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NPR (@npralltech) journalist Steve Henn (@HennsEggs) reports on the mobile shopping revolution and one way store retailers can compete.

When you shop online, marketers are following your every click. But when you walk into a store they know almost nothing about you. That detailed information about in-store shoppers is exactly what retailers want. A company called Nearbuy Systems (@NearbuySystems) is using mobile technology to try to give it to merchants.

"Our challenge was, take what we already have, and most stores have — Wi-Fi and ... video for security and things — and mix those two signals together to create something that is more accurate," says Bryan Wargo, co-founder of Nearbuy Systems.

Retailers could use this technology to build apps to guide customers through their store aisles to specific products, or even deliver discounts and coupons based on where people are standing in any particular store.

Read this in full.

Bookmark and use daily SomersaultNOW, our (@smrsault) online dashboard designed for publishing and marketing executives.

Digital Book World (@DigiBookWorld) editorial director Jeremy Greenfield (@JDGsaid) postulates on what the Microsoft/B&N deal could mean to book publishing:

Imagine a Windows-powered Nook Tablet (@nookBN) that breaks the iOS and Android stranglehold on the mobile device market.

Imagine turning a PowerPoint slide deck into an enhanced ebook and distributing it to a dozen e-booksellers with the press of a button.

Imagine a book discovery engine built into every version of Internet Explorer and connected to one of the world’s leading e-bookstores.

These are the dreams that book industry players were having last night as the news sunk in of a sweeping new partnership between tech giant Microsoft and the second-leading US e-bookseller, Barnes & Noble.

Read this in full.

In “B&N and Microsoft: Why It's Not About Ebooks,” Joe Wikert (@jwikert), general manager, publisher, and chair of the Tools of Change conference (@toc) says, “Success in this venture will not be measured by sales of ebooks. Microsoft should instead use this as an opportunity to create an end-to-end consumer experience that rivals Apple's and has the advertising income potential to make Google jealous.”

Read this in full.

It makes sense that B&N wants to keep improving its Nook Tablet. According to a new BISG (@BISG) study, dedicated e-readers are losing their hold, paving the way for publishers to introduce richer ebook content on multi-function tablet devices.

In another B&N development, Laura Hazard Owen (@laurahazardowen) reports on GigaOM (@gigaom) that the Nook will soon be used for more than reading ebooks.

On the heels of yesterday’s news that Microsoft is investing $300 million in Barnes & Noble’s Nook and college businesses, B&N CEO William Lynch says that the company plans to embed NFC (near field communication) chips into Nooks. Users could take their Nook into a Barnes & Noble store and wave it near a print book to get info on it or buy it.

That could help someone gain quick information on their Nook about a book, making it easy to go from browsing to buying. Consumers could also choose to just buy a printed book in the store with the additional information gleaned from the Nook. The model would help ensure that showrooming leads to sales through Barnes & Noble, whether users ultimately purchase a print or ebook, instead of sending them online and possibly Amazon.

Read this in full.

In these fast-changing times, contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you publish and market your content.

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

From Chart of the Day (@chartoftheday)

Here’s the latest disrupter in the education field. TED (@TEDNews & @tedtalks) curator Chris Anderson (@TEDchris) announced yesterday that “after more than a year of planning and dreaming, we're finally launching our new TED-Ed website (@TED_ED), whose goal is to offer teachers a thrilling new way to use video.”

...the goal is to allow any teacher to take a video of their choice (yes, any video on YouTube, not just ours) and make it the heart of a “lesson” that can easily be assigned in class or as homework, complete with context, follow-up questions, and further resources.

This platform also allows users to take any useful educational video, not just TED’s, and easily create a customized lesson around the video. Users can distribute the lessons, publicly or privately, and track their impact on the world, a class, or an individual student.

In recent years at TED, we've become enamored of a strategy we call “radical openness”: Don't try to do big things yourself. Instead empower others to do them with you.

