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Digital Book World’s (@DigiBookWorld) editorial director, Jeremy Greenfield (@JDGsaid) says, “For the first time ever, more than half of Americans 65 and older are on the Internet, according to a new report — and this could mean a whole new growing market for ebook publishers and retailers.”

According to the study from the Pew Internet and American Life Project (@pewinternet), 53% of American adults age 65 or older use the Internet or email, up from about 40% less than a year ago. By comparison, 82% of all adults say they use the Internet or email at least occasionally.

Readers in that age group are among the most prolific book buyers, according to the Codex Group, a New York-based book-focused research firm. Book buyers 65 and older buy more books a month than those in the 18-to-24, 25-to-34, and 35-to-44 age groups. Book-buying peaks in the 45-to-54 and 55-to-64 age groups and drops off at 65 and up, possibly due to less disposable income to spend on books.

...“Seniors that read ebooks like the ability to change the type size and appreciate that they can get them at home without having to leave,” says Pew research specialist and report co-author Kathryn Zickuhr (@kzickuhr), referring to an upcoming study from Pew that will discuss libraries and ebooks, and contains feedback from older adults on how they got started reading ebooks and what they like and don’t like about them.

Read this in full.

Read the Pew report in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you effectively communicate your brand’s content in this digital age.

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

A demographic milestone has been passed that will be important to marketers and publishers. Here’s how The Wall Street Journal puts it:

For the first time in US history, whites of European ancestry account for less than half of newborn children, marking a demographic tipping point that is already changing the nation's politics, economy, and workforce.

Theologian Martin E. Marty suggests,

Insert the word “Religion” next to “Politics” and “Economy” ... and you will have the mix which excites, troubles, and provides new agendas.

According to the WSJ,

Among the roughly four million children born in the US between July 2010 and July 2011, 50.4% belonged to a racial or ethnic group that in previous generations would have classified them as minorities, up from 48.6% in the same period two years earlier, the Census Bureau says. That was the first 12-month stretch in which non-Hispanic white children accounted for less than half the country's births.

The New York Times says,

While over all, whites will remain a majority for some time, the fact that a younger generation is being born in which minorities are the majority has broad implications for the country’s economy, its political life and its identity. “This is an important tipping point,” said William H. Frey, the senior demographer at the Brookings Institution, describing the shift as a “transformation from a mostly white baby boomer culture to the more globalized multiethnic country that we are becoming.”

Read the WSJ article in full.

Read The NYT article in full.

Read Martin Marty’s commentary in full.

Read the Census Bureau news release.

Also see our previous blogposts, “Millennials Aren't Kids Anymore; Plurals Are” and “New Website for Demographic Info.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you reach your brand’s targeted demographic.

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

In Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly), Joe Wikert (@jwikert), general manager, publisher, & chair of Tools of Change for Publishing (@ToC) (#toccon), asks bookstores, “What business are you really in?” Simply selling books, he says, is too narrow. He challenges sellers to focus on their unique benefits, such as personalized service and community-building.

Despite the sluggish economy of the last few years, some bricks-and-mortar retailers have found ways to grow their business. Apple is a terrific example. Regardless of whether you’re an Apple fan, there’s always something new and interesting to discover in an Apple store. I can’t tell you the last time I felt that way about a bookstore. I’m not talking about eye candy or glitzy merchandising; when you enter an Apple store you know you’re in for a treat.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if customers entering your bookstore had that same feeling? I realize Apple can invest a lot in its store experience because it’s selling higher-priced items, but maybe that means you need to look beyond simply selling $20 or $30 books. I’m not talking about adding stationery and toys, like some bookstores have done over the years. It’s time to think much bigger.

Take a page out of Apple’s playbook and create a genius bar service for customers interested in self-publishing. Establish your location as the place to go for help in navigating the self-publishing waters. Remember, too, that most of the income earned in self-publishing is tied to services, e.g., editing, cover design, proofreading, and not necessarily sales of the finished product. Consider partnering with an established expert in these areas or build your own network of providers. The critical point is to evolve your business into something more than just selling books.

Read this in full.

Also see the Forbes (@Forbes) article by Phil Johnson (@philjohnson), "The Man Who Took On Amazon and Saved a Bookstore," about Jeff Mayersohn and Harvard Book Store (@HarvardBooks). And "Inside Amazon's Idea Machine: How Bezos Decodes The Customer" by George Anders (@GeorgeAnders).

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you “think bigger.”

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

Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) correspondent Judith Rosen (@Judith2dogs) reports on the conference Unbound: Speculations on the Future of the Book (#unbound) held May 3-4 at MIT.

The symposium, organized by two postdoctoral fellows in Writing and Humanistic Studies at MIT, Amaranth Borsuk (@amaranthborsuk) and Gretchen E. Henderson, lingered most on what forms the book might take.

