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This article in The New York Times on “how JPMorgan Chase got into the mess of the London whale trades that dominated the financial news last year” illustrates the real costs of inexact communication.

A key figure in the controversy wrote at the time the following in a memo to “the International Senior Management Group of the Chief Investment Office:

...sell the forward spread and buy protection on the tightening move,... use indices and add to existing position,... go long risk on some belly tranches especially where defaults may realize,... buy protection on HY and Xover in rallies and turn the position over to monetize volatility.”

Gibberish. Yet it was approved, even though “relevant actors and regulators could not understand” it.

Read this in full.

This is a reminder to all of us in the publishing trade that good writing is rooted in clear writing! As Strunk and White said in The Elements of Style,

Since writing is communication, clarity can only be a virtue. When you become hopelessly mired in a sentence, it is best to start fresh; do not try to fight your way through against the terrible odds of syntax. Usually what is wrong is that the construction has become too involved at some point; the sentence needs to be broken apart and replaced by two or more shorter sentences.

Muddiness is not merely a disturber of prose, it is also a destroyer of life, of hope: death on the highway caused by a misplaced phrase in a well-intentioned letter, anguish of a traveler expecting to be met at a railroad station and not being met because of a slipshod telegram. Think of the tragedies that are rooted in ambiguity, and be clear! When you say something, make sure you have said it. The chances of your having said it are only fair.

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

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.

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The website BuzzFeed (@BuzzFeed) offers to re-title a few Dr. Seuss books based on their possible underlying meanings. Perhaps the exercise shows how important the correct title is to the success of a book ☺

The Butter Battle Book ≈ The Tragic Futility of the Nuclear Arms Race!

The Sneetches and Other Stories ≈ Racists and Other Stories

The Cat in the Hat ≈ The Virtues of Autonomy, Efficiency, and Skepticism

The Lorax ≈ The Importance of Environmental Awareness in Industrialized Society

Yertle the Turtle ≈ Why Hitler is Dangerous and Other Stories

How the Grinch Stole Christmas ≈ The Psychological Implications of Holiday-Motivated Materialism

Green Eggs and Ham ≈ How Fear of the Unknown Hinders the Developmnet of Informed Opinions

Horton Hears a Who ≈ The Inherent Ethical Issues of Isolationism!

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). 

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

Leadership Journal (@Leadership_Jnl) has selected 10 books as the best of 2012 to nurture ministry leaders’ souls while equipping them for more effective ministry.

The Leader’s Inner Life category:

·         Pastoral Graces: Reflections on the Care of Souls by Lee Eclov (Moody)

·         Sifted: Pursuing Growth through Trials, Challenges, and Disappointments by Wayne Cordeiro (@waynecordeiro) (Zondervan)

·         The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg (@cduhigg) (Random House)

·         Adventures in Churchland: Finding Jesus in the Mess of Organized Religion by Dan Kimball (@DanKimball) (Zondervan)

·         Dangerous Calling: The Unique Challenges of Pastoral Ministry by Paul Tripp (@PaulTripp) (Crossway)

The Leader's Outer Life category:

·         Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City by Tim Keller (Zondervan)

·         Deep & Wide: Creating Churches Unchurched People Love to Attend by Andy Stanley (@AndyStanley) (Zondervan)

·         Pursuing God's Will Together: A Discernment Practice for Leadership Groups by Ruth Haley Barton (@TransformingCnt) (IVP)

·         Your Church Is Too Safe: Why Following Christ Turns the World Upside-Down by Mark Buchanan (Zondervan)

·         Vision: Lost & Found: The Story of a Church That Got Stuck but Didn't Stay There by Tim Stevens (@timastevens) (Exponential)

Read this in full.

Also see our previous blogpost: “The 2013 Christianity Today Book Awards.”

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, 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. 

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

From an initial crop of 455 titles submitted by 68 publishers, Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) magazine selected for its 2013 Book Awards 10 winners and 9 notables that offer insights into the people, events, and ideas that shape evangelical life, thought, and mission.

·         Where the Conflict Really Lies: Science, Religion, and Naturalism by Alvin Plantinga (Oxford University Press)

·         A New Testament Biblical Theology: The Unfolding of the Old Testament in the New by G. K. Beale (Baker Academic)

·         Bad Religion: How We Became a Nation of Heretics by Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) (Free Press)

·         Kingdom Calling: Vocational Stewardship for the Common Good by Amy L. Sherman (InterVarsity Press)

·         Center Church: Doing Balanced, Gospel-Centered Ministry in Your City by Timothy Keller (Zondervan)

·         Evangellyfish: A Novel by Douglas Wilson (Canon Press)

·         Summoned from the Margin: Homecoming of an African by Lamin Sanneh (Eerdmans)

·         Just and Unjust Peace: An Ethic of Political Reconciliation by Daniel Philpott (Oxford University Press)

·         Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis by Lauren F. Winner (HarperOne)

·         The Theology of Jonathan Edwards by Michael J. McClymond and Gerald R. McDermott (Oxford University Press)

Read this in full.

