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Thomas Nelson will continue to operate as an independent company with its unique editorial focus on inspirational and Christian content. Details, such as how Thomas Nelson will benefit from HarperCollins global print and digital platform, will be forthcoming.

HarperCollins also has a religion imprint called HarperOne (@HarperOne).

Read the news release.

GalleyCat says

Last month, News Corp. (the corporate parent of HarperCollins) announced it would split into two entities, an entertainment business and a publishing business.

Digital Book World says

Digital revenues are growing quickly in Christian publishing, with the Association of American Publishers reporting nearly a 50% increase in digital revenues in religious publishing in February 2012 versus February 2011.

See our previous blogpost, “HarperCollins to Acquire Thomas Nelson.”

Bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

Forbes (@Forbes) contributor Suw Charman-Anderson (@Suw) asks, “If you’re starting out and you’ve just written your first book, you really do have to ask yourself the hard question: Is this book actually any good?”

If there’s a common flaw in self-publishing, it’s that too many books are published too soon. Experienced voices across the publishing world continually advise self-publishers to get help with editing, and not just copyediting but story editing too. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to properly edit your own work. But the siren call of the Kindle store is often too seductive. The urge to finish your first draft, chuck it through a spellchecker and release it in to the wild is often far too strong for eager writers to resist.

But resist you must. Not resisting results in your name being married, permanently, to sub-standard work which doesn’t show off your talents to their best. Do you really want, in five or ten years time, to look back on your early work and cringe? More to the point, do you really want your first act of publishing to result in the irreversible blotting of your copybook with your potential fans?

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you professionally craft, edit, publish, and market your content.

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

In 2 articles, CNET’s (@CNET) executive editor David Carnoy (@DavidCarnoy) offers step-by-step tips on how to self-publish print books as well as ebooks.

Self-publishing a print book is easy. Self-publishing an ebook is even easier.

You choose a size for your book, format your Word manuscript to fit that size, turn your Word doc into a PDF, create some cover art in Photoshop, turn that into a PDF, and upload it all to the self-publisher of your choice and get a book proof back within a couple of weeks (or sooner) if you succeeded in formatting everything correctly. You can then make changes and swap in new PDFs.

After you officially publish your book, you can make changes to your cover and interior text by submitting new PDFs, though your book will go offline (“out of stock”) for a week or two. Companies may charge a fee (around $25-$50) for uploading a new cover or new interior.

Read this in full.

Carnoy’s other article, “How to Self-Publish an Ebook,” suggests basic tips for ebook publishing and lays out best options for publishing quickly and easily.

·         It's gotta be good....

·         Create an arresting cover....

·         Price your ebook cheaply....

·         Avoid any outfits that don't let you set the price....

·         Marketing is all about creating awareness for your ebook....

Read this in full.

Also see MediaShift's (@mediatwit) "A Step-By-Step Guide to US Copyright Registration for Self-Publishers."

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you publish and market your content, as either a pbook or ebook.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Publishers tab that includes links to self-publishing services.

Forbes (@Forbes) senior editor Deborah L. Jacobs (@djworking) offers insights she learned in successfully self-publishing her non-fiction book.

Digital technology has made it possible for anyone to publish a book….But turning that book into a successful commercial venture is far more challenging. For more than one year after self-publishing my book, Estate Planning Smarts, promoting it was practically my full-time job.

I didn’t take the decision to self-publish lightly. In fact, I turned down offers from two big publishers because I wasn’t happy with the money they offered. McGraw-Hill’s offer was missing a zero—and I told them so.

...The reason for publishers’ low offers was that statistics show estate planning books don’t sell well. I had a vision for a book that would prove them wrong, but the big companies would never have allocated the resources to produce it.

My business model involved going against the grain by spending money where big publishers are cutting corners: high-quality paper, two-color graphics, printing on a Web press, rather than print-on-demand. And while big publishers were cutting experienced staff, I retained top talent for editing and graphics, on a freelance basis. The goal was to produce a high-quality product that advisers would give to their clients and friends and family would share with each other.

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you publish and market your content in this fast-changing digital age.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard;especially the Publishers tab that includes links to self-publishing services.

Somersault’s editorial director Dave Lambert says this New York Times commentary talks about the effects of one author's novels, Sir Walter Scott, on the attitudes that created the Civil War. “Who says books don't affect society?,” he asks.