The answer varied from Christian Bök’s (@christianbok) The Xenotext, an attempt to genetically engineer a bacterium to store a poem in its genome, to Nick Montfort’s computational poem, 10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10, a one-line Commodore 64 BASIC program, to Bob Stein’s SocialBook, a post-print publishing platform that allows users to share comments and drawings on books and articles read in Web browsers.

James Reid-Cunningham, associate director for digital programs and preservation at the Boston Athenaeum, a private membership library, was the only speaker to proclaim the book dead, specifically the reference book. “Books that carry data will be dead; the phone book is already dead,” he said, and drew parallels to other “dead” technologies like the daguerreotype. Digitization may be replacing the codex, but one form that Reid-Cunningham thinks may be a future of the book is art books, which are in and of themselves works of art.

In looking at reshaping the book, Gita Manaktala (@sylviamath), editorial director of the MIT Press, the only traditional publisher on the roster, discussed the difficulties faced by scholarly presses. “Our authors live in a wiki world, where knowledge is produced quickly,” she said. Yet publishers have to figure out what content should be preserved. She also discussed the need for alternatives to peer reviews given that today’s authors put up content and solicit comments as they prepare their manuscripts.

Stein suggested that Manaktala use SocialBook, which is currently in beta, and invited her and all 240 attendees to sign up by emailing him at futureofthebook@gmail.com. The idea behind the platform, he explained, is that a book becomes a place where readers and authors can gather. “Google Docs, wikis, they’re great at letting you change the text. They’ve grafted social awkwardly on top of it. For us,” said Stein, “social is not a pizza topping, it’s the cornerstone of reading and writing.”

Read this in full.

Also see imprint's (@printmag) "Between Page and Screen," The Institute for the Future of the Book, and Harvard’s History of the Book.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you identify publishing opportunities in this digital age.

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

On MediaPost’s (@MediaPost) Engage:GenY, Sharalyn Hartwell (@SharalynHartwel) executive director at Magid, writes, “Millennials [those born in the ‘80s and ‘90s]...aren’t kids anymore. In fact, according to our Millennial Life Stage Segmentation, only one in ten Millennials (11% of Millennials or approximately 10 million) isn’t an official adult (i.e., is under the age of 18). Approximately 13 million, or 15%, are college students and about 12 million, or 14%, are in flux — not working or married, but don’t have kids. The majority of Millennials are ‘grown-ups’ in the way society tends to define them — they are working (36% or 31 million) or parents (24% or 21 million).”

Millennials are no longer the youth population in this country, which means there’s a new generation of youth for marketers to know.

Presenting the Pluralist Generation. The oldest Plural is 14, turning 15 in 2012. The youngest is a newborn.

Plurals are America’s last generation to have a Caucasian majority, and based on immigration projections, they will also be America’s first generation to be pluralistic, or have no majority race. Their own ethnic composition is a catalyst for the overall ethnic transition in our country. In 2019, less than 50% of live births in this country will be Caucasian. In 2042, just 30 years from now, our entire population will be less than 50% Caucasian. Plurals are being raised in the environment of change and, in their 30s and early 40s, they will be the ones managing the transition into a truly pluralistic society.

Read this in full.

See the news release, "Magid Generational Strategies Reveals America's Newest Generation."

Actually the name of the next generation is still up for grabs. Reveries.com (@cool_news) says that, along with Pluralist, other suggested identifiers are Generation Wii, iGeneration, Gen Tech, Digital Natives, Net Gen, Multi Gen, Post Gen. You can vote on which one you think it should be.

Read this in full.

How will you prepare now for Pluralist consumers of the future? Write your comments below.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you sort through research statistics and what they mean to effectively communicate your brand's message.

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

Somersault (@smrsault) is attending Q’s (@Qideas) 5th annual Gathering (#QDC) today through Thursday in Washington, DC. According to its own description, “Q was birthed out of Gabe Lyons’ (@GabeLyons) vision to see Christians, especially leaders, recover a vision for their historic responsibility to renew and restore cultures.”

Q explores topics that fall into 4 broad themes: culture, future, church, and gospel. Q facilitates the investigation of deeper engagement and responsibility in each of these areas. As we continue to work through these ideas on a deeper level, so grows our commitment to equipping innovators, social entrepreneurs, entertainers, artists, church-shapers, futurists, scientists, educators, historians, environmentalists and everyday people to do extraordinary things. At Q Ideas, you'll see a broad spectrum of content represented in our small group curriculum, videos, and articles. These are all contributed and commissioned to shed light on unique areas of culture and the church.

Q is a place where leaders from every sphere of society gather to learn, reflect, collaborate and take action to renew culture. We share a common commitment to the gospel of Jesus Christ and an awareness of our calling by God to join him in his redeeming work throughout every channel of culture.

