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Julie Bosman (@juliebosma) and Matthew Richtel (@mrichtel) write in this New York Times (@nytimesbusiness) article about the many ways tablets – by providing too many options – can distract people from concentrating on the books they’re reading; fragmenting their experience or stopping it altogether.

Email lurks tantalizingly within reach. Looking up a tricky word or unknown fact in the book is easily accomplished through a quick Google search. And if a book starts to drag, giving up on it to stream a movie over Netflix or scroll through your Twitter feed is only a few taps away.

That adds up to a reading experience that is more like a 21st-century cacophony than a traditional solitary activity. And some of the millions of consumers who have bought tablets and sampled ebooks on apps from Amazon, Apple, and Barnes & Noble have come away with a conclusion: It’s harder than ever to sit down and focus on reading.

Read this in full.

The article focuses on apps and email being distractions, but we also ask the question, “When do you think the digital features and creative apps of an enhanced ebook cross the line from augmenting the book reading experience and become a distraction and interruption? Write your comments below.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you plan and execute your ebook publishing and marketing strategy.

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

According to a new survey of technology experts, teens and young adults brought up from childhood with a continuous connection to each other and to information will be nimble, quick-acting multitaskers who count on the Internet as their external brain and who approach problems in a different way from their elders.

Many of the experts surveyed by Elon University’s (@elonuniversity) Imagining the Internet Center and The Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project (@pewinternet) say the effects of hyperconnectivity and the always-on lifestyles of young people will be mostly positive between now and 2020.

But the experts also predict this generation will exhibit a thirst for instant gratification and quick fixes, a loss of patience, and a lack of deep-thinking ability due to what one referred to as “fast-twitch wiring.”

Survey respondents say it’s vital to reform education and emphasize digital literacy. And a notable number say trends are leading to a future in which most people are shallow consumers of information, in danger of mirroring George Orwell’s 1984 of control by powerful interests in an age of entertaining distractions.

Read this report in full.

Also see our previous blogpost “Introducing Generation C: Americans 18-34 Are the Most Connected.”

How does this research and these predictions help you determine the future needs of your consumers and the ways you can publish life-changing content to meet those needs? Write your comments below.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you identify blue ocean strategy for your brand.

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

Born sometime between the launch of the VCR and the commercialization of the Internet, Americans 18-34 are redefining media consumption with their unique embrace of all things digital. According to Nielsen (@NielsenWire) and NM Incite’s (@nmincite) US Digital Consumer Report, this group — dubbed “Generation C” by Nielsen — is taking their personal connection — with each other and content — to new levels, new devices, and new experiences like no other age group.

The latest Census reports that Americans 18-34 make up 23% of the US population, yet they represent an outsized portion of consumers watching online video (27%), visiting social networking/blog sites (27%), owning tablets (33%) and using a smartphone (39%). Their ownership and use of connected devices makes them incredibly unique consumers, representing both a challenge and opportunity for marketers and content providers alike. Generation C is engaging in new ways and there are more touch points for marketers to reach them.

Access the report (registration required).

Also see our blogpost "Millennials Will Benefit & Suffer Due to Their Hyperconnected Lives."

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you navigate the changing demographics in today’s publishing world.

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

Emily Temple, editor of flavorpill (@flavorpill), has compiled more photos of more gorgeous bookstores “from Slovakia to Brazil to West Chester, PA” (see our previous blogpost). Enjoy these (and maybe even plan to visit them) while appreciating the fact that not all bookstores are bereft of customers these days.

See the photos and read this in full.

If you’re a book lover like we (@smrsault) are, bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

The website Book Guys (@PaulTheBookGuy) discovered this article gem by Emily Temple, editor of flavorpill (@flavorpill). Despite grim news of brick-and-mortar bookstores closing, there are still bookshops open that are wonders to the eye and beckon customers to come see!

We can’t overestimate the importance of bookstores — they’re community centers, places to browse and discover, and monuments to literature all at once — so we’ve put together a list of the most beautiful bookstores in the world, from Belgium to Japan to Slovakia.

See the photos and read this in full.

Also see our blogposts, "20 More Beautiful Bookstores from Around the World" and "The 20 Coolest Bookstores in the World."

If you’re a book lover like we (@smrsault) are, bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

The American demographic landscape has changed significantly, as reflected in the 2010 US Census compiled by the US Census Bureau (@uscensusbureau). The shifts related to race, age, gender, ethnicity, geography, income, and other key marketing drivers profoundly impact the USA and how brands communicate their messages to target audiences. Adweek (@Adweek) has partnered with Draftfcb (@Draftfcb), to present The New America (@The_New_America), a website “dedicated to providing timely and topical news and insights on what the metrics mean for marketers, ad agencies, publishers, and technology companies.”

A few articles of interest:

·         Higher Numbers for Higher Education: More than 30% of adults now have bachelor’s degrees

·         Multigenerational Households: Number of children living with a grandparent increases

·         Coming of Age in the Down Economy: Pew finds young Americans are underemployed but optimistic

·         Man Down: The future isn’t rosy for American males

·         An Unmarried Boomer: The growing number of middle-ages singles has significant implications

·         5 Discoveries from the 2010 Decennial Census That Advertisers Should Know:

     1.    The US population is an older one.

     2.    We are an ethnic soup spread throughout the country.

     3.    The growth of the Latino population is substantial.

     4.    Multiracial identification is growing.

     5.    Internal migration from the North and East to the South and West continues.

See The New America.

