new Greystripe (@Greystripe) study that says better than 66% of moms are plugged into their mobile devices while engaged in the act of shopping:

• 57% search for mobile coupons via their mobile device.
• 45% of connected moms use their smartphone to locate stores.
• 36% utilize some form of price comparison app or service.
• 31% use their smartphones to research products, read reviews, and check product availability.
• 91% prefer free apps with ads over paid apps without ads.

Read the MMW report.

Also see our April 14 blog post, “Motherhood Sends Moms to Smartphones.”

And see Marketing Charts' "1 in 3 Smartphone Shoppers Often Accesses In-store Coupons."

What are you doing to publish content that will reach these moms? Let Somersault help.

This Infographic (#Infographic) by Ad Age (@AdAgeStat) displays social media demographics based on actual user profiles, not just Web traffic. Also see detailed tables of the age breakdowns of Facebook, MySpace, and LinkedIn.