In the commentary Cynthia Wachtell says

Sir Walter Scott not only dominated gift book lists on the eve of the Civil War but also dominated Southern literary taste throughout the conflict. His highly idealized depiction of the age of chivalry allowed Southern readers and writers to find positive meaning in war’s horrors, hardships, and innumerable deaths. And his works inspired countless wartime imitators, who drew upon his romantic conception of combat.

...[According to Mark Twain], “Sir Walter Scott had so large a hand in making Southern character, as it existed before the war, that he is in great measure responsible for the war.”

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you powerfully communicate in the 21st century.

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

Writing in Salon (@Salon), Corinne Purtill (@corinnepurtill) describes her ordeal of writing a book; something most authors can probably identify with.

Four and a half years ago I quit my job and moved continents so that I could write a book. This book was to be a serious yet eminently readable work of narrative nonfiction. It was going to be the kind of book that earned stellar reviews in respected publications and landed me a segment on “The Daily Show,” where you could tell Jon Stewart thought I was funny....

...I set about writing, a thing I believed I loved to do. I was wrong. I liked having written things. Writing them was the worst. I wrote and wrote, and could not believe there was so much still to write. I read and reread drafts until I was no longer sure they were in English. I cut pages of useless and boring exposition that amounted to days of work....

I agonized over every sentence, and I have yet to hear any great writer advise that the best work comes when you ignore your instincts and focus intently on fear and self-doubt....

As the years passed with no sign of a finished book, I took odd jobs to stay afloat....

Finally I finished it and sent it to my agent. Over the next 24 hours I refreshed my email every 10 minutes in the hopes that her breathless, joyful reply would surface. After a few weeks of silence I no longer believed that the book was so good she just needed time to compose herself before writing back. The email mercifully euthanizing our contract eventually came. But by that time I had had a baby, was about to move to London for my husband’s job and had already mourned the end of this little dream....

Read this in full.

As the saying goes: ‘There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open your vein.’

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

The above Infographic (enlarge it) is by Marketo (@marketo).

According to this article on All Twitter (@alltwtr), inbound marketing is the concept of “capturing the attention of prospects and helping them find your brand (or products) before they're ready to buy. This can be done in a variety of ways, but search, content marketing, and, increasingly, social media platforms such as Twitter and Facebook, are found to be the most effective.”

The approach differs from traditional marketing in that the campaign makes it easier for leads to find the brand, as opposed to the other way around.

A successful inbound marketing strategy will usually implement the following:

1. The creation of a central theme to anchor efforts each month

2. The creation of 2-3 small pieces of content around said theme

3. Regular updates on social media channels to get the word out about this content

4. The production of one major piece of content to support the theme

5. Blogging

6. Analysis and optimization

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you plan and execute effective inbound marketing strategy for your brand.

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

Sally Falkow (@sallyfalkow), president of PRESSfeed (@PRESSfeed) says journalists look for multimedia content to help them report a story. She offers 15 steps to crafting a successful social media news release:

·         Write a short, concise headline....

·         Add a main image that tells the story....

·         Craft the lead paragraph with the news angle and the 5Ws....

·         List the core news facts in the release in bullet points....

·         Write the rest of the release in narrative form....

·         Link to relevant analyst coverage....

·         Add approved quotes from the main players in the release....

·         Make the release available in an RSS news feed....

·         Add more images, so that there is a choice for bloggers and journalists....

·         If possible, add a short video....

·         Add any other supporting material: charts, slide decks, pdfs, Infographics or whitepapers....

·         Tag all the content with the keywords that will make it easy to find in search or social sites....

·         Add the About Us boilerplate....

·         Include a contact person – a real person....

·         Add icons that connect to all social content for the company....

Read this in full.

Get the above Infographic.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help plan your brand’s public relations and social media news strategy.

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.

Stan Freberg Presents The United States of America: Volume One The Early Years is a comedy album with music and dialogue written and performed by Stan Freberg and cast, released in 1961. It parodies, in a musical theater format, well known events of American history from 1492 until the end of the Revolutionary War in 1783.

Enjoy it online right now and let it’s puns, jokes, and vigor ignite your creativity! Happy 4^th of July!

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help inspire innovation for you and your team.

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