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HarperCollinsPublishers (@HarperCollins) announced yesterday it’s creating a Christian publishing division that will consist of its new company acquisition Thomas Nelson (@ThomasNelson) and Zondervan (@zondervan). Thomas Nelson’s president and CEO Mark Schoenwald is now president and CEO of the new division, reporting to Brian Murray, president and CEO of HarperCollins Worldwide. Schoenwald also will serve on the HarperCollins executive committee. Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) quotes Schoenwald in an exclusive interview:

“We will be building our leadership team over the next few weeks. Everything is under review – we are evaluating every area of the business....With some things you only get one chance to get it right, and we don't want to have to go back and keep adjusting.”

Schoenwald said the reason for creating the new division and bringing it under his leadership is that “people have to know who is in charge. We have to have someone leading the business.”

Read this in full.

Read the news release.

Read coverage by Digital Book World (@DigiBookWorld), GalleyCat (@GalleyCat), and Christian Retailing (@ChristianRetail). Also watch for comment by Thomas Nelson former president and CEO, Michael Hyatt (@MichaelHyatt).

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

In a possibly related development, Publishers Weekly reports that Thomas Nelson has signed an agreement with B&H Publishing (@BHpub) granting B&H "certain publication rights" to the New King James Version of the Bible. This could be a condition set by the Department of Justice to allow the Harper/Nelson deal to go through.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you in your publishing needs, from concept conception to product development, research, branding, marketing, and more.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard to remain current with all the publishing news.

Philip Jones, editor of The Bookseller’s (@thebookseller) digital blog Futurebook (@TheFutureBook), interviewed Bob Stein, founder and co-director of the Institute for the Future of the Book, who insists publishers need to make books social and look for ways to “build the conversation around books.”

"The current system of publishing doesn't really support the shape publishing is taking on as it develops," says Stein, who founded The Voyager Company in 1985, the first commercial multimedia CD-ROM publisher. But publishers are chronically slow at recognising what is happening to them and grasping the opportunities before they emerge. Stein argues that the real innovation is happening left-of-centre in sectors such as gaming, where collaborative narratives have already taken root. "The future is being born outside their field of vision," he says.

"The idea of publishing is to move ideas around time and space," is how he sees it....His big idea now is "social reading", the concept that in the future texts will become one part of a much larger conversation that happens around them, with notes and context shared on a collaborative platform.

Stein is currently working on SocialBook — a reading platform that allows users to interact with texts, leave notes, and begin conversations around those books. The site will have free and paid-for areas, though the commercial model is not yet finalized. "It begins as YouTube for social documents in the free space, but then we'll build Amazon for publishing," says Stein.

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you build the conversation around your books.

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

This video by Salon Alpin tells the story of a bookmark stuck in a forgotten book that is one day knocked over by wind. The bookmark experiences its environment by surfing the pages that turn in to ocean-waves, enjoying the ride of its life. As the book cover closes, light reveals new challenges.

See 3 videos that show the making of the above video.

Also see our blogposts, “EPILOGUE: the future of print” and "The 3 Qualities That Make a YouTube Video Go Viral."

If you love books like we (@smrsault) do, we invite you to make our SomersaultNOW online dashboard your personal computer homepage (see instructions).

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The public radio program about language, A Way with Words (@wayword), asks, “Why are some book titles so incredibly long?”

A caller complains about book-title inflation, usually consisting of a shorter title followed by a colon and a longer subtitle that seems to sound important and ends with the words “and What To Do About It.” Cohost Grant Barrett (@grantbarrett) explains that such extra-long book titles have long been a form of search optimization by publishers and marketing departments. The more searchable keywords in the title, the more copies sold.

Listen above. Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you select the most effective title, and other marketing necessities, for your book.

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

Google’s Nexus 7 is the latest tablet on the tech scene, along with Apple’s iPad, Amazon’s Kindle Fire, Barnes & Noble’s Nook, and Microsoft’s Surface.

See a comparison chart above and another one by The Verge (@verge).

See all tablets compared at The Verge.

A new study by Gartner (@Gartner_inc) says consumers are choosing to use tablets now for some activities they previously used to use PCs for.

According to the findings, the “main activities moving from PCs to media tablets” included checking email, a shift observable among 81% of contributors, and reading the news, on 69%.

Over 50% prefer reading newspapers, magazines, and books on screens rather than on paper.

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you use current technology to publish and market your brand’s content.

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

This week’s The New Yorker (@NewYorker) cover bitingly captures how obsessed Americans are with being online all the time, no matter what we’re doing and who we’re with!

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you capitalize on the digital revolution to strategically and effectively publish and market your brand’s content.

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

New York-based start-up Zola Books (@zolabooks) is planning to replace the Google eBooks re-seller progam (to end in January; originally embraced by the American Booksellers Association), as the ecommerce platform of choice for independent bookstores selling ebooks.

According to Digital Book World (@DigiBookWorld), “Zola will offer readers a social e-reader and bookstore, independent bookstores a new place to sell ebooks, and publishers another storefront to display their wares. When it launches to the public on September 19, the company plans to make a splash, offering readers a sizable selection of ebooks, including titles that will only be available on Zola.”

The plan is to offer a selling experience for independent bookstores that is easier, more attractive and more profitable than Google eBooks was.

Zola allows each independent bookstore to create its own storefront that it curates with titles it thinks its readers will like. Each bookseller is responsible for marketing their storefront but the proceeds could be worth it. Zola will pay independent bookstores 60% of net proceeds from every sale.

With Zola, publishers get a straight 70% of every sale and then Zola and its partners split the rest after paying a 4% credit card transaction fee....

In addition to providing a storefront for bookstores, Zola is providing pages for publishers, book reviewers and influential bloggers. Books sold through those pages will net whoever maintains the page an affiliate commission, which will vary in size depending on who or what the affiliate is. Each storefront comes with tools that allow for simple integration with all major social platforms so pages can be kept up-to-date by tweeting.

Read this in full.

Tech Crunch (@TechCrunch) reports, “The company’s Zola Social Reader will work on the Kindle Fire, Nook, and iPad. Zola Books will make both native apps as well as HTML5 apps available for its readers.”

Given the controversy surrounding ebook pricing right now, the company has decided to hold off from selling books until the publishers and the US Department of Justice have settled their current issues. Zola Books plans to use an agency model for selling books, meaning it will give authors and/or publishers full control over the pricing of content their are publishing exclusively on the site. By the time it launches publicly, the company expects to have every publisher on board. Exclusive content on the site will be offered DRM free.

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you publish and market ebooks and pbooks, as well as stay current with the quickly changing digital publishing world.

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

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.

(Birth of a book from Lamartis Publishing House on Vimeo.)

Russian publisher Lamartis (@lamartis) says it strives to combine all the elements that make books timeless, majestic, and beautiful. It positions its books for “sophisticated art connoisseurs and book collectors” and creates books for “the adornment of public, corporate, and home libraries.” The above video wonderfully captures the artistic craftsmanship of the Lamartis method.

Also see our blogpost, “EPILOGUE: the future of print.”

If you love books like we (@smrsault) do, we invite you to make our SomersaultNOW online dashboard your personal computer homepage (see instructions).

(Cartoon copyright © Dave Coverly. Used by permission. www.SpeedBump.com)

One of our core values is to have fun. ☺ Contact us (@smrsault) to help you with your publishing and marketing needs.

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