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The above film, EPILOGUE: the future of print (@EPILOGUEdoc) (vimeo channel) by Hanah Ryu Chung, is a documentary that explores the world of print books, scratching the surface of its future. Chung says:

The act of reading a “tangible tome” has evolved, devolved, and changed many times over, especially in recent years. I hope for the film to stir thought and elicit discussion about the immersive reading experience and the lost craft of the book arts, from the people who are still passionate about reading on paper as well as those who are not.

Also see our previous blogposts:

• "Paper is Stronger than Tech and Now its Aroma Comes Bottled"
• "Home Libraries Despite the Ebook Era"
• "Birth of a Book: The Handmade Bookbinding Process"
• "Book Seller Believes in Video's Marketing Power"
• "A Video About a Poster Masks a Bookstore's Promotion"
• "Video: What Books Do After Hours"
• "The Technology of Storytelling"
• "Photos: The 20 Coolest Bookstores in the World"
• "Introducing the New Book"
• "Even E-reader Owners Still Like Printed Books, Survey Finds"
• "In a Flood Tide of Digital Data, an Ark Full of Books"
• "The 'End' of Print and TV."

If you love books like we (@smrsault) do, we invite you to make our SomersaultNOW online dashboard your personal computer homepage (see instructions).

Digital Book World’s (@DigiBookWorld) editorial director, Jeremy Greenfield (@JDGsaid) says, “For the first time ever, more than half of Americans 65 and older are on the Internet, according to a new report — and this could mean a whole new growing market for ebook publishers and retailers.”

According to the study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project (@pewinternet), 53% of American adults age 65 or older use the Internet or email, up from about 40% less than a year ago. By comparison, 82% of all adults say they use the Internet or email at least occasionally.

Readers in that age group are among the most prolific book buyers, according to the Codex Group, a New York-based book-focused research firm. Book buyers 65 and older buy more books a month than those in the 18-to-24, 25-to-34, and 35-to-44 age groups. Book-buying peaks in the 45-to-54 and 55-to-64 age groups and drops off at 65 and up, possibly due to less disposable income to spend on books.

...“Seniors that read ebooks like the ability to change the type size and appreciate that they can get them at home without having to leave,” says Pew research specialist and report co-author Kathryn Zickuhr (@kzickuhr), referring to an upcoming study from Pew that will discuss libraries and ebooks, and contains feedback from older adults on how they got started reading ebooks and what they like and don’t like about them.

Read this in full.

Read the Pew report in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you effectively communicate your brand’s content in this digital age.

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

Mardel (@Mardel_Inc) retail chain has 35 stores in 7 states. Its store in Oklahoma City, OK is now “one of the first Christian bookstores that has a newly-installed Espresso Book Machine® (EBM), technology that offers patrons instant access to more than 8 million titles printed in any language, and allows area Oklahoma authors to self-publish their work on-site.”

“Now people have a source to print-on-demand all types of books in any language and genres, and to publish their own professional or personal writings,” said Kevin McDonell, merchandise manager of Mardel.

The EBM is “the only digital-to-print at retail solution on the market. With the push of a button, any book from EspressNet®, On Demand Books’ (@espressobook) digital catalog of content, can be printed, bound and trimmed, creating a paperback book that is virtually indistinguishable from the publisher’s version.“

Read the news release (pdf).

Last November, Baker Publishing Group (@ReadBakerBooks) became the first major Christian publisher  to make available almost its entire paperback list to the EBM network.

Read the news release (pdf).

Espresso Book Machine location list.

In other digital news, Publishers Weekly reports:

Zondervan (@Zondervan), the evangelical Christian publishing division of HarperCollins, has begun a new direct-to-digital imprint. Zondervan First (@ZondervanFirst) launches with the acquisition of a historical fiction title, Love in Three-Quarter Time by Dina Sleiman. The digital titles will be produced with editorial and marketing support from Zondervan.

Zondervan First will initially focus on fiction but will eventually include all the categories the company currently publishes. Submissions will be accepted for fiction, non-fiction, and Bible material suitable for kids, teens, and adults in addition to manuscripts geared for curriculum, church resources, academic, and reference books.

Zondervan First will not pay an advance, but authors will receive a 25% royalty from the first book sold. After an ebook sells 10,000 net copies, the author's royalty rate rises to 50%.

Read the news release.

And Alive Communications literary agency for Christian and inspirational titles has launched “a sister epublishing company, Bondfire Books (@BondfireBooks).“

“We aim to be a game changer by working with other literary agencies and paying all authors a 50% net royalty, essentially double the industry standard of 25%. We will also offer 5-year renewable terms instead of the normal life of copyright,” says Rick Christian (@RicklyChristian), founder of Bondfire Books and Alive Communications.

Read the news release.

