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Erin Griffith (@eringriffith) writes on PandoDaily (@PandoDaily) about Macmillan Publishing’s resolve to embrace the disruption happening in the world of education publishing and to intentionally change its structure, business model, and processes to succeed in this Internet age.

Macmillan Publishing has taken an entirely different route altogether. It’s one that, until now, has remained relatively under the radar. The company hired Troy Williams, former CEO of early ebook company Questia Media, which sold to Cengage. Macmillan gave him a chunk of money and incredibly unusual mandate: “Build a business that will undermine our own.”

The publishing giant has given Williams a sum greater than $100 million (he won’t say exactly how much) to acquire ed-tech startups that will eventually be the future of Macmillan. The plan is to let them exist autonomously like startups within the organization, as Macmillan transitions out of the content business and into educational software and services. Through the entity, called Macmillan New Ventures, Williams plans to do five deals this year and 10 to 15 over the course of the next five years.

He’s buying companies that will help Macmillan survive as a business once textbooks go away completely.

This includes PrepU (@PrepUQuiz), a quizzing engine for classrooms, i>Clicker (@iclicker), a mobile classroom polling company, and most recently EBI (@EBIandMAPWorks), a data and evaluation startup.

Read this in full.

Troy Williams speaks about his objectives in this video (beginning at the 5:00 mark).

Look to Somersault (@smrsault) to help you scout the future of publishing and the continued convergence of technology and writing.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard, especially the Future tab.

GigaOM (@gigaom) senior writer Mathew Ingram (@mathewi) reports on 72-year-old Canadian author Margaret Atwood’s (@MargaretAtwood) involvement with Wattpad (@wattpad) (blog) and Fanado (@Fanadoevents).

Wattpad is a Toronto, Ontario-based...online writing community with more than 3 million users and over 5 million pieces of content uploaded to the network....

Instead of just uploading books, many members of Wattpad’s community upload unfinished chapters that are still in development, or pieces of poetry they need feedback on, and then get comments and advice from other users of the service — both other writers and readers....

In addition to her work with Wattpad, Atwood is one of the founding artists involved with a startup called Fanado, which is trying to raise funds through the crowdfunding service Indiegogo (@Indiegogo) in order to launch a kind of digital-community platform for artists....

The idea behind Fanado is to give authors tools that they can use to interact with fans remotely, including the ability to share live video and audio of readings or get-togethers with a community, and to autograph and distribute both electronic books and printed books, as well as CDs and other offerings related to a work. In some ways, Fanado is the logical extension of an earlier project that Atwood was involved in, which led to the development of an electronic book-signing device called the “LongPen (@Syngrafii) — which authors could use to sign physical books in remote locations while on a virtual book tour.

Read this in full.

Read the Fanado news release (pdf).

See book patrol’s (@bookpatrol) post, “Fanado: The LongPen Still Lives."

Also see our blogpost, "Authors Can Now Personalize Messages in Ebooks."

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you plan and execute strategy to bring authors and readers together.

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

Chairman of Thomas Nelson Publishers (@ThomasNelson), Michael Hyatt’s (@MichaelHyatt) new book is Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World (#PlatformBook). It offers practical advice for anyone who wants to effectively communicate any kind of a message in today’s media-saturated world.

He says properly building a platform for your brand (either you or an entity you represent) provides visibility (elevation above the crowd), amplification (extend your reach to people who want to hear you), and connection (engage people with relevant and valuable information).

Hyatt maintains an active blog and Twitter stream. He says it took him 4 years to attract more than 1,000 readers a month, but today he has more than 300,000 visitors (and 130,000 Twitter followers). Read his post, “4 Insights I Gleaned from Building My Own Platform.”

Hyatt also conducted a teleseminar for Platform. You can hear it here.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategically and effectively build your platform.

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

The Verge (@verge) reports on a publishing/marketing concept that uses disappearing ink to print books whose text gradually fades away over a period of 2 months as it comes into contact with light and air.

Dubbed "The Book That Can't Wait," the format — an intriguing one in a world increasingly dominated by Kindles and Nooks — is being pioneered by independent Argentinian publishing house Eterna Cadencia, which is using it to promote new authors. As the promo video points out, “if people don't read their first books, they'll never make it to a second.”

Read this in full.

If you’re a book lover like we (@smrsault) are, bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

As the above video reports, this Wall Street Journal Life & Culture (@WSJLife) article focuses on the amount of information about readers that booksellers and their e-readers are now able to glean through ebook technology.

It takes the average reader just seven hours to read the final book in Suzanne Collins's "Hunger Games" trilogy on the Kobo e-reader — about 57 pages an hour. Nearly 18,000 Kindle readers have highlighted the same line from the second book in the series: "Because sometimes things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them." And on Barnes & Noble's Nook, the first thing that most readers do upon finishing the first "Hunger Games" book is to download the next one.

