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The winners of the 2012 Christian Small Publisher Book of the Year Award have been announced by the Christian Small Publishers Association (CSPA) (@SarahBolme).

Christian Small Publisher Book of the Year Award honors books produced by small publishers each year for outstanding contribution to Christian life. Book lovers and retailers selling Christian products voted on the nominated titles in each of 12 categories.

The winners in each category are:

Fiction
Yahshua’s Bridge by Sandi Rog (DeWard Publishing Company (@dewardbooks))

Romance
Hearts Communion by Marianne Evans (@Marmo212) (White Rose Publishing/Pelican Book Group (@PelicanBookGrp))

Christian Living
Walking in Broken Shoes by Susan Magnuson Walsh (Grace Acres Press (@GraceAcresPress))

Bible Study / Theology
The Disciple Whom Jesus Loved by J. Phillips

Devotional
Just Honor God by Dr. Rick Metrick (ShadeTree Publishing)

Biography
Mr. Awana by Art Rorheim (Grace Acres Press (@GraceAcresPress))

Relationships / Family
Deliver Me: Help, Hope, & Healing through True Stories of Unplanned Pregnancy by Dianne E. Butts (@DianneEButts) (Connections Press)

Children (age 4 to 8)
Today I Found God by Greg Long (@LaughALongBooks); Nathan Wondrak, illustrator (Halo Publishing International (@HaloPublishing))

Children (age 8 to 12)
What Do Heroes Wear? by Gary Bower; Jan Bower, illustrator (Storybook Meadow Publishing)

Young Adult (age 12+)
Purity’s Big Payoff / Premarital Sex is a Big Rip-Off, Donna Lee Schillinger, editor (The Quilldriver (@OnMyOwnNowMin))

Gift Book
A Second Cup of Hot Apple Cider, N. J. Lindquist (@NJ_Lindquist) & Wendy E. Nelles, editors (That's Life! Communications (@ThatsLifeComm))

eBook Exclusive
Keyboarding for the Christian School, Elementary Edition by Leanne Beitel (@lbeitel) (Christian Keyboarding)

See the awards site.

Also see our previous blogpost, “ECPA Announces 2012 Christian Book Award Finalists.”

And be sure to bookmark and use daily SomersaultNOW, the online dashboard for publishing and marketing professionals.

The New York Times Media and Advertising (@NYTimesAd) section reports on a new public service campaign that seeks to help children “read by bringing together two collections of all-stars: a Who’s Who of literary characters and a lineup of well-known musicians.”

The twin gatherings of familiar faces and voices are meant to underline the theme of the campaign, “Book people unite.” The pro bono campaign is on behalf of Reading Is Fundamental (@RIFWEB), the nonprofit literacy organization founded in 1966.

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you publish and market content for all ages.

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

The Vancouver Sun (@VanSunReporters) features this photo gallery of bookstores around the world that have décor stunning enough to make them repeated destination places. If only more stores were as beautiful.

See all the photos.

See our previous blogposts, “The 20 Most Beautiful Bookstores In The World” and “20 More Beautiful Bookstores from Around the World.”

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

The wonder, the art, the magic, the work of creating a printed book  — often forgotten in this digital age  — is demonstrated in the above video. Filmmaker Glen Milner (@glen_milner) visited Smith Settle bookbinders near Leeds, England, where the owners, Don Walters and Tracey Thorne, allowed him to film the making of the 17th Slightly Foxed (@FoxedQuarterly) book, Suzanne St Albans’ memoir Mango and Mimosa, from start to finish. The Telegraph (@Telegraph) reports:

Here, you’ll get a behind-the-scenes look at the printing plates, the stitching of the “signatures” (folded sections), the pressing and gluing, the adding of the ribbon bookmark and head and tail bands, the making of the final hardcover in green linen cloth and the numbering of the copies. All of it done with great care, much of it by hand.

The video below on Kottke.org (@Kottke) shows that back before print on demand, laser printers, and the Internet, even machine printing and binding was a time-consuming laborious process, that took teams of people working together to produce just one book.

Just for fun, here’s a video of what the help desk would look like back in the day when print books overtook scrolls.

And, one artist looks at print books and sees a canvas from which to carve art.