This has served us well. Sharing TEDTalks free online has built a global community of idea seekers and spreaders. Opening up our transcripts has allowed 7500 volunteers to translate the talks into 80+ languages. And giving away the TEDx brand in the form of free licenses, has spawned more than 4000 TEDx events around the world.

So it's natural that we would look to this approach as we embark on our education initiative.

Read this in full.

Also see The Atlantic’s (@TheAtlantic) article by Megan Garber (@megangarber), “The Digital Education Revolution, Cont’d: Meet TED-Ed’s New Online Learning Platform.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you take advantage of new technology to publish and market your brand’s message.

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

The US Department of Justice announced April 11 it was suing Apple and 5 major international publishers (Hachette, HarperCollins, Macmillan, Penguin, and Simon & Schuster) for allegedly conspiring to fix — and subsequently increase — the price of ebooks in a bid to “require them to grant retailers — such as Amazon and Barnes & Noble — the freedom to reduce the prices of their ebook titles.” Hachette, HarperCollins, and Simon & Schuster have since settled their suits (see Publishers Weekly, “The Broad Strokes of the Hachette, HarperCollins, and S&S Price-Fixing Settlement”).

Read the summary by The Wall Street Journal, “Publishers Seek to Resolve Ebook Case” and the paper by Knowledge@Wharton (@knowledgewharton), "Ebook Price-Fixing: Finding the Best Model for Publishers — and Readers."

Coverage of the news by The New York Times includes “Book Publishing’s Real Nemesis,” “Competition Needs Protection,” and “Cut in Ebook Pricing by Amazon Is Set to Shake Rivals.”

For an historical perspective on the matter, see this NPR commentary by Jason Boog (@jasonboog), editor of GalleyCat (@GalleyCat).

“This wasn't the first time the industry had needed a quick and dirty price fix. During the Great Depression, publishers faced off against another seemingly invincible retail juggernaut: Macy's Department Stores.”

On ZDNet, Adrian Kingsley-Hughes (@the_pc_doc) expands the topic and asks, “Should the DoJ investigate ebook DRM and hardware lock-in?”

“For example, Apple only offers iBooks on the iOS platform, so when one day your favorite iDevice goes the way of all electronic devices, you either have to buy a new device or lose your entire iBooks investment.”

Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you navigate the turbulent seas of ebook publishing.

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

Although many Californians who own Kindles, Nooks, and other e-readers love their gadgets, they still prefer books the old-fashioned way — on paper — according to a survey by USC Dornsife (@USCDornsife) and the Los Angeles Times (@usclatpoll).

Even with sales of e-readers surging, only 10% of respondents who have one said they had abandoned traditional books. More than half said most or all of the books they read are in printed form.

The pleasure of reading endures in the digital age, even with its nearly boundless options for entertainment, according to data collected from 1,500 registered state voters. Six in 10 people said they like to read “a lot,” and more than 20% reported reading books for more than 10 hours a week....

And age is clearly no barrier to new habits. Folks over 50 are embracing some new reading technology at about the same rate as younger people. Twenty-two percent of those ages 18 to 49 own e-readers; 20% of people 50 and older have them.

Read this in full.

Also see our previous blogposts, “The Next Time Someone Says the Internet Killed Reading Books, Show Them This Chart” and “Extensive New Study: The Rise of E-reading.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you publish and market content in either ebook or pbook formats.

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

From Kottke.org (@Kottke) comes word that the Internet Archive (@internetarchive) is hosting a copy of the American Specimen Book of Type Styles put out by the American Type Founders Company in 1912. It’s an elegant 1300-page book showing 100s of typefaces and their possible use cases, as well as all the equipment, tools, and furniture of the printing trade at the turn of the 20^th century.

See this in full.

There's also a 1910 copy of what is basically the German version of the ATF book.

Also see our previous blogpost, “Font Pain and Poetry: So Much Depends on a Curve.”

If you’re a lover of all things related to books like we (@smrsault) are, be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

In the Personal Tech section of The New York Times (@NYTpersonaltech), Alan Finder explains why you may or may not be able to digitally check-out your favorite books from your local library; and, if you find them, exactly how to do it.

