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In his coverage of the recent Digital Book World (@DigiBookWorld) Discoverability and Marketing conference, Jeremy Greenfield (@JDGsaid) reports, “Reader behavior is in flux and the ways in which people engage with and discover new content has grown exponentially.”

–     In 2011, nearly half of consumers changed their book-buying behavior (chart below)

–     39% of books are sold online, 26% in stores, and the rest in nearly a dozen other ways (chart below)

–     People discover new books in up to 44 different ways

...Amid all the change in how readers read and discover books, one thing has remained constant: in-person, personal recommendations are the No. 1 way people discover books, no matter who they are or how they read.

Read this in full.

Also see "Discoverability & Marketing Conference: A Diversity of Challenges."

And read our previous blogposts “How Ebook Buyers Discover Books” and “Sites That Facilitate Book Discovery.”

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

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And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Book Discovery Sites tab.

The above Chart of the Day (@chartoftheday) graph depicts research by Kontera (@Kontera) to determine when people use their PC (stationary) versus smartphones and tablets (mobile).

PC usage is strongest from 11 am to 5 pm (the work day while in the office) and mobile usage is strongest from 6 pm to midnight (the leisure hours at home).

The research also finds that 22% of all Internet content consumed in the US is on mobile devices.

Here’s another chart, showing how people are using their smartphones and tablets.

How might this influence your digital publishing strategy?

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you think through your mobile content effectiveness.

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

New findings from a Nielsen (@NielsenWire) online survey of respondents from 56 countries:

·         Nearly half (49%) have purchased a product online.

·         46% have used social media to help make purchase decisions.

·         37% purchase from online-only stores most frequently.

·         1 in 5 global respondents plan to purchase electronic books and digital newspaper and magazine subscriptions in the next 3 to 6 months.

·         The online purchase intent of hard copy books and physical subscriptions declined from 44% in 2010 to 33% this year.

·         Categories with growing global purchase intent include computer/game software (+18%), entertainment tickets (+10%), computer/game hardware (+6%), video/music production (+5%), cars/motorcycle and accessories (+4%) and apparel/accessories/shoes/jewelry (+1%).

·         More than one-quarter (26%) of global respondents plan to purchase food and beverage products via an online connected device in the next 3 to 6 months — a jump from 18% reported in 2010.

Also see the Infographic “The Pre-Purchase Habits of Shoppers” and our previous blogposts, “Why Shopping Will Never Be the Same” and “Tablets Change Shopping, Media Habits.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help digitally publish and market your content.

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

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

The above Infographic, based on research from the My Hope with Billy Graham (@BGEA) outreach campaign, depicts statistics of the average American neighborhood of 100 people.

How might this information shape your publishing agenda? Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you.

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

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

The Infographic is by Milo (@miloshopping). Enlarge it.

Bottlenose (@bottlenoseapp) is a new real-time social search engine. All Things D (@allthingsd) senior editor Mike Isaac (@MikeIsaac) says:

It is essentially described as a Google for the social Web, using public API inputs from the largest social networks out there: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+, as well as photo-sharing sites like Instagram. Enter a search query, and Bottlenose scans each of the networks for the most relevant, current information, depending on trends across networks and the influence of the people sharing the content.

It’s likely most relevant to marketers and social strategists who want to keep an eye on the pulse of whatever their clients follow. Without the search algorithm, the dashboard is especially close to a HootSuite-like analytics product. The free version is advertising-based — like Google — while the upgraded paid versions give better access to the Twitter firehose, along with additional feature upgrades.

Read this in full.

Bottlenose is included in our (@smrsault) SomersaultNOW online dashboard in the “Research” and “Monitor Your Brand” tabs. Bookmark our dashboard and use it every day.

