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.
The promise we can all go paperless has been around for years, so why is it that despite email, smartphones, e-readers, tablets, and computers, we’re still so dependent on pen and paper?
BBC Click (@BBCClick) reporter LJ Rich explores why paper has such staying power in this hi-tech age. She says
Demand for paper is at an all-time high. Finnish paper provider Foex predicts that the global paper market could reach a new record of 400m tons in 2012.
Since paper is not going away, technology is being developed to enhance it. The above video is from Layar (@Layar), a company specializing in augemented reality that wants to make the print world clickable.
With Layar, publishers and advertisers can quickly and easily activate their static print pages with digital experiences...all without hiring developers or installing software.
Layar makes it possible for consumers to scan with their smartphones a printed magazine cover, articles, photos, and more, to immediately see digital content such as a video or more detailed and localized information.
Back in April, one of our blogposts explained how AbeBooks (@AbeBooks) uses videos to promote itself. One of them answers the question, “Why do old books smell?”
Similarly to how people enjoy the smell of the interior of new cars and look for ways to replicate it, now comes a perfume for people who prefer the smell of books.
Fashion designer Karl Lagerfeld came up with the name Paper Passion, which launched on July 12 in Wallpaper magazine’s annual Handmade issue. It was actually at Wallpaper‘s Handmade exhibition in Milan last year that the idea for the perfume originated, when German publisher Gerhard Steidl remarked that his favorite scent was a “freshly printed book.”
Since then, Steidl has been working with perfumer Geze Schoen on perfecting the scent, using only four or five ingredients. Synthesizing paper’s unique aroma was apparently not an easy task. Schoen explained, “The smell of printed paper is dry and fatty; they are not notes you often work with.”
If you’ve read this far, you obviously have a keen interest in books. So you’ll want to visit this website (@bookshelfporn) that features photo upon beautiful photo of bookshelves.
According to MediaPost’s (@MediaPost) Online Media Daily, the spread of connected PCs, smartphones, and tablets has altered how people consume media and make purchases. So says a new study by mobile ad network InMobi (@inmobi) and Mobext, the mobile marketing arm of Havas Digital (@HavasDigital). Among the highlights:
·Tablet use has risen quickly to 29.5 million US users, 11% of the total US population.
·Over 60% of US tablet owners spend at least 30 minutes each day accessing media content on their tablets and 52% use a tablet to fill what previously would have been “dead time.”
·After buying a tablet, 29% of tablet owners say they stopped surfing the Internet via their PC and/or laptop.
·Nearly half of tablet owners — 48% — agree that tablets’ appealing design and accessibility make it is easier to access media content than on a PC or laptop.
·When it comes to shopping, 22% of tablet users say they've shopped less in physical stores since purchasing a tablet and more than half (55%) make purchases on their device in an average month.
·Tablet use peaks at home in the evening between 6 pm and midnight for most owners.
·Regarding considered purchases, 55% of tablet owners say they first learn about the product on their tablet, 53% actively evaluate the product, and 58% follow through with purchasing those goods on their tablet.
Forbes (@Forbes) contributor Suw Charman-Anderson (@Suw) asks, “If you’re starting out and you’ve just written your first book, you really do have to ask yourself the hard question: Is this book actually any good?”
If there’s a common flaw in self-publishing, it’s that too many books are published too soon. Experienced voices across the publishing world continually advise self-publishers to get help with editing, and not just copyediting but story editing too. It’s difficult, if not impossible, to properly edit your own work. But the siren call of the Kindle store is often too seductive. The urge to finish your first draft, chuck it through a spellchecker and release it in to the wild is often far too strong for eager writers to resist.
But resist you must. Not resisting results in your name being married, permanently, to sub-standard work which doesn’t show off your talents to their best. Do you really want, in five or ten years time, to look back on your early work and cringe? More to the point, do you really want your first act of publishing to result in the irreversible blotting of your copybook with your potential fans?
In 2 articles, CNET’s (@CNET) executive editor David Carnoy (@DavidCarnoy) offers step-by-step tips on how to self-publish print books as well as ebooks.
Self-publishing a print book is easy. Self-publishing an ebook is even easier.
You choose a size for your book, format your Word manuscript to fit that size, turn your Word doc into a PDF, create some cover art in Photoshop, turn that into a PDF, and upload it all to the self-publisher of your choice and get a book proof back within a couple of weeks (or sooner) if you succeeded in formatting everything correctly. You can then make changes and swap in new PDFs.
After you officially publish your book, you can make changes to your cover and interior text by submitting new PDFs, though your book will go offline (“out of stock”) for a week or two. Companies may charge a fee (around $25-$50) for uploading a new cover or new interior.
Carnoy’s other article, “How to Self-Publish an Ebook,” suggests basic tips for ebook publishing and lays out best options for publishing quickly and easily.
·It's gotta be good....
·Create an arresting cover....
·Price your ebook cheaply....
·Avoid any outfits that don't let you set the price....
·Marketing is all about creating awareness for your ebook....
Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you publish and market your content, as either a pbook or ebook.
And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Publishers tab that includes links to self-publishing services.
Forbes (@Forbes) senior editor Deborah L. Jacobs (@djworking) offers insights she learned in successfully self-publishing her non-fiction book.
Digital technology has made it possible for anyone to publish a book….But turning that book into a successful commercial venture is far more challenging. For more than one year after self-publishing my book, Estate Planning Smarts, promoting it was practically my full-time job.
I didn’t take the decision to self-publish lightly. In fact, I turned down offers from two big publishers because I wasn’t happy with the money they offered. McGraw-Hill’s offer was missing a zero—and I told them so.
...The reason for publishers’ low offers was that statistics show estate planning books don’t sell well. I had a vision for a book that would prove them wrong, but the big companies would never have allocated the resources to produce it.
My business model involved going against the grain by spending money where big publishers are cutting corners: high-quality paper, two-color graphics, printing on a Web press, rather than print-on-demand. And while big publishers were cutting experienced staff, I retained top talent for editing and graphics, on a freelance basis. The goal was to produce a high-quality product that advisers would give to their clients and friends and family would share with each other.
Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you publish and market your content in this fast-changing digital age.
And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard;especially the Publishers tab that includes links to self-publishing services.
He says properly building a platform for your brand (either you or an entity you represent) provides visibility (elevation above the crowd), amplification (extend your reach to people who want to hear you), and connection (engage people with relevant and valuable information).
Hyatt maintains an active blog and Twitter stream. He says it took him 4 years to attract more than 1,000 readers a month, but today he has more than 300,000 visitors (and 130,000 Twitter followers). Read his post, “4 Insights I Gleaned from Building My Own Platform.”
Hyatt also conducted a teleseminar for Platform. You can hear it here.
Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategically and effectively build your platform.
Between traditional publishing, the legitimization of self-publishing, print-on-demand, and Internet technology lowering the barrier to authoring books, roughly 1,000 books are now being published every single day in the USA.
We’ve never had so many books available, yet bookstores are going out of business like never before. With the astronomical number of books in the marketplace and stores closing their doors where books have historically been displayed for serendipitous encountering, the question these days is, “How will people conveniently browse and discover new titles.” The following social websites are one answer:
As the above video reports, this Wall Street Journal Life & Culture (@WSJLife) article focuses on the amount of information about readers that booksellers and their e-readers are now able to glean through ebook technology.
It takes the average reader just seven hours to read the final book in Suzanne Collins's "Hunger Games" trilogy on the Kobo e-reader — about 57 pages an hour. Nearly 18,000 Kindle readers have highlighted the same line from the second book in the series: "Because sometimes things happen to people and they're not equipped to deal with them." And on Barnes & Noble's Nook, the first thing that most readers do upon finishing the first "Hunger Games" book is to download the next one.
In the past, publishers and authors had no way of knowing what happens when a reader sits down with a book. Does the reader quit after three pages, or finish it in a single sitting? Do most readers skip over the introduction, or read it closely, underlining passages and scrawling notes in the margins? Now, ebooks are providing a glimpse into the story behind the sales figures, revealing not only how many people buy particular books, but how intensely they read them.
Digital Book World (@DigiBookWorld) editorial director Jeremy Greenfield (@JDGsaid) says, “Publishers worried that readers who borrow ebooks from libraries don’t buy books can put those worries to rest."
According to a new study from the The Pew Research Center's (@PewResearch) Internet & American Life Project (@pewinternet), those who borrow ebooks from libraries also purchase ebooks. When ebook borrowers were asked by Pew how they acquired the last ebook they read, 41% said they bought it.
“Ebook borrowers are book lovers,” says Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet project. “They the heaviest book-reading cohort of the ones we measured. They are more into books than even ebook readers, the larger group they fall into.”
·12% of readers of ebooks borrowed an ebook from the library in the past year.
·But 58% of all library card holders say they don’t know if their library provides ebook lending services.
·55% of all those who say the library is “very important” to them say they don’t know if their library lends ebooks.
·53% of all tablet computer owners say they don’t know if their library lends ebooks.
·48% of all owners of ebook reading devices such as original Kindles and NOOKs say they don’t know if their library lends ebooks.
·47% of all those who read an ebook in the past year say they don’t know if their library lends ebooks.
·E-book borrowers appreciate the selection of ebooks at their local library, but they often encounter wait lists, unavailable titles, or incompatible file formats.
·Many Americans would like to learn more about borrowing ebooks.
·58% of Americans have a library card, and 69% say their local library is important to them and their family.
·Leading-edge librarians and patrons say the advent of ebooks has produced a major transformation in book searching and borrowing at libraries.
In his blogpost, “Does Pew study prove ebooks in libraries are safe for publishers?,” Mike Shatzkin (@MikeShatzkin) says, “The latest Pew ebook study seems to me to confirm that the publishers are doing the right thing for sales by constricting the availability of many of the most attractive books from library shelves.”
