somersault

Laura Hazard Owen (@laurahazardowen) of paidContent (@paidContent) reports, ”Digital reading company Kobo (@kobo) is launching a competitor to Amazon’s KDP and Barnes & Noble’s PubIt!: Kobo Writing Life, a free self-publishing platform for independent authors and publishers.”

Jane Litte at Dear Author (@dearauthor) reports that Kobo is paying a 70% royalty on ebooks priced between $1.99 and $12.99, and a 45% royalty on ebooks below $1.99 or above $12.99. By contrast, Amazon pays a 70% royalty on KDP ebooks priced above $2.99 and a 35% royalty on those below $2.99. And she notes that authors can sell their books with or without DRM.

Read this in full.

Read the news release.

Below is a video of Michael Kozlowski (@Goodereadermike), editor-in-chief of Good e-Reader (blog) (@Goodereader), interviewing Kobo’s Michael Tamblyn about Writing Life (see the blogpost).

See our list of self-publishers.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you publish and market your ebook/pbook content.

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.

Perfect insight on today’s fast-changing publishing scene! :)

(Cartoon copyright © Harry Bliss. Used by permission of Pippin Properties, Inc..)

If you’ve ever pondered the cryptic acronyms and abstruse language found in the arcane world of publishing, VP of sales at Weldon Owen (@WeldonOwen), Amy Kaneko (@amykaneko), strips away the conspiratorial subterfuge to enlighten the uninitiated. She does so by parsing an innocuous email message she innocently sent to a colleague one day:

Hi ________,

I heard from the account. They saw the ARC and think it could be part of a coop opportunity for an endcap or MOD. Not for POG or WIGIG. Or we could put in a dump. They still want to see the dummy though. Of course we have to watch out, these guys might screw up the laydown and of course there is always the chance that they'll come back in a gaylord, then we'll have to remainder. I checked the stock and found we're OS! I can't sell what I don't have!

What!?

Read this in full.

(Above image is Kryptos, the coded sculpture in the CIA’s Langley, VA courtyard.)

Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you decipher the intricacies of publishing.

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

Alexandria, VA has moved up one level this year to first place in Amazon.com’s (@amazon) annual list of the Most Well-Read Cities in America. The ranking was determined by compiling sales data of all book, magazine and newspaper sales in both print and Kindle (@AmazonKindle) format since June 1, 2011, on a per capita basis in cities with more than 100,000 residents. The Top 20 Most Well-Read Cities are:

1.   Alexandria, VA               11.  Pittsburgh, PA

2.   Cambridge, MA             12.  Knoxville, TN

3.   Berkeley, CA                  13.  Seattle, WA

4.   Ann Arbor, MI                  14.  Orlando, FL

5.   Boulder, CO                    15.  Columbia, SC

6.   Miami, FL                        16.  Bellevue, WA

7.   Arlington, VA                   17.  Cincinnati, OH

8.   Gainesville, FL                18.  St. Louis, MO

9.   Washington, DC             19.  Atlanta, GA

10. Salt Lake City, UT          20.  Richmond, VA

Read the news release in full.

See last year’s listing.

The above list differs from the one compiled by Central Connecticut State University (@CCSUToday) which names Washington, DC number one. Here’s the top ten list:

1.  Washington, DC               6.   Pittsburgh, PA

2.  Seattle, WA                      7.   Cincinnati, OH

3.  Minneapolis, MN              8.   St. Louis, MO

4.  Atlanta, GA                       9.   San Francisco, CA

5.  Boston, MA                     10. Denver, CO

Read this in full.

See last year's listing.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you reach readers.

And if you love books like we do, be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

Traditionally, the metric used to assess return-on-investment for public relations efforts has been Advertising Value Equivalency (AVE), defined by Marketing Metrics Made Simple (MMMS) as “what your editorial coverage would cost if it were advertising space (or time).”

To calculate the AVE for one month, measure the space (column inches) occupied by a clip (for radio and television coverage, you measure time). Then multiply the column inches (time) by the ad rate for that page (time slot).

After you do the same for every clip for that month, add up the costs to get a total cost. The total cost is the cost of the ads that theoretically could have occupied the space (time) occupied by all your editorial coverage for that month.

However, MMMS explains how AVE numbers might be an inaccurate tool:

Consider that a highly positive article can be worth much more than a single advertisement in the same space. That's because readers consciously or unconsciously think of an advertisement as an instance of a company boasting about itself (and paying dearly for the privilege of doing so), and an article as an implied endorsement by a presumably objective and knowledgeable third party (the editor who approved the copy on that page). So, from this perspective, AVE underestimates the value of editorial.

...Generally speaking, advertising tends to command attention and create awareness. Publicity tends to build credibility. Normally you need both.

In an attempt to more precisely gauge a PR campaign’s influence on the decision-making steps of a consumer (awareness, knowledge, consideration, preference, action), the International Association for Measurement and Evaluation of Communication (@AmecOrg) (#Amec2012) has produced The Barcelona Declaration of Measurement Principles:

1. Importance of goal setting and measurement

2. Measuring the effect on outcomes is preferred to measuring outputs

3. The effect on business results can and should be measured where possible

4. Media measurement requires quantity and quality

5. AVEs are not the value of public relations

6. Social media can and should be measured

7. Transparency and replicability are paramount to sound measurement.

Public Relations is a broad discipline that requires multiple metrics tied to well-defined objectives. These guidelines provide many alternatives to AVEs and are intended to help practitioners identify a palette of Valid Metrics that will deliver meaningful measurement to reflect the full contribution of Public Relations.

Above are slides explaining the Barcelona Principles measurement activity and effect in each of the following PR areas:

·         Brand/product marketing

·         Reputation building

·         Issues advocacy & support

·         Employee engagement

·         Investor relations

·         Crisis and issues management

·         Public education / not-for-profit

·         Social / community engagement.

Read the presentation in full (pdf).

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you plan and execute the right integrated public relations communications strategy for your brand.

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

Newsweek (@Newsweek) created this poster in 2010, but it’s still interesting.

Jeremy Greenfield (@JDGsaid), editorial director of Digital Book World (@DigiBookWorld) asks how the publishing industry should standardize the term used to describe books comprised of digital content. In his article, he presents the results of his research, including:

Using the Google Adwords keyword tool, I discovered that “ebooks” has 13.6 million global monthly searches and “e-books” has 4.1 million, meaning that roughly triple the amount of people search for “ebooks” versus “e-books.”

Furthermore, the competition for “ebooks” is low (meaning there are fewer pages that try to rank for this as a keyword) versus the competition for “e-books,” which is medium, according to Google Adwords.

Read this in full, then vote.

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

The above Infographic is by First Scribe (@firstscribe).

Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you plan and execute your social media marketing strategy.

And bookmark and use daily our SomersaultNOW online dashboard.