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All facets of publishing are changing exponentially. Printing has gone way beyond mere ink and paper. CNN reports that a Dutch architect wants to print a house.

Architect Janjaap Ruijssenaars describes his $5-$6 million "Landscape House" as "one surface folded in an endless Mobius band," or sort of a giant figure 8. He says walking through its continuous looping design will seamlessly merge indoors and outdoors in an effort to model nature itself.

Ruijssenaars plans to build "Landscape House" using the emerging technology of 3-D printing, where 20-foot by 30-foot blocks are printed out of sand formed into a material like marble. Those blocks, along with fiberglass and concrete reinforcements, will be used to create the building.

Read this in full.

You may also be interested in reading (and seeing the video at) "Printing 3D Buildings: Five tenets of a new kind of architecture" and "Staples announces in-store 3D printing service."

Also see our previous blogposts “3D Printing a Gun” and “PaperTab: A Tablet As Flexible As Paper,” and others tagged “Future.”

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. 

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

In the Los Angeles Times (@latimesbooks), Carolyn Kellogg (@paperhaus) reports that Circle City Books in Pittsboro, NC, “has just completed an eye-catching mural” of 48 huge, spine-out books along the outside of its store building.

See the list of titles and read this in full.

Also see The Bookshop Blog’s (@BookshopBlog), “Beautiful Mural at Circle City Books.”

And see the fun photo on our previous blogpost, “A Book Cover for an Eyesore.”

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.

Reading books has always included a social element (“What books have you read lately”). But it’s now been given a bump as new technology allows readers, without regard to geographical boundaries, to converse with each other — and the author — in real time while still reading.

Among the just announced winners of Digital Book World’s (@DigiBookWorld) Publishing Innovation Awards is the ebook 11 Days in May: The Conversation That Will Change Your Life by JD Messinger (@JDMessinger); voted Best Non-Fiction Ebook.

The PIAs honor “the most innovative ebooks, enhanced ebooks, and book apps....It is the mission of the PIAs to highlight excellent publishers/authors, encourage new thinking, and improve the reading experience in the digital age.”

11 Days in May utilizes Democrasoft’s (@Democrasoft) WeJIT (@myWeJIT) technology, in collaboration with Vook (@vooktv), to allow readers to communicate directly with the author and other readers. These topic-based discussions are made possible with embedded WeJIT links in the ebook that direct readers to an online discussion forum. Conversations can be shared beyond the confines of the ebook via email, Facebook, Twitter, and other sharing methods built into WeJITs.

Read this in full.

WeJIT discussions and polling links from the ebook 11 Days in May.

News release: “WeJIT Connects Readers and Authors Inside the eBook.”

The following video explains how WeJITs work:

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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The New York Times (@nytimesbooks) book section asked people in and around the world of graphic design to name one of their favorite book covers from 2012 and briefly describe its appeal. Do you agree with their selection?

See all 19 covers.

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

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategically design your book covers.

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 Innovation tab.

The Evangelical Christian Publishers Association (@ecpa), in conjunction with Dickinson Press as the sponsor, has announced the winners of the ECPA | dp Book Cover Awards. A total of 101 covers were submitted from 19 publishers for the 6th annual program.

Launched in 2007, the awards aim to educate, promote, and recognize superior cover design in Christian publishing. This year, the program presented two awards: one for design and one for research-based marketability.

Highlighting the art aspect of book covers, the ECPA Book Cover Design Award focuses on the design merits of a book cover, including the level of conceptual thinking, the quality of the execution, and appropriateness for the market. Design winners are:

·         The Hole in Our Holiness by Kevin DeYoung; designed by Josh Dennis (Crossway); in the Small Publisher category

·         Daddy, Is That Story True or Were You Just Preaching? by James W. Moore; designed by David Carlson (Abingdon Press); in the Mid-Sized Publisher category

·         Love Does by Bob Goff; designed by Connie Gabbert (Thomas Nelson); in the Large Publisher category.

Highlighting the science aspect of covers, the Research award is based on the consumer-buying research of the Research Institute for Social Change, which measures consumer motivations as it relates to cover design and book sales. Covers were judged and analyzed on how well their design elements match characteristics of their intended audience. Research winners are:

·         Spark by Jason Jaggard; designed by Kristopher Orr (WaterBrook Press); in the Small Publisher category.

