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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.

See her video report.

Also see the BBC Click article, “Is the paperless office possible?”

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.

As Melville House (@melvillehouse) reports the story:

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.”

Read this in full.

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.

Also see our previous blogposts:

·         “Home Libraries Despite the Ebook Era”

·         “Even E-reader Owners Still Like Printed Books, Survey Finds”

·         “Photos: The 20 Coolest Bookstores in the World”

·         “EPILOGUE: the future of print.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you publish and market your content as either pbooks or ebooks (or both).

And if you’re a book lover like we are, bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

Erin Griffith (@eringriffith) writes on PandoDaily (@PandoDaily) about Macmillan Publishing’s resolve to embrace the disruption happening in the world of education publishing and to intentionally change its structure, business model, and processes to succeed in this Internet age.

Macmillan Publishing has taken an entirely different route altogether. It’s one that, until now, has remained relatively under the radar. The company hired Troy Williams, former CEO of early ebook company Questia Media, which sold to Cengage. Macmillan gave him a chunk of money and incredibly unusual mandate: “Build a business that will undermine our own.”

The publishing giant has given Williams a sum greater than $100 million (he won’t say exactly how much) to acquire ed-tech startups that will eventually be the future of Macmillan. The plan is to let them exist autonomously like startups within the organization, as Macmillan transitions out of the content business and into educational software and services. Through the entity, called Macmillan New Ventures, Williams plans to do five deals this year and 10 to 15 over the course of the next five years.

He’s buying companies that will help Macmillan survive as a business once textbooks go away completely.

This includes PrepU (@PrepUQuiz), a quizzing engine for classrooms, i>Clicker (@iclicker), a mobile classroom polling company, and most recently EBI (@EBIandMAPWorks), a data and evaluation startup.

Read this in full.

Troy Williams speaks about his objectives in this video (beginning at the 5:00 mark).

Look to Somersault (@smrsault) to help you scout the future of publishing and the continued convergence of technology and writing.

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

Penny C. Sansevieri, CEO and founder of Author Marketing Experts, Inc. (@Bookgal), offers 50 ideas for inexpensive book promotion, such as

·         Buy your domain name as soon as you have a title for your book.

·         Head on over to Blogger.com or Wordpress.com and start your very own blog.

·         Set up an event at your neighborhood bookstore. Do an event and not a signing, book signings are boring!

·         Create an email signature for every email you send; email signatures are a great way to promote your book and message.

·         Start a Twitter account and begin tweeting.

Read this in full.

Also see “Promote Your Book on a Budget: 20 Thrifty Ways to Get Your Writing Out There” and “Promoting your book on a budget: A response to BookBaby” by Suw Charman-Anderson (@Suw).

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you plan and execute your marketing strategy.

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

GigaOM (@gigaom) senior writer Mathew Ingram (@mathewi) reports on 72-year-old Canadian author Margaret Atwood’s (@MargaretAtwood) involvement with Wattpad (@wattpad) (blog) and Fanado (@Fanadoevents).

Wattpad is a Toronto, Ontario-based...online writing community with more than 3 million users and over 5 million pieces of content uploaded to the network....

Instead of just uploading books, many members of Wattpad’s community upload unfinished chapters that are still in development, or pieces of poetry they need feedback on, and then get comments and advice from other users of the service — both other writers and readers....

In addition to her work with Wattpad, Atwood is one of the founding artists involved with a startup called Fanado, which is trying to raise funds through the crowdfunding service Indiegogo (@Indiegogo) in order to launch a kind of digital-community platform for artists....

The idea behind Fanado is to give authors tools that they can use to interact with fans remotely, including the ability to share live video and audio of readings or get-togethers with a community, and to autograph and distribute both electronic books and printed books, as well as CDs and other offerings related to a work. In some ways, Fanado is the logical extension of an earlier project that Atwood was involved in, which led to the development of an electronic book-signing device called the “LongPen (@Syngrafii) — which authors could use to sign physical books in remote locations while on a virtual book tour.

Read this in full.

Read the Fanado news release (pdf).

See book patrol’s (@bookpatrol) post, “Fanado: The LongPen Still Lives."

Also see our blogpost, "Authors Can Now Personalize Messages in Ebooks."

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you plan and execute strategy to bring authors and readers together.

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

Thomas Nelson will continue to operate as an independent company with its unique editorial focus on inspirational and Christian content. Details, such as how Thomas Nelson will benefit from HarperCollins global print and digital platform, will be forthcoming.

HarperCollins also has a religion imprint called HarperOne (@HarperOne).

Read the news release.

GalleyCat says

Last month, News Corp. (the corporate parent of HarperCollins) announced it would split into two entities, an entertainment business and a publishing business.

Digital Book World says

Digital revenues are growing quickly in Christian publishing, with the Association of American Publishers reporting nearly a 50% increase in digital revenues in religious publishing in February 2012 versus February 2011.

See our previous blogpost, “HarperCollins to Acquire Thomas Nelson.”

Bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

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?

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you professionally craft, edit, publish, and market your content.

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

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.

Read this in full.

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....

Read this in full.

Also see MediaShift's (@mediatwit) "A Step-By-Step Guide to US Copyright Registration for Self-Publishers."

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.

Read this in full.

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.

Somersault’s editorial director Dave Lambert says this New York Times commentary talks about the effects of one author's novels, Sir Walter Scott, on the attitudes that created the Civil War. “Who says books don't affect society?,” he asks.

In the commentary Cynthia Wachtell says

Sir Walter Scott not only dominated gift book lists on the eve of the Civil War but also dominated Southern literary taste throughout the conflict. His highly idealized depiction of the age of chivalry allowed Southern readers and writers to find positive meaning in war’s horrors, hardships, and innumerable deaths. And his works inspired countless wartime imitators, who drew upon his romantic conception of combat.

...[According to Mark Twain], “Sir Walter Scott had so large a hand in making Southern character, as it existed before the war, that he is in great measure responsible for the war.”

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you powerfully communicate in the 21st century.

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

Writing in Salon (@Salon), Corinne Purtill (@corinnepurtill) describes her ordeal of writing a book; something most authors can probably identify with.

Four and a half years ago I quit my job and moved continents so that I could write a book. This book was to be a serious yet eminently readable work of narrative nonfiction. It was going to be the kind of book that earned stellar reviews in respected publications and landed me a segment on “The Daily Show,” where you could tell Jon Stewart thought I was funny....

...I set about writing, a thing I believed I loved to do. I was wrong. I liked having written things. Writing them was the worst. I wrote and wrote, and could not believe there was so much still to write. I read and reread drafts until I was no longer sure they were in English. I cut pages of useless and boring exposition that amounted to days of work....

I agonized over every sentence, and I have yet to hear any great writer advise that the best work comes when you ignore your instincts and focus intently on fear and self-doubt....

As the years passed with no sign of a finished book, I took odd jobs to stay afloat....

Finally I finished it and sent it to my agent. Over the next 24 hours I refreshed my email every 10 minutes in the hopes that her breathless, joyful reply would surface. After a few weeks of silence I no longer believed that the book was so good she just needed time to compose herself before writing back. The email mercifully euthanizing our contract eventually came. But by that time I had had a baby, was about to move to London for my husband’s job and had already mourned the end of this little dream....

Read this in full.

As the saying goes: ‘There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open your vein.’

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