somersault

Top leaders from Google, Twitter, and Facebook spoke at the annual NRB Convention (@NRBToday & @NRB_Convention) (#NRB13) in Nashville March 4 and stressed the importance of communicators (authors, broadcasters, presenters, and others) to concentrate on engaging with their audience through social media platforms and not to focus so much on numbers only.

Claire Diaz-Ortiz, Twitter's social innovation leader, said that while her company was doing some analytics, just 3 years ago "we started to see that Bible verses were doing really well."

"Someone would tweet out Bible verses and 500 people would immediately re-tweet it," Diaz-Ortiz said. "People of faith were really engaged with these Bible verses. Religious content on Twitter is incredibly engaged. You can look at a pastor such as Andy Stanley and see that he will tweet something out and get more reaction and more engagement than famous celebrities like Lady Gaga or Justin Bieber with 50 times as many followers."

Facebook's manager for policy, Katie Harbath, said, "The Internet and how people use it is constantly changing and so what worked six months ago may have changed."

Although some people add as many Facebook friends as they can accumulate, she believes the value of the site is not found in a numbers game.

"The number of fans you have on your page is important, absolutely, but in reality it's how many of those people are engaged with you. A fan is worthless if they are not seeing your content and not engaging," she said.

Read this in full.

Also see our previous blogposts, “Infographic: The Importance of a Fan Base” and "Know Your Brand Advocates."

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategically publish and market pbooks, ebooks, and audiobooks.

Download our white paper, “Tech, Trends, & Retail Success: See the Future and Act Now,” in which we detail the elements of creating extreme retail in-store experiences.

Learn about SomersaultSocial (@SomersaultHelp), our Web-based author online marketing education modules.

Add our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/SomersaultGroup) & Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/smrsault) to your Flipboard account on your iPad, iPhone, or Android. Or download our blog as an ebook to your ereader (http://goo.gl/3nTtN). 

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

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

O’Reilly’s Tools of Change 2013 (@toc) (#toccon) kicked off Feb. 12 with the first-ever Author (R)evolution Day, cosponsored by Publishers Weekly, designed to inform authors, content creators, agents, and indie author service providers about the promotion of books in the digital age. Blogger and author Cory Doctorow brought up the concept of the “hybrid author” — the author who publishes traditionally and self-publishes.

One of the most talked about points of the day was discovery. During an afternoon panel, Kobo’s Mark Lefebvre started by saying to authors: “Don’t wonder how you will get discovered — think about what you're going to do to deserve being discovered.”

The panelists agreed that author investment is very often tied to author discovery. In relation to social media, Elizabeth Keenan of Penguin’s publicity department said, “It’s a full-time job to make it work.” (See our SomersaultSocial training program for authors.)

Lefebvre said the most important thing in getting someone to buy a book is still the opinion of someone the reader trusts, and all panelists agreed that — especially in the digital age when curation becomes more and more important — getting reviews for your book is essential.

The “power of free” was discussed; attracting your audience by offering them something, whether it be an excerpt or author expertise on a subject, and giving that audience an answer to the question every reader asks when picking up a book: “What’s in it for me?”

Read this in full.

See TOC articles tagged Author (R)evolution Day.

Read coverage by Good E-Reader (@Goodereader).

Also see our previous blogpost, "Guy Kawasaki's New Self-Publishing Instruction Book."

Download our white paper, “Tech, Trends, & Retail Success: See the Future and Act Now,” in which we detail the elements of creating extreme retail in-store experiences.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategically publish and market pbooks, ebooks, and audiobooks.

Learn about SomersaultSocial (@SomersaultHelp), our Web-based author online marketing education modules.

Add our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/SomersaultGroup) & Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/smrsault) to your Flipboard account on your iPad, iPhone, or Android. Or download our blog as an ebook to your ereader (http://goo.gl/3nTtN). 

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

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

Members of Somersault were pleased to give the keynote presentation Jan. 9 at the CBA Next 2013 (@ICRShow) event held in cooperation with AmericasMart Atlanta (@AmericasMartATL) in the Atlanta gift mart.