How will these changes influence your publishing agenda in the coming months and years? Write your comments below.

Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you analyze demographics to maximize your brand’s marketing communication strategy.

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

It turns out that consumers who are physically touched in stores judge products more harshly, leave more quickly, and are less willing to spend than those who aren’t, especially if they’re touched by a man.

Implication: Although retailers try to drive as many customers to their stores as possible, overcrowding may drive them away as well.

Read this article in full.

Read the study in full.

Be sure to bookmark and use daily our (@smrsault) SomersaultNOW online dashboard designed specifically for professionals in the book trade.

Smartphone-toting consumers are embracing a world in which they can find out about (and potentially buy) anything they see or hear, even if they don’t know what it is or can’t describe it in words. According to trendwatching.com (@trendwatching), the concept of “Point—Know—Buy” will reshape consumers’ info-expectations (“infolust”), search behavior, and purchasing patterns. Here are some of the drivers trendwatching identifies:

·         QR Codes

·         Augmented Reality

·         Tagging

·         Visual Search

Available online services that accommodate those drivers include WordLens (@wordlens), leafsnap (@leafsnap), Skymap (@googleskymap), Shazam (@Shazam), Aurasma (@aurasma), Blippar (@blippar), and others.

Read this in full.

See the PDF report.

Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you track and act on trends that impact your brand.

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

The popularity and sustainability of technology depends to some degree on its favorable use by consumers. Often the “next new shiny thing” bursts onto our radar and we get excited, which feeds the hype, creating momentum, until we drop it for the next new shiny thing. Unless we judge it to be valuable and necessary. So it is with social media. And marketers today must understand this technology cycle if we are to properly and efficiently communicate our marketing messages.

Analyst firm Gartner Inc. (@Gartner_inc) describes this process as The Hype Cycle. It identifies peak points in visibility over time for technologies, highlighting the common pattern of over-enthusiasm, disillusionment, and eventual realism that accompanies each new technology and innovation:

·         The technology trigger

·         Peak of inflated expectations

·         Trough of disillusionment

·         Slope of enlightenment

·         Plateau of productivity

It’s a useful chart to understand both the trajectory of technology and the actions of consumer behavior.

In the 2011 Emerging Technologies Hype Cycle, activity streams, wireless power, Internet TV, NFC payment, and private cloud computing are some of the technologies that have moved into the Peak of Inflated Expectations. And ebook readers are moving up the Slope of Enlightenment. (Compare the 2011 Cycle with 2010 and 2009 above.) Gartner dissects 4 themes in current technology trends:

The connected world: Advances in embedded sensors, processing and wireless connectivity are bringing the power of the digital world to objects and places in the physical world….

Interface trends: User interfaces are slow-moving areas with significant recent activity. Speech recognition was on the original 1995 Hype Cycle and has still not reached maturity, and computer-brain interfaces will evolve for at least another 10 years before moving out of research and niche status. However, a new entry for natural language question answering recognizes the impressive and highly visible achievement of IBM's Watson computer in winning TV's Jeopardy! general knowledge quiz against champion human opponents. Gesture recognition has also been launched into the mainstream through Microsoft's Kinect gaming systems, which is now being hacked by third parties to create a range of application interfaces….

Analytical advances: Supporting the storage and manipulation of raw data to derive greater value and insight, these technologies continue to grow in capability and applicability....

New digital frontiers: Crossing the traditional boundaries of IT, new capabilities are reaching levels of performance and pricing that will fundamentally reshape processes and even industries. Examples on this year's Hype Cycle include 3D printing and bioprinting (of human tissue), and mobile robots….

Read the news release in full.

Read the Hype Cycle Special Report.

Let Somersault (@smrsault) help your brand take publishing and marketing advantage of today’s developing technologically.

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

Internet users in Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, the UK, and US were surveyed, representing more than half of the world's online population and more than 60% of the world's gross domestic product (GDP).

For the first time on the survey, Canada reports that the Internet is now more influential overall in purchasing decisions than family and friends. Comparatively, in the US, the Internet rates about equal in importance (46% compared with 47% for family and friends). The Internet's greatest sway is in Asia, where the gap between the influence of the Internet and that of family and friends is 9% in China (79% to 70%) and nearly twice that in India (79% to 60%).

Overall

·         66% of contributors say the Web has an impact on their purchase choices

·         61% for guidance from friends, family and colleagues

·         51% for email

·         43% for newspapers

·         42% for television

·         37% for direct mail

·         28% for magazines and radio.

When looking online for information about products

·         89% use search engines

·         60% visit brand websites

·         50% access user-review platforms

·         24% post a question on a forum

·         18% turn to the brand's Facebook page

·         14% go to the corresponding feed on Twitter

·         12% search Twitter for comments in this area.

The average participant of the survey spends 13.7 hours per week using the Web, vs. 9.8 hours watching TV and 4.7 hours on a mobile device.

Regarding social media, 42% of the sample have “liked” a brand on these services.

·         79% became “fans” to learn more about a brand

·         76% were seeking discounts

·         73% sought exclusive information

·         69% wanted to give positive feedback.

·         67% hoped to share opinions

·         59% had ideas to submit

·         58% wished to “display an affiliation”

·         57% liked being part of a community.

Read the survey in full (pdf).

Read the facts and figures ebook (pdf).

Bookmark and use daily our (@smrsault) free online dashboard SomersaultNOW; especially the Research tab.