Somersault (@smrsault) is here to help publishers and other content creators communicate their messages digitally and in print.

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

The book trade's annual international convention, Book Expo America (BEA) (@BookExpoAmerica) (#bea12), is happening right now in New York at the same time the Electronics Entertainment Expo (@e3expo) (#E3) is underway in Los Angeles. Even though they’re occurring on extreme opposites of the continent, they may have more in common than you think.

E3 is where developers announce advanced technology in the computer and video game industry. That may sound like an entirely different world from literary interests, but in today’s digital publishing universe, technology in gaming is probably a short circuit away from being used in an ebook tablet!

Follow coverage of BEA (as well as the International Digital Publishing Forum (#IDPF & #epub)):

·         Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly)

·         Book Business (@bookbusinessmag)

·         Huffington Post Books (@HuffPostBooks)

·         Publishing TrendSetter (@PubTrendSetter)

Also see last year's convention coverage, "BEA, Blog World Expo NY, & BookBloggerCon."

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you navigate the churning waters of 21st century publishing.

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

An article on Marketing Charts (@marketingcharts) says QR Code scans by consumers were up 157% in Q1 2012 over Q1 2011, according to a report by Scanlife (@ScanLife), the mobile barcode solution provider.

Read this in full.

That’s good news for the town of Monmouth (Wikipedia entry) in Wales (pop. 8,877) which recently embarked on the "Monmouthpedia" (@Monmouthpedia) project — a community-wide 6-month project to affix QR codes to all its landmarks, organizations, and even people, and write Wikipedia entries on each of them, which the codes link to. Adweek (@Adweek) says:

The idea came from a TEDx talk in Bristol, where a Wikipedia editor suggested that Wikimedia's UK chapter should "do a whole town" using QR codes. Residents and businesses in Monmouth stepped up, did all the legwork (there are more than 1,000 QR codes in total), and introduced Monmouthpedia this weekend.

A Wikimedia blog entry says:

Lest you think this is a passing interest, the town of Monmouth is in it for the long haul. Many of the QRpedia codes are printed on ceramic plaques that should last for decades. The information in articles is backed by the Wikipedia community and will be continually improved and expanded. Physical guides and maps will become outdated, but the Wikipedia articles will always be able to be updated. This potential for on-site access to up-to-date information in any language is what makes the Monmouthpedia model so exciting.

A simple concept and coordinated effort put this Welsh community on the social media map. Does this spark any dreams you may have for your own brand?

Read the Wikimedia blog entry in full.

Read the Adweek article in full.

Read coverage by psfk (@psfk), by Amanda Kooser (@akooser) for cnet, and by Joseph Volpe (@jrvolpe) for engadget.

Also see our previous blogpost, "Small Swiss Village Hits it Big with Facebook Fans."

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategize unique promotions for your brand.

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

At the 21st Annual Minitex ILL Conference in Minnesota, the director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project (@pewinternet), Lee Rainie (@lrainie), gave the keynote presentation on "Learning in the Digital Age: Where Libraries Fit In."

He discussed the way people use ebook readers and tablet computers, and how those devices are fitting into users' digital lives. His presentation below describes how 3 revolutions in digital technology – in broadband, mobile connectivity, and social media – have created a new social operating system that he calls "networked individualism." And he used the Project's latest findings to help describe how librarians can serve the new educational needs of networked individuals.

How does this new way of learning among your consumers impact your publishing agenda? Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you sort it all out.

And be sure to bookmark, use daily, and tell others about the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

According to an analysis by Digital Book World (@DigiBookWorld) editorial director Jeremy Greenfield (@JDGsaid) of a new study from the Book Industry Study Group (BISG), some 25% of all people who read ebooks are now reading on tablets (as opposed to dedicated e-readers), up from under 20% at the end of 2011.

An industry insider says, as tablets put pressure on sales of dedicated e-readers, prices of the e-ink devices could drop until they hit zero.

Read this in full.

For all the technology we have, it doesn’t seem to be bringing us much happiness, according to a recent survey conducted by research firm Market Probe International and integrated marketing communications agency Euro RSCG Worldwide (@EuroRSCG).

This Digital Life (@prosumer_report) surveyed the opinions of 7,213 people in 19 markets and discovered that

·         55% of respondents believe technology is robbing us of our privacy, while more than half of Millennials worry that a family member or friend will post inappropriate personal information about them online.

·         42% of consumers believe it’s "too soon to tell" whether new technology will have a bad effect on society. 10% already believe the impact is negative.

·         60% say it’s "wrong" for people to share a lot of their personal experiences and feelings online.

·         58% agree people are "losing the ability to engage in civil debate."

·         1 in 3 Millennials say sites such as Facebook and Twitter make them "less satisfied" with their lives.

·         40% of consumers would be happier if they "owned less stuff."