Five of the six major publishers of trade books either refuse to make new ebooks available to libraries or have pulled back significantly over the last year on how easily or how often those books can be circulated. And complaints are rampant about lengthy waiting lists for best sellers and other popular ebooks from the publishers that are willing to sell to libraries....

These complexities may only increase with the announcement [April 11] that the Justice Department had filed a civil antitrust action against major book publishers and Apple, accusing the companies of colluding in 2010 to raise the prices of ebooks [on this subject, see the Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) article, “ABA Calls DoJ Ruling ‘Baffling’” and its other coverage]. In the meantime, though, if you can find the ebook you want in the library, it’s easy to check it out. You can browse a library’s digital holdings from the comfort of your living room at any time. You don’t have to go to the library to borrow a book, and even better, you don’t have to go there to return it. Books vanish from your device when they are due. And you can get access to a library’s ebooks from myriad devices, including e-readers, tablets, and smartphones.

You do have to learn one of the two basic systems. One is for Amazon’s Kindle, which works directly through Amazon.com and is the easier of the two. The other requires you to download software from the Adobe website, and works for other e-readers.

Read this in full.

For a historical view on the topic of libraries and ebooks, see Mathew Ingram’s (@mathewi) article on GigaOm (@gigaom), “Kindle Lending: Book Publishers Still Not Getting It.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you navigate 21st century digital publishing.

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

Alexis Madrigal (@alexismadrigal), senior editor at The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic), offers this chart of statistics drawn from Gallup (@gallupnews) surveys to show that book reading has not diminished with the rise of digitization; on the contrary, it’s expanded. Interesting!

Also see The Christian Science Monitor's (@csmonitor) "Ebook revolution: We're reading more than ever" and our previous blogpost, "Extensive New Study: The Rise of E-reading."

If you’re a book lover like we (@smrsault) are, be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Research tab.

In this article, Wired’s (@wired) Angela Watercutter (@WaterSlicer) writes how “with tablets selling at mind-boggling rates, book publishers are scrambling to figure out how to bring their ancient medium into the digital realm.”

Though the rewards promise to be great, the adaptation book publishers must make is far more complicated than that faced by the music and movie industries, which essentially needed to digitize their current products. Bookmakers must become multimedia companies — creating audio, video, and interactive components for their immersive, built-for-tablets offerings.

They also face a dizzying array of decisions brought on by evolving standards and platforms: Should a certain book come to life as a dedicated app, an approach that, until iBooks 2 was released, offered more flexibility in terms of features like video and audio on the iPad? Or should it be turned into an “enhanced ebook,” which will work on Apple’s tablet as well as Amazon’s Kindle Fire, Barnes and Noble’s Nook, and other devices, but must be re-created several times over to meet each device’s specs?

Read this in full.

Therein lies the rub: are enhanced ebooks a profitable return-on-investment for publishers? This is explored by Digital Book World (@DigiBookWorld) in Andrew Rhomberg’s (@arhomberg) “Some Tough Questions for Enhanced Ebooks.”

Also see our previous blogpost, “Extensive New Study: The Rise of E-reading” and Mike Shatzkin’s (@MikeShatzkin) analysis, “A feast of data to interpret in new Pew survey of book readers about ebooks.”

And then there’s the article, “A Billion-Dollar Turning Point for Mobile Apps” by New York Times (@nytimestech) tech reporter Jenna Wortham (@jennydeluxe) that, even though it focuses on the Web strategy of entrepreneurs and start-up companies, may have implications for publishers preparing ebooks and ebook apps for tablets.

The path for Internet start-ups used to be quite clear: establish a presence on the Web first, then come up with a version of your service for mobile devices.

Now, at a time when the mobile start-up Instagram can command $1 billion in a sale to Facebook, some start-ups are asking: who needs the Web?

“People are living in the moment and they want to share in the moment,” says professor S. Shyam Sundar, a director of the media Effects Research Lab at Pennsylvania State University. “Mobile gives you that immediacy and convenience.”

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you plan your strategy for ebook (as well as pbook) publishing.

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