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For a fee of between $99 and $549, plus a cut of any sales revenue, Penguin's subsidiary Book Country (@Book_Country) will offer an array of tools — ranging from professional ebook conversion to a cover creator — to help a writer make their work available through digital book outlets and print-on-demand services.

The self-publishing venture could help Penguin discover new writers while creating an additional revenue stream.

Penguin Group (USA) has invested “a substantial amount of money” in technology to launch the new service, said Chief Executive David Shanks. “If some of these books hit the best-seller lists, it could be very successful.”

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Also see Laura Hazard Owen's (@laurahazardowen) article in paidContent (@paidContent), "Self-Published Authors Sharply Criticize Penguin's Book Country."

Other self-publishing services by major publishers include WestBow Press (@WestBowPress), a division of Thomas Nelson (@ThomasNelson), CrossBooks (@CrossBooks), a division of LifeWay (@LifeWay); Dellarte Press, a division of Harlequin (@HarlequinBooks); and Balboa Press (@BalboaPress), a division of Hay House (@hayhouse). HarperCollinsPublishers (@HarperCollins) sponsors Authonomy (@authonomy), a “community of discovery where writers become authors.”

Also see Huffington Post Books’ (@HuffPostBooks) “How Will We Read: A Book by You?” where Cathy Rubin (@CMRUBINWORLD) interviews Kevin Weiss, CEO of Author Solutions (@authorsolutions), (the white label service providing the backend operations to several publishers above) about “new technologies and services that are helping more authors achieve their personal publishing goals, as well as helping traditional publishers and passionate readers discover new talent.”

In The New York Times (@nytimes) Janet Maslin reviews Just My Type: A Book About Fonts by Simon Garfield (@simongarfield), saying, “This is a smart, funny, accessible book that does for typography what Lynne Truss’ best-selling Eats, Shoots & Leaves did for punctuation: made it noticeable for people who had no idea they were interested in such things.”

Knowledge of fonts is essential to advertising, book publishing, professions (like law) that require thoughtfully chosen stationery and any written work that can be done on a home computer. Personal computers are the main reason that font fandom and do-it-yourself design have snowballed in the last two decades. Had Steven Jobs not taken a shine to calligraphy as a college student and decided to include a choice of fonts in computer software, we might not be having this conversation.

Mr. Garfield’s book overlaps with Gary Hustwit’s (@gary_hustwit) 2007 documentary Helvetica, which concentrated entirely on a single, unstoppably popular typeface. Is global proliferation of the very Swiss, clean, antiseptic Helvetica a welcome phenomenon, or is Helvetica the weedy, unstoppable kudzu of the design world? Mr. Garfield takes a somewhat jaundiced view of Helvetica mania, but he hardly limits himself to one narrow school of fontificating. A full look at font history, aesthetics, science, and philosophy could fill an encyclopedia, but Just My Type is an excellent gloss. Mr. Garfield has put together a lot of good stories and questions about font subtleties and font-lovers’ fanaticism.

Just My Type covers phenomena including how the fonts on road signs are tested for legibility and what the fonts used by various political campaigns subliminally communicate about candidates. It explains relatively arcane matters like kerning (the science of spacing letters)....And if it does nothing else Just My Type will make it impossible for you to look at logos, road signs, airports, magazines, and advertisements indifferently any longer.

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Let Somersault help you in the page and cover designs of your books. And stay informed about publishing best practices with the SomersaultNOW dashboard, such as the content in the Editing and Innovation tabs.

Chris Ferebee (@caferebee) of Yates & Yates (@yatesandyates) literary agency writes about confusion some published authors have when it comes to trademarks. He asks

Do you know who owns the title to your book? Do you know who owns the right to the name of your quirky, one of a kind character? Do you know who has the ability to license the name of your book, or character name, or any other potential trademark along with the various commercial, merchandising, dramatic and other rights to all of the folks who will come calling after you’ve enjoyed commercial success? Think movie studios for sure, but what about the video game industry? What about graphic novel adaptations? Heard of the new Spider-Man show on Broadway? Who knows, maybe even someone will want to license your character for a lunchbox. Are you, as the author, the one who these folks should be talking to, or is it your publisher?

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Give us your comments on how you strategically think about trademarks.

USA TODAY (@USATODAY) reports on one author, Amanda Hocking, who became frustrated in trying to find a traditional publisher to accept her young-adult paranormal novels. So last year she published them herself in the ebook format.

By May she was selling hundreds; by June, thousands. She sold 164,000 books in 2010. Most were low-priced (99 cents to $2.99) digital downloads.

More astounding: This January she sold more than 450,000 copies of her 9 titles. More than 99% were ebooks.

In fact, her Trylle Trilogy will debut in the top 50 of USA TODAY’s Best-Selling Books list on Thursday! Truly book publishing and distribution is changing. How can Somersault help you navigate these waters?

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