Floatingsheep.org (@floating_sheep), a website that maps the geographies of user-generated online content, has created the pdf booklet “Geographies of the World’s Knowledge,” a joint venture between Convoco and the Oxford Internet Institute (@oiioxford). Through creative maps, it visualizes the distribution of the world’s knowledge through 10 categories

1.    Literacy and Gender

2.    Internet Penetration

3.    The World’s Newspapers

4.    The Location of Academic Knowledge

5.    Academic Knowledge and Language

6.    Academic Knowledge and Publishers

7.    Mapping Flickr

8.    The Distribution of all Wikipedia Articles

9.    Time-series of the Distribution of Biographies on Wikipedia over the Last Five Centuries

10. User-generated Content in Google

Data, evaluated in an unprecedented way, shows the current distribution of knowledge in the different parts of the globe. Some of the implications of this are surprising, others are worrying. The maps visualize where the foci of knowledge — and, thus, the forces of innovation and economic growth — are located. Thanks to this scientific visualization the most important factors involved can be grasped at a glance.

The booklet is also available in interactive format for iPads.

Consider how this information should influence your publishing strategy.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you plan, execute, and analyze market research for your brand.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Research tab.

This article by USA TODAY (@USATODAYtech)  tech reporter Jon Swartz (@jswartz) has implications for the future of bookstore retailers. Swartz writes, “The convergence of smartphone technology, social-media data, and futuristic technology such as 3-D printers is changing the face of retail in a way that experts across the industry say will upend the bricks-and-mortar model in a matter of a few years.”

"The next five years will bring more change to retail than the last 100 years," says Cyriac Roeding, CEO of Shopkick, a location-based shopping app available at Macy's, Target, and other top retailers.

Within 10 years, retail as we know it will be unrecognizable, says Kevin Sterneckert, a Gartner analyst who follows retail technology. Big-box stores such as Office Depot, Old Navy, and Best Buy will shrink to become test centers for online purchases. Retail stores will be there for a "touch and feel" experience only, with no actual sales. Stores won't stock any merchandise; it'll be shipped to you. This will help them stay competitive with online-only retailers, Sterneckert says.

Read this in full.

Below is a slide deck summary of psfk’s (@PSFK) report, The Future of Retail.

Also read about the possibility of Google providing same-day delivery and what IKEA is doing with Augmented Reality.

See our other blogposts tagged “Retail.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you navigate the revolutionary changes occurring in the world of books.

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

MediaPost’s (@MediaPost) MarketingDaily lists the top 10 designated market areas (DMA) in which adults who personally own an e-reader reside:

  1. San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose, CA

  2. Washington, DC (Hagerstown, MD)

  3. New York, NY

  4. Boise, ID

  5. Austin, TX

  6. San Diego, CA

  7. Seattle-Tacoma, WA

  8. Denver, CO

  9. Philadelphia, PA

10. Salt Lake City, UT

Source: GfK MRI’s (@GfKMRINews) 2011 Market-by-Market study

See the Market-by-Market List of 205 DMAs (pdf).

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you publish and market your brand’s content in today’s digital publishing environment.

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

On the ECPA (@ecpa) website, David Kinnaman (@davidkinnaman), president of Barna Group (@barnagroup), says new research shows pastors love books. “One of the nation’s most loyal book-buying audiences, 92% of all pastors in the US say they buy at least one book every month, and they average 3.8 books per month. That’s anywhere from 12 to 46 books a year. Compare that to the total population, where only 29.3% of American adults buy more than 10 books in the course of a year.”

·         Pastors, as a group, purchase between 8 million and 13 million books every year.

·         Pastors influence others — their staffs, boards, and congregants — to buy books.

·         Many pastors say they want to support the business and ministry of Christian retailers. But this sentiment — particularly for bricks and mortar Christian retail — is changing with the generations. Younger pastors are leading the shift to online buying, with 57% of Buster pastors (ages 28-46) expressing a preference for online.

·         When a pastor selects a ministry-related book, the most important factor, by a wide margin, is the topic. 58% of pastors say topic is the most important factor, while only 15% give top priority to the author of the book. This is consistent across all generations and across all church sizes.

·         By a large margin, pastors in the US prefer to read books in hardcover (55%). Only 24% prefer paperback, and 16% prefer digital.

·         E-reading devices have tripled in their penetration among pastors in the last 2 years.

Read this in full.

Also see our previous blogpost, “Study: Christians are Embracing Tablets & E-readers” and other posts tagged research.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you reach pastors with your book and brand message.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Research tab.