We distributed our white paper, “Tech, Trends, & Retail Success: See the Future and Act Now” and our Christian Bookstore Customer Satisfaction Survey. Both are available online.

We encouraged Christian retailers to brand themselves as more than sellers of product, but as experts in Christian publishing. And to declare their expertise by referring to their bookstore as a “Books Bistro” with “Publishing Einsteins,” so when a customer wants to learn about a Christian topic or write about one, the first expert advisor he or she should think of consulting is their store.

Christian Retailing (@ChristianRetail) covered our presentation:

Seventy percent of Christian store shoppers say they would buy an ebook at a Christian retail store, with many options now available to Christian market retailers, according to publishing strategy and services agency Somersault Group....

Creating an in-store experience that will draw traffic is critical. The panel urged Christian retailers to cultivate an atmosphere that promotes relaxation, provides real-time marketing and offers information openly that reassures customers in their purchase decisions. Stores were also encouraged to assign a staff member to event management and another to digital communication.

“Be the Christian hub of your community,” the panel told NEXT attendees. “Christian booksellers are no longer only in the bookselling business. You are in the community-building, personalized-service, outcome-based-solution-provider, experts-in-all-things-publishing-related and technology business with a spiritual emphasis.”

Read this in full.

Learn more about this retail report in the upcoming March issue of Christian Retailing.

Download our white paper, “Tech, Trends, & Retail Success: See the Future and Act Now,” in which we detail the elements of creating extreme retail in-store experiences.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategically publish and market pbooks, ebooks, and audiobooks.

Learn about SomersaultSocial (@SomersaultHelp), our Web-based author online marketing education modules.

Add our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/SomersaultGroup) & Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/smrsault) to your Flipboard account on your iPad, iPhone, or Android. Or download our blog as an ebook to your ereader (http://goo.gl/3nTtN). 

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

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

The annual Digital Book World Conference (@DigiBookWorld) (#DBW13) has concluded. DBW editorial director Jeremy Greenfield (@JDGsaid) offers a quick summary:

Publishers are grappling with the possibility that bookstores might not exist in the future; that some authors have a very low opinion of them; that agents are pushing them for more advantageous contract terms for their clients; that the landscape of book discovery is changing; and much more.

See DBW’s links to coverage of the event. (Digital Book World’s YouTube channel | Slideshare site)

Photos and tweets on Eventifier

Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly): Kobo, Book Discovery and More at Digital Book World 2013

GoodEReader (@Goodereader): My Thoughts on Digital Book World 2013 by Paul Biba (@paulkbiba) and complete coverage

Publishing Perspectives (@pubperspectives): 3 Key Ideas from Digital Book World 2013

Education, Publishing, & Technology (@toddols) summaries: Day One | Day Two

Learn about SomersaultSocial, our Web-based author online marketing education modules.

Add our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/SomersaultGroup) & Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/smrsault) to your Flipboard account on your iPad, iPhone, or Android. 

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

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

Every November, the annual meetings of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) (@AARWeb) and Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) (@SBLsite) (#sblaar & #aarsbl12) are held, affectionately known as the “alphabet” AAR/SBL convention. This year it’s taking place at McCormick Place (@McCormick_Place) in Chicago. Somersault (@smrsault) was there over the weekend, meeting with friends and making new ones among the vast number of publishers exhibiting their considerable frontlist and backlist academic, textbook, and reference titles.

Religion scholar and author Martin Marty writes about AAR/SBL in his column, Sightings:

The Program Book for the gatherings is 496 pages long. You read that right. When I mention that “a number of thousand scholars of religion” are meeting, my friends of secular ethos orientation gasp: they can picture restaurateurs, gun-sellers, and auto-dealers convening in such numbers. But “religion” scholars in abundance? Can this be true?