Also see our previous blogpost, "Christian Publishing's 2012 Best Book Covers."

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.

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

Humor website The Onion (@TheOnion) “reports” a “news” article that only an editor or writer (or English teacher) can appreciate ☺:

Law enforcement officials confirmed Friday that four more copy editors were killed this week amid ongoing violence between two rival gangs divided by their loyalties to the The Associated Press Stylebook (@APStylebook) and The Chicago Manual Of Style (@ChicagoManual).

“At this time we have reason to believe the killings were gang-related and carried out by adherents of both the AP and Chicago styles, part of a vicious, bloody feud to establish control over the grammar and usage guidelines governing American English,” said FBI spokesman Paul Holstein, showing reporters graffiti tags in which the word “anti-social” had been corrected to read “antisocial.”

The deadly territory dispute between these two organizations, as well as the notorious MLA Handbook gang, has claimed the lives of more than 63 publishing professionals this year alone. Officials also stated that an innocent 35-year-old passerby who found himself caught up in a long-winded dispute over use of the serial, or Oxford, comma had died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

Author Mark Sullivan (@MarkSullivanBks) shares his learning experiences writing novels with James Patterson. Sullivan says, “I thought I knew what I was doing when it came to commercial fiction. Working with Patterson, however, I discovered quickly that I didn’t.”

Characters, especially heroes and villains, were to be thought about carefully. They had to be human, above all, and then we had to subject them to terrible ordeals that took them to the brink of their capacities and beyond….

Exposition was severely limited. The old adage—show, not tell—was critical, and the element of surprise was paramount….

The sum of this advice was to sacrifice all for the story and the characters. Outlines were trusted navigational charts, yet we were free to sail in other directions as the novel evolved. But if you were going to change something, it had to be a terrific change….

Read this in full.

Also see our previous blogpost, “James Patterson Explains Why His Books Sell Like Crazy.”

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. 

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

The Oxford Dictionaries (@OUPAcademic) USA Word of the Year for 2012 is GIF (pronounced with either a soft or hard “G”). GIF the noun has been around for years. GIF the verb (“He GIFed the highlights of the debate”) is derived from GIF the file extension.

“The GIF, a compressed file format for images that can be used to create simple, looping animations, turned 25 this year,” notes Oxford University Press’ Katherine Martin, “but like so many other relics of the 80s, it has never been trendier.” (Listen to Studio 360’s (@Studio360show) “'Tis the Season for GIF-ing.”

Word of the Year runners-up include Eurogeddon, Higgs boson, MOOC (massive open online course), nomophobia (anxiety caused by being without one’s mobile phone), super PAC, superstorm, and YOLO (you only live once). Oxford Dictionaries also announced its British “Word of the Year”: omnishambles. Officially defined as a situation “characterized by a string of blunders and miscalculations.”

Read the USA Word of the Year announcement in full.

Read the UK Word of the Year announcement in full.

In its 23rd annual words of the year vote, the American Dialect Society (@americandialect) selected "hashtag" as the 2012 word of the year. Hashtag refers to the practice used on Twitter for marking topics or making commentary by means of a hash or number symbol (#) followed by a word or phrase (#WOTY12).

If you’re a word lover, also see our previous blogposts,

• “'Lolz', 'Ridic' and 'Mwahahaha' Added to Oxford Dictionaries Online”
• “Scrabble Champion Named”
• “The Story of English in 100 Words”
• “A Future of Fewer Words?”
• “Word Warriors' 2012 Top 10 Expressive Words”
• “Words of the Year 2011”

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. 

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

In her Op-Ed article in The New York Times (@nytopinion), Stanford (@Stanford) anthropology professor and author of When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship With God, T. M. Luhrmann raises some interesting points that apply to biblical fiction, Bible-based movies, and creative storytelling in sermons. She says:

Most evangelicals describe the Bible as literally true. Yet for many, “literally” often means “keep what’s there and add details to make it vivid.”

I am an anthropologist, and in recent years I have been exploring a kind of American evangelical Christianity that seeks to enable its followers to know God intimately. These evangelicals talk about the Bible as if it is literally true, but they also use their imagination to experience the Bible as personally as possible. They talk about getting to know God by having coffee with God, or asking God what shirt they should wear in the morning. A man from Horizon Christian Fellowship in San Diego told me that “the Bible is a love story, and it is written to me.” It is a style of evangelical Christianity with many followers: perhaps a quarter of all Americans....