See all the amazing photos.

Also see our previous blogposts “The Technology of Storytelling” and “Introducing the New Book.”

Whether pbook or ebook, contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you pursue publishing in this digital age.

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

According to a new report by the Pew Research Center’s (@pewresearch) Internet & American Life Project (@pewinternet), 43% of Americans age 16 and older read long-form digital text such as ebooks and magazines, and many say they’re reading more because books and other long-form material are in a digital format.

One-fifth of American adults (21%) report they’ve read an ebook in the past year; this number increased following a gift-giving season that saw a spike in the ownership of both tablet computers and ebook reading devices such as the original Kindles and Nooks. In mid-December 2011, 17% of American adults had reported they read an ebook in the previous year; by February, 2012, the share increased to 21%.

The average reader of ebooks says she’s read 24 books (the mean number) in the past 12 months, compared with an average of 15 books by a non-ebook consumer. For device owners, those who own ebook readers say they’ve read an average of 24 books in the previous year (vs. 16 books by those who don’t own that device). They report having read a median of 12 books (vs. 7 books by those who do not own the device.

·         30% of those who read e-content say they now spend more time reading, and owners of tablets and ebook readers particularly stand out as reading more now.

·         The prevalence of ebook reading is markedly growing, but pbooks still dominate the world of book readers.

·         People prefer ebooks to pbooks when they want speedy access and portability, but print wins out when people are reading to children and sharing books with others.

·         Ebook reading happens across an array of devices, including smartphones.

·         Those who read ebooks are more likely to be under age 50, have some college education, and live in households earning more than $50,000.

·         11% of all Americans age 16 and older – or 14% of those who have read a book in the past year – consume audiobooks.

·         The majority of book readers prefer to buy rather than borrow.

·         61% of e-reading device owners said they purchased the most recent book they read, compared with 48% of all readers.

·         Owners of e-reading devices are more likely than all Americans 16 and older to get book recommendations from people they knew (81% vs. 64%) and bookstore staff (31% vs. 23%).

·         26% of those who had read a book in the past 12 months said that what they enjoyed most was learning, gaining knowledge, and discovering information.

Read this in full.

Also see Mike Shatzkin's (@MikeShatzkin) analysis in "A feast of data to interpret in new Pew survey of book readers about ebooks."

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you plan your strategy for ebook (as well as pbook) publishing.

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

Reporter Lauren A. E. Schuker of The Wall Street Journal interviews bestselling author James Patterson, who had 11 books released last year and has 13 coming out this year.

To date, the 65-year-old author has published 95 books and according to Nielsen ranks as the country’s top-selling author. Those numbers have added up to big business: Mr. Patterson earns more than $80 million a year, according to people familiar with his publishing empire.

Mr. Patterson works seven days a week out of a two-room office suite at his Palm Beach, FL oceanfront home. White bookshelves line the first room, where he does the bulk of his writing, all in pencil on white legal pads. There’s no computer; just a telephone, fax machine, an iPad, and a bag of bubble gum. The second room looks like a traditional bedroom, but the bed is covered by books, loose-leaf papers, and manuscripts.

When it comes to writing, he has a well-practiced system: he writes a detailed outline and then hires someone—often a former colleague from his advertising days — to write the ensuing scenes, usually in 30 to 40 page chunks. He will review those pages every few weeks, sometimes providing notes on them and other times re-writing them entirely.

Read this in full.

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

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

CNBC Business magazine (@CNBC) contributing editor Colin Brown (@colinmlbrown) writes

You don't need to be BP, Toyota, News Corp, or even Tiger Woods to know how quickly ‘brand equity’ can be destroyed by screw-ups, cover-ups, and indiscretions. In the face of such PR fiascos, the accepted repair strategy has been to come clean as quickly and as contritely as possible. But in an era when corporate skeletons are subject to constant social media scrutiny, your business can suffer just as easily by being too transparent. Ask Bank of America....

Many see measurement of reputation — trust quotients, if you like — as the next big frontier on the Web. Just as Google unleashed the search potential of the Internet with its PageRank analysis that assigned a numerical weighting to every nugget of information, so a new breed of reputation brokers is starting to define Web 3.0 with the equivalent of 'PeopleRank' scores. You might think of these as Yelp ratings for people, creating a hierarchy of individuals and companies based on reputation scores....