It is. It takes the cavernous, soul-less halls of McCormick Place and eighteen hotels to accommodate these North American religionists, while graduate students, “old friends,” and others bunk with acquaintances around the city. What these do tends to be invisible to off-campus populations and much is even ignorable on the campuses in which they thrive. The word is out that religious practice is declining in North America, that attendance at and support for religious ventures has been having harder times. But you wouldn’t know that from observing the conventioneers or opening the Program Book. They do not draw notice as do medics in the American Medical Association, and their religion and sacred rites are not experienced as intense as are those of the acolytes of the American Rifle Association or the National Football League, but there they are.

One sights astonishing variety here. The SBL “Sections” include “Cognitive Linguistics in Biblical Interpretation,” “Disputed Paulines,” “Asian and Asian-American Hermeneutics,” etc. and the AAR fosters groups on “Animals and Religion,” “Evangelical Studies,” “Queer Studies in Religion,” “Quran,” and scores upon scores more. Related Scholarly Organizations cluster alongside AAR and SBL, among them “Colloquium on Violence and Religion,” “International Bonhoeffer Society,” “Karl Barth” and “Reinhold Niebuhr” societies alongside “La Communidad of Hispanic Scholars,” and, again, many, many more. There are stars and shapers as well as promising graduate students and tenure-track newcomers to the fields.

Read this in full.

Publishers Weekly's (@PublishersWkly) article, "The Digital Revolution in Religion Publishing Brings Business, Technical Issues," highlights the difficulties facing publishers serving the academic market:

Maintaining sanity in this arena can be challenging at times. Example: books rich in maps, art, and ancient language characters need formatting across various platforms and require new digital permissions for every image. On the reader side, it can be maddening in class when one person's page 50 is someone else's page 47 or 53. And note taking on a screen is still in primitive stages.

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault to help you publish and market your print and digital resources to the academic market.

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

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

ZondervanAcademic / Koinonia Blog (@ZonderAcademic), along with 49 other publishers/exhibitors, is at the annual meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society this week in Milwaukee, WI. While there, it’s live streaming all plenary speakers, including Calvin Beisner, Russell Moore, Richard Bauckham, and Douglas Moo, and a panel discussion on Friday at 11:10 am EST.

And beginning this weekend in Chicago, IL, the annual gatherings are taking place of the Institute for Biblical Research, the Society of Biblical Literature (@SBLsite), and the American Academy of Religion (@AARWeb) — Somersault will be there.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you publish and market your print and digital resources to the academic market.

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

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

Recently Somersault (@smrsault) had the privilege of helping sponsor the American Christian Fiction Writers (@ACFWTweets) (#ACFW) annual conference (@ACFWConference) held this year in Dallas (see our previous blogpost).

Michael Hyatt (@MichaelHyatt), former CEO and Chairman of Thomas Nelson (@ThomasNelson) and author of Platform (#PlatformBook), spoke in two plenary sessions about the necessity for authors to learn social media marketing and build a targeted fan base (see our previous blogpost, "The Importance of Building Your Platform"). His message exactly supports our new SomersaultSocial program.

During the conference, we asked authors, agents, and publishers to give us their opinions in response to one question: “What major challenges are facing Christian publishing today?”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you embrace and surmount publishing and marketing challenges in this new digital age.

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

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

The American Christian Fiction Writers (@ACFWTweets) conference (@ACFWConference) (#ACFW) is being held in Dallas, TX and Somersault (@smrsault) is here telling authors, agents, and publishers about

• our online dashboard for publishers and marketers, SomersaultNOW
• this blog as a telescope helping industry professionals “see around the corner” to prepare for the future of publishing
• and SomersaultSocial, our new program to educate authors and speakers in the strategic and effective use of social media marketing.

Congratulations to Allen Arnold, winner of the ACFW’s 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award “in recognition of his impact on the Christian fiction industry, its authors, and its readers.” He’s the former publisher and senior vice president of Thomas Nelson Fiction, having launched the Fiction group in 2004.