I am no theologian and I do not think that social science can weigh in on the question of who God is or whether God is real. But I think that anthropology offers some insight into why imaginatively enriching a text taken as literally true helps some Christians to hang on to God when they are surrounded by a secular world.

First, this way of knowing God involves what social scientists would call “active learning.”.... Second, these practices make the experience of God personally specific....

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategically design your online brand presence.

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. 

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At the recently held LitFlow-Thinktank (@LitFlow) in Berlin, publishing pundit Jane Friedman (@JaneFriedman) said publishers must demonstrate their continued relevance in light of current technology that minimizes the barrier to entry for authors to publish their own books apart from depending on established publishers. She said:

Publishers, for the first time, have to earn their keep by providing a value that extends beyond production and distribution — and possibly even editorial direction. The biggest problem that authors must solve for themselves, year after year, is (1) staying competitive, current, and discoverable in a shifting digital landscape (2) having the right tools to be effective and in touch with their readers, and (3) having a strong network of connections that helps them better market and promote. All of these things are well within a publisher’s ability to assist with, only they haven’t been putting any resource into providing such assistance. They have been focused on their own corporate problems of shifting to a digitally enabled business, and squeezing as many sales as possible out of their mastery of print book sales and distribution. Most of the thinking is centered on self-preservation. But I’d like to suggest that the best self-preservation measure of all is becoming a house that’s known and respected for — in the eyes of its authors — being an active, long-term partner and resource. By empowering each author to do better, the publisher is ensuring more sales over the long run.

Friedman suggests 3 ways publishers should add value to continue attracting authors:

1. Create an author collective, where authors assist each other in branding, marketing, and promotion.
2. Make available an author education program of 101/evergreen education in the form of white papers, webinars, tutorials, screencasts, Q&As, and events.
3. Devote at least one person full time to nurturing author development and community.

Read her presentation in full.

Listen to her presentation.

Also see eReport’s (@nztaylor) coverage, “How publishers can stay in the game.”

See our previous blogposts, “Guy Kawasaki's New Self-Publishing Instruction Book” and "Publishing Must Reinvent Itself."

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you publish and market your ebooks and pbooks.

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, especially the Publishers tab that includes links to self-publisher services.

Somersault was given early review access to Guy Kawasaki (@GuyKawasaki) and Shawn Welch’s (@shawnwelch) forthcoming 324-page book APE: Author, Publisher, Entrepreneur — How to Publish a Book (Nononina Press, 2012, ISBN 978-0-9885231-1-1, Kindle edition).

In describing their work, Kawasaki and Welch have coined the term “artisanal publishing,” which they say consists of “writers who love their craft and who control every aspect of the process from beginning to end. In this new approach, writers are no longer at the mercy of large, traditional publishers, and readers will have more books to read.” Kawaski says,

In 2011 the publisher of one of my books, Enchantment, could not fill an order for 500 ebook copies of the book. Because of this experience, I self-published my next book, What the Plus!, and learned first-hand that self-publishing is a complex, confusing, and idiosyncratic process. As Steve Jobs said, “There must be a better way.”

With Shawn Welch, a tech wizard, I wrote APE to help people take control of their writing careers.

Among the chapter titles are:

·         Tools for Writers

·         How to Write Your Book

·         How to Finance Your Book

·         How to Avoid the Self-Published Look

·         Understanding Book Distribution

·         How to Convert Your File

·         How to Price Your Book

·         How to Guerrilla-Market Your Book

Kawasaki and Welch have done a huge service for hesitant or nervous authors who want to self-publish (they've also lobbed a huge salvo into the ramparts of traditional publishers already agitated over the revolutionary changes occurring in the industry). The book is packed with helpful, practical advice and direct links to important online sources (the only thing missing is a link to the wealth of publishing and marketing information at SomersaultNOW ☺). Also check out the Kindle/iBookstore/Nook/Google Play/Kobo Royalty Calculator on the book's website.

If you want to become an expert at self-publishing, buy APE.

If you want experts to help you publish and market your book, contact us (@smrsault). ☺

Also see our blogposts, "Self-Publishing a Book: 25 Things You Need to Know" and "Free iBook Targets New Writers, Missionaries, Christian Journalists," and others tagged "Self-Publishing."

Learn about online marketing with SomersaultSocial.

Add our Facebook page (http://facebook.com/SomersaultGroup) & Twitter stream (http://twitter.com/smrsault) to your Flipboard account on your iPad, iPhone, or Android.

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