somersault

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.

A new release from Barna Group (@barnagroup) (@davidkinnaman) ranks the most and least “Bible-minded” cities by looking at how people in those cities view the Bible.

The report, part of Barna:Cities, is based on 42,855 interviews conducted nationwide and the analysis of Bible trends was commissioned by American Bible Society (@americanbible). Individuals who report reading the Bible in a typical week and who strongly assert the Bible is accurate in the principles it teaches are considered to be Bible-minded. This definition captures action and attitude — those who both engage and esteem the Christian scriptures. The rankings thus reflect an overall openness or resistance to the Bible in the country’s largest markets.

The top ranking cities, where at least half of the population qualifies as Bible-minded, are all Southern:

·         Knoxville, TN (52% of the population are Bible-minded)

·         Shreveport, LA (52%)

·         Chattanooga, TN (52%)

·         Birmingham, AL (50%)

·         Jackson, MS (50%).

The least Bible-oriented markets:

·         Providence, RI (9%)

·         Albany, NY (10%)

·         Burlington, VT (16%)

·         Portland, ME (16%)

·         Hartford, CT (16%)

·         Boston, MA (16%)

Read this in full.

Also see our previous blogposts “Clear Majority of Americans Own A Bible,” “Infographic: Books of the Bible,” and “Christian Publishing and ‘Living the Experience of Scripture’”

In another Barna:Cities study, the US megachurch audience is measured, with the result being that only about 1 in 10 (10%) self-identified Christians attend a church with at least 1,000 attenders. Barna says, “While megachurches are a much-discussed trend, the vast majority of American Christians attend smaller churches.”

Cities with the highest concentration of megachurch attenders:

·         Las Vegas, NV (29% of all Christians who live in the region attend a megachurch)

·         Baton Rouge, LA (27%)

·         Tampa-St. Petersburg, FL (21%)

·         Dallas-Fort Worth, TX (19%)

·         Houston, TX (19%)

Cities with the lowest concentration of megachurch attenders:

·         Salt Lake City, UT (1%)

·         Toledo, OH (1%)

·         Madison, WI (1%)

Read this in full.

Also see our blogposts, "Mississippi Is Most Religious USA State" and "Study: Religiously Active People More Likely to Engage in Civic Life."

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. 

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.

(Enlarge this Infographic)

The above information is by Random House (@randomhouse). Among the statistics:

·         Over a fifth of American adults have read an ebook.

·         Ebook consumers are likely to be book enthusiasts who read across digital and print formats.

·         Most ebook consumers are women, are younger than 45, have college degrees or have had some college education, and have upscale incomes.

·         Ebook consumers are over 20% more likely to have household incomes over $100,000 per year than non-ebook consumers.

·         Preferred genres include mystery/suspense/detective fiction, general fiction, and romance.

Read this in full.

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. 

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.

This article in The New York Times (@nytimesbusiness) says, “Reviews on Amazon are becoming attack weapons, intended to sink new books as soon as they are published.”

Books used to die by being ignored, but now they can be killed — and perhaps unjustly killed,” said Trevor Pinch, a Cornell sociologist who has studied Amazon reviews. “In theory, a very good book could be killed by a group of people for malicious reasons.”

...The retailer, like other sites that depend on customer reviews, has been faced with the problem of so-called sock puppets, those people secretly commissioned by an author to produce favorable notices. In recent months, Amazon has made efforts to remove reviews by those it deemed too close to the author, especially relatives. The issue of attack reviews, though, has received little attention....

Attack reviews are hard to police. It is difficult, if not impossible, to detect the difference between an authentic critical review and an author malevolently trying to bring down a colleague, or organized assaults by fans. Amazon’s extensive rules on reviewing offer little guidance on what is permissible in negative reviews and what is not....

Read this in full.

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. 

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.

(Enlarge the above Infographic)

From televisions and smartphones to tablets and game consoles, Americans are consuming content on every device under the sun.

According to Nielsen’s (@NielsenWire) new US Consumer Usage Report 2012, nearly 120 million people within television homes own 4 or more TV sets, and 16% of television homes own a tablet. Smartphone owners officially make up the majority of mobile subscribers, as 56% owned a smartphone as of Q3 2012. The number of social media users continues to increase across all platforms as consumers use social networking as a vehicle to navigate the ever-expanding media universe.

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.

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.

As retailers reinvent their in-store shopping experience in the face of the continued rise of e-commerce, research released by Cisco finds that digital content from the Internet is the most powerful influence in buying decisions for the majority of shoppers in all channels.

The 3rd annual Cisco^® (@CiscoRetail) study of consumers says online ratings and reviews are the most influential sources for making purchasing decisions (followed by advice from friends and family), and that shoppers increasingly want access to digital content in stores through a variety of devices. The study recommends different ways retailers can present digital information to better influence shoppers' buying behavior — and win higher revenue in the store.