In the past, publishers and authors had no way of knowing what happens when a reader sits down with a book. Does the reader quit after three pages, or finish it in a single sitting? Do most readers skip over the introduction, or read it closely, underlining passages and scrawling notes in the margins? Now, ebooks are providing a glimpse into the story behind the sales figures, revealing not only how many people buy particular books, but how intensely they read them.

Read this in full.

Bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

</object><p style="font-size:11px; font-family:Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; color: #808080; margin-top: 5px; background: transparent; text-align: center; width: 500px;">Watch Digital Nation on PBS. See more from FRONTLINE.</p>

In our Internet era, publishing houses are having to reinvent themselves as technology companies in order to adapt their business models and remain viable. But when does technology cease to be a value-add to the consumer experience?

“Digital Nation: Life on the Virtual Frontier,” a documentary that aired on PBS’ (@PBS) Frontline (@frontlinepbs) program, asks the question, “Is our 24/7 wired world causing us to lose as much as we've gained?”

Within a single generation, digital media and the World Wide Web have transformed virtually every aspect of modern culture, from the way we learn and work to the ways in which we socialize and even conduct war. But is the technology moving faster than we can adapt to it?

This video explores what it means to be human in a 21st-century digital world. It seeks to understand the implications of living in a world consumed by technology and the impact that this constant connectivity may have on future generations. "I'm amazed at the things my kids are able to do online, but I'm also a little bit panicked when I realize that no one seems to know where all this technology is taking us, or its long-term effects," says producer Rachel Dretzin.

Read and see this in full.

Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you leverage technology to effectively communicate your brand’s message.

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

Family Christian Stores (@FCstores) is the world’s largest Christian-focused retail chain with nearly 300 stores nationwide. Along with its books, Bibles, gifts, and music, it now is selling its own exclusive e-reader, edifi.

Based on a chart comparing edifi with the Nook Color, Nook Tablet, and Kindle Fire, edifi is comparable but a bit smaller (although same screen size), has less resolution and pixel density, runs on Android 2.3.5, comes with its own stand, and is less expensive. It’s uniquely pre-installed with family-friendly features and free apps including Safe Search Wi-Fi Web browsing, 27 Bible translations, and Christian Internet radio. With edifi, users are able to check email, access social networks, watch movies, display photos, and download ebooks and read them with the included FC Reader app.

Read our previous blogposts on the subject of tablets.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you publish your content for ebooks, pbooks, and audiobooks.

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

GalleyCat (@GalleyCat) reports that net sales revenue from ebooks have now surpassed hardcover books in the first quarter of 2012.

According to the Association of American Publishers’ (@AmericanPublish) March net sales revenue report (collecting data from 1,189 publishers), adult ebook sales were $282.3 million while adult hardcover sales counted $229.6 million during the 1st quarter of 2012. During the same period last year, hardcover accounted for $335 million in sales while ebooks logged $220.4 million.

Here’s more from the report (Q1 2012 chart embedded above): “While ebooks continue to show growth, downloaded audiobooks also keep accelerating vs last year – as some experts have said, tied to ongoing popularity and acquisition of smartphones and mobile devices.”

Read this in full.

Also see our previous blogposts, “Ebooks Projected to Comprise 50% of US Trade Book Market By 2016,” “Extensive New Study: The Rise of E-reading,” and others about ebooks.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you publish your content as pbooks, ebooks, and audiobooks.

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

In The New York Times Media & Advertising section (@NYTimesAd), David Carr (@carr2n) says “the velocity of transformation is growing” in this digital publishing era.

Technology has altered the media business more than most, not in one big surge, but in a series of waves, each one shifting the ground that traditional businesses were built on.

He recounts how David Carey, the president of Hearst Magazines (@HearstCorp), had The Huffington Post (@HuffingtonPost) on his mind when he addressed a group of employees last week.

“I am telling them to beware of digital upstarts that don’t follow any of the rules of big companies like ours,” he said. “Huffington Post has gone down paths that others scoffed at and they have emerged with a string of very strong products.”

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you identify blue ocean strategy for your brand in this fast-changing publishing climate.

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

At a media event today in Los Angeles, Microsoft announced its new tablet, Surface (@surface) (#Surface), which, when it debuts (a release date was not announced) will feature a 10.6-inch wide display with Gorilla Glass, its own kickstand, Bluetooth, front & rear camera, a full-size USB port, dual Wi-Fi antennae, a multitouch full-size keyboard, a stylus which writes freehand on the screen, a trackpad, and presumably Microsoft Office software (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.) — and yet is only about a half-inch thick. Models will come with either 64 gigabytes or 128 GB of storage.

Its capacity as an e-reading device was left unexplained. Microsoft has invested $300 million investment in Barnes & Noble's Nook e-reader, though B&N was not part of today’s announcement.

Read coverage by USA TODAY, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Sun-Times, VentureBeat, and The Verge.

Somersault (@smrsault) helps you stay abreast of new technology and its impact on publishing.

Be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.