Free live streaming of the opening and closing presentations is available this morning and tonight. Speakers and their topics include

·         Gabe Lyons, Founder of Q: “Ideas for the Common Good”

·         Andy Crouch (@ahc), Author: “Power”

·         Mark Batterson (@MarkBatterson), Pastor of National Community Church: “Church & Place”

·         David Brooks (@DavidBrooksNYT), Columnist, The New York Times: “Humility”

·         Jonathan Merritt (@JonathanMerritt), Author and Columnist: “Faith of Our Own”

Depend on Somersault to help you develop strategy to effectively communicate your brand message in today’s culture.

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

E-readers may soon be thinner, lighter, and supple. LG (@LGUS) has just announced it’s beginning mass production of the world’s first flexible, plastic e-ink display. This is opposed to the hard, heavy, prone-to-cracking glass-laminate e-ink displays found in devices such as the Kindle and Nook.

The new plastic display has a resolution of 1024x768 and is 6 inches across the diagonal, comparable to the Kindle and Nook.

The LG display is half the weight and 30% thinner (0.7mm) than a comparable, glass e-ink panel. Existing ebook readers need to be thick (and heavy) to protect the glass display, but LG says its display is more rugged. The press release says the plastic display survives repeated 1.5-meter drop tests and break/scratch tests with a small hammer, and that it's flexible up to 40 degrees from the midpoint.

Read this in full.

Also see USA TODAY's article, "Flexible displays bend what's possible for computers."

And see our previous blogposts, “Why Your Next Phone Might be Bendable” and “Revolutionary New Paper Computer Shows Flexible Future for Smartphones and Tablets.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you plan your strategy for 21st century digital publishing.

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

Also see our previous blogpost, “Computers: The New Consumers?.”

How does the Internet of Things—where not only is everyone connected to the Internet, but also everything—impact your publishing strategy and planning? Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you think it all through.

And bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Futurist News tab.

This article in The Economist (@TheEconomist) explains how Jeff Bezos, the founder and CEO of Amazon (@amazon), values innovation and risk-taking. It begins with the example of Bezos’ major investment in “a gargantuan clock” being built inside the Sierra Diablo Mountain Range in Texas by The Long Now Foundation (@longnow). This 10,000-year clock, designed “to be a symbol, an icon for long-term thinking,” will tick once a year, its century hand will advance once every 100 years, and its cuckoo will come out on the millennium.

Mr. Bezos’s willingness to take a long-term view also explains his fascination with space travel, and his decision to found a secretive company called Blue Origin, one of several start-ups now building spacecraft with private funding. It might seem like a risky bet, but the same was said of many of Amazon’s unusual moves in the past. Successful firms, he says, tend to be the ones that are willing to explore uncharted territories. “Me-too companies have not done that well over time,” he observes.

Eyebrows were raised, for example, when Amazon moved into the business of providing cloud-computing services to technology firms—which seemed an odd choice for an online retailer. But the company has since established itself as a leader in the field. “A big piece of the story we tell ourselves about who we are is that we are willing to invent,” Mr. Bezos told shareholders at Amazon’s annual meeting last year. “And very importantly, we are willing to be misunderstood for long periods of time.”

...[Criticism does] nothing to sway Mr. Bezos, who is convinced that rapid technological change creates huge opportunities for companies bold enough to seize them. “There is room for many winners here,” he says. But he believes Amazon can be one of the biggest thanks to its unique culture and capacity for reinventing itself. Even in its original incarnation as an internet retailer, it pioneered features that have since become commonplace, such as allowing customers to leave reviews of books and other products (a move that shocked literary critics at the time), or using a customer’s past purchasing history to recommend other products, often with astonishing accuracy.

Read this in full.

Also see Bezos' long view approach in "Bezos team finds Apollo 11 rocket engines on Atlantic floor."

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you set your leadership vision and take advantage of technology to advance your brand.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Innovation and Leadership tabs.

In this New York Times (@nytimestech) article, technology writer David Streitfeld spotlights a wooden warehouse in Richmond, CA, where copies of printed books are being stored in the hope of preserving literature in case of a digital catastrophe.

Forty-foot shipping containers stacked two by two are stuffed with the most enduring, as well as some of the most forgettable, books of the era. Every week, 20,000 new volumes arrive, many of them donations from libraries and universities thrilled to unload material that has no place in the Internet Age....

“We want to collect one copy of every book,” said Brewster Kahle, who has spent $3 million to buy and operate this repository situated just north of San Francisco. “You can never tell what is going to paint the portrait of a culture.”

As society embraces all forms of digital entertainment, this latter-day Noah is looking the other way. A Silicon Valley entrepreneur who made his fortune selling a data-mining company to Amazon.com in 1999, Mr. Kahle founded and runs the Internet Archive (@internetarchive), a nonprofit organization devoted to preserving Web pages — 150 billion so far — and making texts more widely available.

But even though he started his archiving in the digital realm, he now wants to save physical texts, too.

Read this in full.

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