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E-readers may soon be thinner, lighter, and supple. LG (@LGUS) has just announced it’s beginning mass production of the world’s first flexible, plastic e-ink display. This is opposed to the hard, heavy, prone-to-cracking glass-laminate e-ink displays found in devices such as the Kindle and Nook.

The new plastic display has a resolution of 1024x768 and is 6 inches across the diagonal, comparable to the Kindle and Nook.

The LG display is half the weight and 30% thinner (0.7mm) than a comparable, glass e-ink panel. Existing ebook readers need to be thick (and heavy) to protect the glass display, but LG says its display is more rugged. The press release says the plastic display survives repeated 1.5-meter drop tests and break/scratch tests with a small hammer, and that it's flexible up to 40 degrees from the midpoint.

Read this in full.

Also see USA TODAY's article, "Flexible displays bend what's possible for computers."

And see our previous blogposts, “Why Your Next Phone Might be Bendable” and “Revolutionary New Paper Computer Shows Flexible Future for Smartphones and Tablets.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you plan your strategy for 21st century digital publishing.

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

Reporter Lauren A. E. Schuker of The Wall Street Journal interviews bestselling author James Patterson, who had 11 books released last year and has 13 coming out this year.

To date, the 65-year-old author has published 95 books and according to Nielsen ranks as the country’s top-selling author. Those numbers have added up to big business: Mr. Patterson earns more than $80 million a year, according to people familiar with his publishing empire.

Mr. Patterson works seven days a week out of a two-room office suite at his Palm Beach, FL oceanfront home. White bookshelves line the first room, where he does the bulk of his writing, all in pencil on white legal pads. There’s no computer; just a telephone, fax machine, an iPad, and a bag of bubble gum. The second room looks like a traditional bedroom, but the bed is covered by books, loose-leaf papers, and manuscripts.

When it comes to writing, he has a well-practiced system: he writes a detailed outline and then hires someone—often a former colleague from his advertising days — to write the ensuing scenes, usually in 30 to 40 page chunks. He will review those pages every few weeks, sometimes providing notes on them and other times re-writing them entirely.

Read this in full.

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

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

Linguist David Crystal describes English as "a vacuum cleaner of a language" — speakers merrily swipe some words from other languages, adopt others because they're cool or sound classy, and simply make up other terms.

Crystal believes every word has a story to tell, even the ones as commonplace as “and.” In his new book, The Story of English in 100 Words, he compiles a collection of words — classic words like "tea" and new words like "app" — that explain how the English language has evolved.

On NPR’s Talk of the Nation (@totn), he tells about the challenge of compiling this list and the idiosyncrasies of the English language.

Read and hear this interview in full.

This interview clearly sets the foundation for the reason the new Common English Bible (@CommonEngBible) was just published: because the digital revolution is accelerating changes in the English language and its everyday usage and understandability. The popular Common English Bible, ranking #7 on the Christian retail bestseller list for April, is necessary to clearly communicate God’s Word since 9,000 new words and meaning revisions are added yearly to the English lexicon. The Common English Bible is today’s freshest translation and uses natural, 21st century English.

Sample the CEB on its website.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you clearly communicate your brand’s marketing message.

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

Recognizing the absolute highest quality in Christian books based on excellence in content, literary quality, design, and impact, the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (@ecpa) has announced 40 finalists in 7 categories (Bibles, Bible Reference, Children, Fiction, Inspiration, New Author, Non-Fiction) for the 2012 Christian Book Awards (@ChristianBkExpo).

The debut of the “New Author” category resulted in 6 finalists from both fiction and nonfiction, and represents a new opportunity of exposure for new voices in Christian publishing. One new author title, Kisses from Katie, also appeared on The New York Times bestseller list in the past year.

Judging results in the Non-Fiction category yielded a 3-way tie for a total of 7 finalists in that category. Other ties are in Inspiration, New Author, and Bible Reference. “This year’s 40 finalists and 5 ties represent the strength and quality of content our industry continues to produce, in both seasoned and new voices and from small, mid-sized, and large publishing houses,” says ECPA President Mark Kuyper. “We congratulate each author and the 16 publishers represented on this list!”

One title from each category will be announced April 30 as the Christian Book Award winner. And one title will be chosen among all the finalists to receive the highest honor of 2012 Christian Book of the Year.

Read this in full.

See previous winners.

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

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard, designed especially for publishing and marketing professionals.

View more PowerPoint from Common English Bible

Statistics compiled by the International Bulletin of Missionary Research are now depicted in this Infographic (also available as a PDF) by Seedbed Publishing (@OfficialSeedbed).