Read this in full.

Also see Warc's (@WarcEditors) article, "Corporate Social Responsibility Could Benefit Brands" quoting Nielsen's (@NielsenWire) report, "The Global, Socially-Conscious Consumer."

Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you strategically understand your brand’s reputation management.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard; especially the Marketing/Public Relations tab.

Why would a 2-minute video (created by the Canadian forestry machinery maker Hakmet) of a machine cutting and splitting tree trunks go viral with more than 3 million views? Is it the hypnotic combination of lilting music, buzz saw noise, and captivating visual rhythm? Probably.

It reminds us of another hearty industrial company’s viral video success: Blendtec’s (@Blendtec) “Will it Blend” campaign. The video below of an iPad being destroyed in a blender has more than 13 million views. Wow.

Amber Mac‘s (@ambermac) article “The 5-Video Work Week: How to Build Your Brand On YouTube” in Fast Company’s Co.LEAD (@FastCoLead) offer tips on what makes a video successful:

·         The briefer the better; 60 seconds is best

·         Content that’s useful to the viewer

·         Keep fresh with regular updates

Read this in full.

Rico Andrade’s (@andrade_rico) article “The Rise of the Explainer Video” in TechCrunch (@TechCrunch) suggests reasons to create overview videos:

·         Increase press coverage

·         Help your fans evangelize your product

·         Improve the SEO of your site

·         Repurpose them everywhere

He says the best explainer videos answer the question “How does this product fit into my life?” or “Why should I use this?” before they answer “How does this work?”.

Read this in full.

Also see our previous blogpost “The 3 Qualities That Make A YouTube Video Go Viral.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you produce riveting videos for your brand.

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

57% of US consumers say that they’re increasingly checking product labels to see what company is behind the product they’re buying, and the same proportion say they get annoyed when it’s not obvious what company is behind a product, according the study The Company Behind the Brand: In Reputation We Trust by Weber Shandwick (@WeberShandwick). Roughly 2 in 5 US consumers also say they hesitate to buy products when it’s not clear what company makes them, and that they do research to learn about the companies that make the products they buy.

Our study identified 6 New Realities of Corporate Reputation. Each reality serves as a reminder to business leaders that they cannot view their company’s reputation and their product brands as separately as they once did. Aligning and integrating both optimizes their respective strengths to achieve strong business results.

1.    Corporate brand is as important as the product brand(s).

2.    Corporate reputation provides product quality assurance.

3.    Any disconnect between corporate and product reputation triggers sharp consumer reaction.

4.    Products drive discussion, with reputation close behind.

5.    Consumers shape reputation instantly.

6.    Corporate reputation contributes to company market value.

“In this fast-moving information age, consumers can now readily connect the dots between the brand they buy and the company behind the brand,” says Leslie Gaines-Ross, Chief Reputation Strategist, Weber Shandwick. “Whereas it has long been known that a strong brand shines a light on a company’s reputation, it is now clear beyond a shadow of a doubt that a strong company reputation adds an undeniable brilliance to the brand.”

What impacts consumers’ opinion of a company?

·         Word of mouth (88%)

·         Online reviews (83%)

·         Online search results (81%)

·         News sources (79%)

·         Company websites (74%)

·         Awards and rankings (63%)

·         Leadership communications (59%)

·         Advertising (56%)

·         Social networks (49%) (are companies not embracing social media in a way that fully resonates with the public?)

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you identify blue ocean strategy for your brand.

And be sure to bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.; especially the Branding and Marketing/Public Relations tabs.

This video, highlighting the history of the WWII British government poster “Keep Calm and Carry On,” has gotten nearly 1 million views in less than a month. The original war slogan was all but forgotten until a poster was discovered in 2000 in a box of books bought by Barter Books (@BarterBooks), a large second-hand bookshop in north-east England. In a bit of alchemy, the store has turned those 5 words into word-of-mouth gold.

Also see our previous blogpost “The 3 Qualities That Make A YouTube Video Go Viral.”

Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you strategically communicate your brand message.

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