According to the Cisco Internet Business Solutions Group^™ (@CiscoIBSG) study, titled Catch and Keep Digital Shoppers, a majority of shoppers, categorized as "Digital Mass Market," have advanced beyond the capabilities of many retailers. 

These shoppers expect stores to operate with the same information, transparency, and speed as their favorite website, and two-thirds are interested in personalized shopping experiences when visiting a store. Shoppers overwhelmingly prefer in-store self-service access to digital content (85%), with 1 in 3 using mobile searches to guide their purchasing decisions — up 20% from last year.

·         53% of shoppers expect greater price visibility

·         37% want easier ways to find products

·         39% desire faster/easier way to purchase products.

Read the news release.

Read the full report (pdf).

Enlarge the above Infographic.

See further coverage of the study by Online Media Daily.

Also see our previous blogpost, “’Showrooming’ Gains Ground in US” and other posts tagged “Retail.” And download our white paper, “Tech, Trends, & Retail Success: See the Future and Act Now.”

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

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.

Several surveys by the Pew Research (@pewresearch) Center's Internet & American Life Project (@pewinternet) reveal interesting variations among communities in the way their residents read and use reading-related technology and institutions:

Book readers: Some 78% of Americans ages 16 and older say they read a book in the past 12 months. Urban (80%) and suburban (80%) residents are especially likely to have read at least one book in the past year. While rural residents are somewhat less likely to have read a book in the past year (71%), the book readers in rural areas read as many books as their counterparts in cities and suburbs.

Purposes for reading: Most of those ages 16 and older read books for pleasure, and that is especially true of suburban readers: 82% of suburbanites read for pleasure, compared with 79% of urban residents and 76% of rural residents. Urban residents (80%) and suburban dwellers (79%) are also especially likely to read to keep up with current events. Some 73% of rural residents do that. More than three-quarters of suburban residents (77%) read to research topics that interest them, compared with 74% of urban residents and 70% of rural residents. Finally, 57% of suburbanites and 58% of city dwellers read for school or work, compared with 47% of rural residents who do that.

Americans and libraries: The majority of Americans ages 16 and older (58%) have a library card and even more (69%) say the library is important to them and their families. Some 71% of city dwellers say the library is important to them and 59% have library cards — and 69% of suburban residents say the library is important and 61% have library cards. At the same time, 62% of rural residents say the library is important and 48% have library cards.

Read this in full.

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

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.

According to a survey by GroupM Next (@groupmnext), 43% of US shoppers have used their mobile phone to engage in "showrooming" (#showrooming) the practice of using a mobile device to research products while in a store, including comparing prices online.

"Consumers have shifted their path to purchase to include the store as a step, but not necessarily the final step; and this will likely continue to increase over time," Chris Copeland, CEO of GroupM Next, says.

The study suggests that if bricks-&-mortar stores could stay within 5% of the price available via the Web (e.g., 5% of $17 is 85-cents), almost half of "potential showroomers" say they would finalize their purchase in stores.

Interacting with a member of staff in stores can also make a difference. Consumers who spoke to an associate are 12.5% more likely to purchase from a bricks-&-mortar outlet.

Read this in full.

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

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.

This article in The New York Times (@NYTNational) says, “As librarians across the nation struggle with the task of redefining their roles and responsibilities in a digital age, many public libraries are seeing an opportunity to fill the void created by the loss of traditional bookstores. They are increasingly adapting their collections and services based on the demands of library patrons, whom they now call customers.”

“A library has limited shelf space, so you almost have to think of it as a store, and stock it with the things that people want,” said Jason Kuhl, the executive director of the Arlington Heights Memorial Library. Renovations will turn part of the library’s first floor into an area resembling a bookshop that officials are calling the Marketplace, with cozy seating, vending machines and, above all, an abundance of best sellers....

Today’s libraries are reinventing themselves as vibrant town squares, showcasing the latest best sellers, lending Kindles loaded with ebooks, and offering grass-roots technology training centers. Faced with the need to compete for shrinking municipal finances, libraries are determined to prove they can respond as quickly to the needs of the taxpayers as the police and fire department can.

While print books, both fiction and nonfiction, still make up the bulk of most library collections — ebooks amount to less than 2% of many collections in part because some publishers limit their availability at libraries — building renovation plans rarely include expanding shelf space for print products. Instead, many libraries are culling their collections and adapting floor plans to accommodate technology training programs, as well as mini-conference rooms that offer private, quiet spaces frequently requested by self-employed consultants meeting with clients, as well as teenagers needing space to huddle over group projects....

Read this in full.

A report by the Pew Internet & American Life Project (@pewinternet) says that 13% of 16-year-olds and older have visited library websites or otherwise accessed library services by mobile device; double from an earlier survey in 2009. Those who are most likely to have connected to a library site include parents of minor children, women, and those with at least some college education.

Read this in full.

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

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.