The report says marketers will have to adapt their communications to suit this consumer mood, specifically in “helping people feel a greater sense of control and security.”

"People are looking to replace hyper-consumption and artificiality with a way of living that offers more meaning and more intangible rewards — even as they wish to maintain the modern conveniences upon which they've grown reliant."

Read this in full.

Read the report.

See larger image of above Infographic.

Also see JWT Singapore's (@JWT_Worldwide) news release, "Survey Shows Mounting Social Media Obligations Have Become a Stress and a Chore."

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you properly communicate your brand message.

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

Simultaneous media use has become deeply embedded in the day-to-day habits of US tablet owners, with more than two-thirds regularly going online via the devices while they watch TV.

A new media trends report, State of the Media Spring 2012 (part 2), from market researcher Nielsen (@NielsenWire), says 45% of people who own devices such as Apple's market-leading iPad "multi-screen" at least once a day, while 69% do so on multiple occasions during the average week.

·         61% say they check their email on their tablet while watching TV and

·         47% access their social media profiles.

·         Over one in three (37%) look up information related to the TV program they’re watching on their tablets, while more than 1 in 5 (22%) say they look up coupons or deals related to a TV ad as they watch.

Read this in full.

The average American watches nearly 5 hours of video each day, 98% of which they watch on a traditional TV set, according to the Nielsen Cross-Platform Report. Although this ratio is less than it was just a few years ago, and continues to change, the fact remains that Americans are not turning off. They are shifting to new technologies and devices that make it easier for them to watch the video they want, whenever and wherever they want.

Read this in full.

According to ABI Research’s (@ABIresearch) new report, Connected Home Devices Market Data, about 21% of US homes, or about 27 million, have an Internet-ready TV, game console, Blu-ray player, or smart set-top box that’s connected (not just owned, but connected) to the Web. By far, a gaming console is the most popular route to the Web — it reaches 80% of connected homes.

Read this in full.

American teens are well-known for their consumption of online video content, but they're also among the biggest producers, according to the latest findings from the Pew Research Center’s (@pewresearch) Internet & American Life Project (@pewinternet). The project's latest report, Teens and Online Video, estimates 27% of Internet-using teens (12-17) record and upload video to the Internet.

"One major difference between now and 2006 is that online girls are just as likely these days to upload video as online boys," Pew notes, citing a similar study conducted 6 years ago.

The study also finds that 13% of Internet-using US teens stream live video to others on the Internet, and more than a third (37%) regularly participate in video chats utilizing applications such as Skype, Googletalk, or iChat. Girls are more likely than boys to have such chats.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you communicate your publishing content from screen to screen.

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

Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) correspondent Judith Rosen (@Judith2dogs) reports on the conference Unbound: Speculations on the Future of the Book (#unbound) held May 3-4 at MIT.

The symposium, organized by two postdoctoral fellows in Writing and Humanistic Studies at MIT, Amaranth Borsuk (@amaranthborsuk) and Gretchen E. Henderson, lingered most on what forms the book might take.

The answer varied from Christian Bök’s (@christianbok) The Xenotext, an attempt to genetically engineer a bacterium to store a poem in its genome, to Nick Montfort’s computational poem, 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10, a one-line Commodore 64 BASIC program, to Bob Stein’s SocialBook, a post-print publishing platform that allows users to share comments and drawings on books and articles read in Web browsers.

James Reid-Cunningham, associate director for digital programs and preservation at the Boston Athenaeum, a private membership library, was the only speaker to proclaim the book dead, specifically the reference book. “Books that carry data will be dead; the phone book is already dead,” he said, and drew parallels to other “dead” technologies like the daguerreotype. Digitization may be replacing the codex, but one form that Reid-Cunningham thinks may be a future of the book is art books, which are in and of themselves works of art.

In looking at reshaping the book, Gita Manaktala (@sylviamath), editorial director of the MIT Press, the only traditional publisher on the roster, discussed the difficulties faced by scholarly presses. “Our authors live in a wiki world, where knowledge is produced quickly,” she said. Yet publishers have to figure out what content should be preserved. She also discussed the need for alternatives to peer reviews given that today’s authors put up content and solicit comments as they prepare their manuscripts.

Stein suggested that Manaktala use SocialBook, which is currently in beta, and invited her and all 240 attendees to sign up by emailing him at futureofthebook@gmail.com. The idea behind the platform, he explained, is that a book becomes a place where readers and authors can gather. “Google Docs, wikis, they’re great at letting you change the text. They’ve grafted social awkwardly on top of it. For us,” said Stein, “social is not a pizza topping, it’s the cornerstone of reading and writing.”

Read this in full.

Also see imprint's (@printmag) "Between Page and Screen," The Institute for the Future of the Book, and Harvard’s History of the Book.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you identify publishing opportunities in this digital age.

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