·         What Every Man Wishes His Father Had Told Him by Byron Forrest Yawn; designed by Koechel Peterson & Associates (Harvest House Publishers); in the Mid-Sized Publisher category

·         Soul Detox by Craig Groeschel; designed by Curt Diepenhorst (Zondervan); in the Large Publisher category.

Also see our previous blogposts:

·         “The 2013 Christianity Today Book Awards”

·         “The 2012 Leadership Book Awards”

·         “ECPA Announces 2012 Christian Book Award Finalists”

·         “Christian Book Award Winners for 2012”

·         “2012 Christian Small Publisher Book of the Year Award Winners Announced”

·         “ECPA Announces 2011’s Best Book Covers.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategically design your book covers.

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 Innovation tab.

·         93% of Fortune 500 companies place their logo in the top left corner.

·         27% of logos include a tagline or slogan.

·         63% of companies have content above the fold. Users scroll on the remaining 37% websites to find content.

·         87% of websites have a search field.

·         50% of websites features a scrolling content window of some kind.

·         47% of websites have clear call-to-action buttons on their homepages that take users 3 seconds or less to find.

·         Only 11% of Fortune 500 websites have social media links above the fold; 89% below the fold.

·         60% of companies feature latest news and blogposts on their homepages.

·         Contact information is hard to find on 63%.

·         More than 80% of companies do not have a newsletter signup feature on their homepages.

·         More than 70% of Fortune 500 companies use favicon icons.

·         Average loading time of a homepage is 6.5 seconds; average size of homepage is 766 Kb.

·         Average width of website is 877 pixels.

·         Only 3% of websites use Flash to display content throughout the entire homepage.

·         80% of websites primarily use a light background and color scheme.

·         93% of websites have centered-approach navigation.

·         63% of websites use high quality images on their homepages to connect with users.

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. 

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.

Martin Taylor (@nztaylor), founder of the Digital Publishing Forum, says bookstores should adapt the example from the technical industry in order to succeed in today’s fast-changing retail environment. He points to the strategy known as co-opetition, in which it’s “in each supplier’s self-interest to help competitors reach its customers.” He says, in the advent of Web 2.0, “even traditional media sites found that opening up and sharing widely, even with competitors, was good for business.”

Bookshops are already operating in a world where readers have lots of choices for new book discovery with bookshops just a small part of their repertoire. In this world, the idea that a store in some way ‘owns’ a customer who is disloyal if they stray elsewhere to buy seems quaint.... So a better strategy than closed walls might be a welcoming and respectful openness.

The lesson from co-opetition is that when barriers come down and markets open up, your best strategy might be to work with competitors in ways that make your customers’ lives easier.

Influence – amplified through partnerships, online media, and other channels – rather than location, price, or convenience might be the currency of the leading bookstores of the future. At an industry level, that influence – whether or not the purchase happens in bricks and mortar stores – is the best antidote to the too-common view of an industry in terminal decline.

Read this in full.

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

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. 

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.

Dutch design company Atelier 010 offers the Bookworm, a structural bookcase that curves around and allows space for various kinds of media storage and a place to sit.

Read this in full and see more photos.

Also see our previous blogpost, “Innovative Bookshelves & Buildings Made Out of Books.”

For all book lovers (print and ebook alike), we (@smrsault) invite you to make our SomersaultNOW online dashboard your personal computer homepage (see instructions).

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you publish and market your books. Our international office is in St. Andrews, Scotland.

Learn about online marketing with SomersaultSocial.

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

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

The Biblio-Mat is a random book dispenser built by Craig Small (thejuggernaut.ca) for The Monkey’s Paw, an idiosyncratic antiquarian bookshop in Toronto, Canada. Biblio-Mat books (112 million possibilities), which vary widely in size and subject matter, cost $2 and are dispensed without regard to customer selection.

The machine was conceived as an artful alternative to the ubiquitous and often ignored discount sidewalk bin. When a customer puts coins into it, the Biblio-Mat dramatically whirrs and vibrates as the machine is set in motion. The ring of an old telephone bell enhances the thrill when the customer’s mystery book is delivered with a satisfying clunk into the receptacle below.

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you lead strategically.

Learn about online marketing with SomersaultSocial.

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

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