ACFW’s other awards are Julee Schwarzburg - Editor of the Year, Nicole Resciniti - Agent of the Year, Allison Pittman - Mentor of the Year, Genesis winners for the best unpublished Christian fiction projects, and the Carol Awards for the best Christian fiction published in the previous calendar year.

If you’re attending the conference, please come to our exhibit booth and say hi!

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

Christian Retailing (@ChristianRetail) reports on CBA-commissioned research by the Barna Group (@barnagroup) that Christians are using computer tablets and e-readers at a faster pace than most consumers.

Barna President David Kinnaman (@davidkinnaman) summarized the findings of The Rise of E-Reading: What Digital Content Means for Customer Loyalty, Products, and Retailing study in a video presentation July 15 during the opening general session of the International Christian Retail Show (@ICRShow) (#ICRS) in Orlando, Fla.

The study shows that

·         44% of pastors

·         30% of Christian store shoppers

·         25% of practicing Catholics all report they own a mobile tablet device or e-reader, compared to 18% of shoppers who don't visit Christian stores.

Also, the most popular device is the iPad — 44% of tablet-owning Christian store shoppers.

And nearly 70% of Christian store shoppers said they would definitely or probably buy an ebook or digital download from a Christian store.

Read this in full.

Also see our previous blogpost, “Family Christian Stores Now Selling Its Own Tablet,” and our other posts about tablets.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you publish and market pbooks and ebooks.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard, created specifically for publishing and marketing executives.

Publishers Weekly coverage of the just-concluded BEA (@BookExpoAmerica) includes the following: According to Bowker’s (@Bowker & @DiscoverBowker) newest figures of books produced, last year there were 211,269 self-published titles (based on ISBNs) released, up from 133,036 in 2010.

Vice president for Bowker Market Research Kelly Gallagher reports more statistics:

·         The most popular genre in terms of units is fiction (45%), but nonfiction leads in sales (38%)

·         The average price for a self-published fiction book is $6.94, while nonfiction titles command $19.32

·         While ebooks accounted for 41% of self-published units, they only accounted for 11% of sales because the average self-published ebook sold for $3.18, while trade paperbacks had an average price of $12.68 and hardcovers averaged $14.40.

·         Amazon’s CreateSpace (@CreateSpace) was the largest player in the self-publishing space last year, publishing 57,602 titles; Author Solutions' (@authorsolutions) various imprints did 41,605 books.

Gallagher also says Bowker is developing a self-publishing White Paper, and is creating a self-publishing bestsellers list.

In Bowker’s annual report on US print book publishing for 2011 (compiled from its Books In Print® database), preliminary figures from US publishers lead Bowker to estimate that traditional print book output grew 6% in 2011, from 328,259 titles in 2010 to a projected 347,178 in 2011 (that's 951 books published every day), driven almost exclusively by a strong self-publishing market. Bowker says this is the most significant expansion in more than 4 years for America’s traditional publishing sector; but removing self-publishing from the equation would show that the market is relatively flat from 2010.

“Transformation of our industry has brought on a time of rich innovation in the publishing models we now have today. What was once relegated to the outskirts of our industry — and even took on demeaning names like ‘vanity press’ — is now not only a viable alternative but what is driving the title growth of our industry today,” says Gallagher. “From that standpoint, self-publishing is a true legitimate power to be reckoned with. Coupled with the explosive growth of ebooks and digital content – these two forces are moving the industry in dramatic ways.”

Genres that contributed to the robust growth in the Traditional sector include:

·         Education, with a hefty 20% increase

·         Music (up 14%)

·         Philosophy & Psychology (up 14%)

·         Religion (up 12%)

·         Juveniles (up 11%

·         Biography (up 11%)

·         Business (up 11%).

·         Publishing mainstay Fiction – the largest genre – turned around a multi-year decline with a notable 13% increase.

Read the news release.

And according to a report by the Association of American Publishers (@AmericanPublish), US publishers in the Trade sector saw significant sales increases worldwide in both print and e-format English-language books in 2011.  

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you manage your content creation.

Be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Publishers tab, which includes links to self-publishing publishers.