Notice the shift towards nondenominational churches. In 1900 there were less than 8 million nondenomination Christians. Now there are more than 432 million.

Also see our previous blogposts “Christianity: World’s Largest Religion” and “Study: Religiously Active People More Likely to Engage in Civic Life.”

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

According to Gallup (@gallupnews), Mississippi is the most religious US state, and is the first of 9 other states — Utah, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, South Carolina, Tennessee, North Carolina, Georgia, and Oklahoma  —  where Gallup classifies at least half of the residents as “very religious.”

At the other end of the spectrum, Vermont and New Hampshire are the least religious states, and are 2 of the 5 states  — along with Maine, Massachusetts, and Alaska — where less than 30% of all residents are very religious.

Read this in full and use the above interactive map.

And see USA TODAY’s (@faith_reason) “Topography of Faith” interactive map.

Gallup also reports that Americans who attend a church, synagogue, or mosque frequently report experiencing more positive emotions and fewer negative ones in general than do those who attend less often or not at all. Frequent churchgoers experience an average of 3.36 positive emotions per day compared with an average of 3.08 among those who never attend. This relationship holds true even when controlling for key demographic variables like age, education, and income.

Read this in full.

Also see our previous blogposts “Study: Religiously Active People More Likely to Engage in Civic Life,” and “Christianity: World’s Largest Religion.”

Be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Research tab.

The Startup Daily (@thestartupdaily) highlights some of the elements of strong presentations by gleaning tips from 5 books:

·         Skip the stand-up, and start your presentation by talking about the audience (from How to Give a Pretty Good Presentation: A Speaking Survival Guide for the Rest of Us by T.J. Walker (@tjwalker))

·         Blank the presentation screen at key moments to force the audience to focus on you (from The Naked Presenter: Delivering Powerful Presentations With or Without Slides by Garr Reynolds (@presentationzen))

·         Effortless presentations are the result of deliberate practice (from The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience by Carmine Gallo (@carminegallo))

·         If a slide is not contributing to the main argument of your presentation, take it out (from The Art of the Pitch: Persuasion and Presentation Skills that Win Business by Peter Coughter (@Coughter))

·         Each slide should be simple enough to be processed in 3 seconds (from Resonate: Present Visual Stories that Transform Audiences by Nancy Duarte (@nancyduarte))

The following slide deck by Alexei Kapterev (@kapterev) explains (and shows) the components of a compelling PowerPoint^® presentation.

Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you clearly communicate your message (your content) to your audience.

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

The Pew Research Center’s (@pewresearch) Project for Excellence in Journalism (@PEJPew) summarizes its State of the News Media 2012 report in this Infographic.

TV is still a strong news source, but digital is the growth area, with tablets the fastest-growing platform. Social media is a fair source of news recommendations, though news consumers prefer to find stories themselves, and direct from sources like CNN.com, newspaper, and network sites. Among the findings:

·         23% of U.S. adults get news from two devices

·         44% own a smart phone, and 18% own a tablet computer

·         70% get their news from a desktop computer, and 56% from tablets

·         64% of those employed full time own a tablet computer

·         Twitter is more highly regarded than Facebook as a source of news story recommendations.

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you understand the sea-changes occurring in media and publishing, and how they affect your brand.

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

CNBC Business magazine (@CNBC) contributing editor Colin Brown (@colinmlbrown) writes

You don't need to be BP, Toyota, News Corp, or even Tiger Woods to know how quickly ‘brand equity’ can be destroyed by screw-ups, cover-ups, and indiscretions. In the face of such PR fiascos, the accepted repair strategy has been to come clean as quickly and as contritely as possible. But in an era when corporate skeletons are subject to constant social media scrutiny, your business can suffer just as easily by being too transparent. Ask Bank of America....

Many see measurement of reputation — trust quotients, if you like — as the next big frontier on the Web. Just as Google unleashed the search potential of the Internet with its PageRank analysis that assigned a numerical weighting to every nugget of information, so a new breed of reputation brokers is starting to define Web 3.0 with the equivalent of 'PeopleRank' scores. You might think of these as Yelp ratings for people, creating a hierarchy of individuals and companies based on reputation scores....

Read this in full.

Also see Warc's (@WarcEditors) article, "Corporate Social Responsibility Could Benefit Brands" quoting Nielsen's (@NielsenWire) report, "The Global, Socially-Conscious Consumer."

Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you strategically understand your brand’s reputation management.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Marketing/Public Relations tab.