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Dwight Silverman (@dsilverman), tech blogger/columnist and blog editor for the Houston Chronicle (@HoustonChron), says, “The book business is not changing fast enough.... Most of the changes still involve readers paying a publisher for one book, written by an author. Digital formats can enable more creative and reader-friendly innovations. Here are five things I'd like to see book publishers and retailers do that would really kick off a reading revolution.”

·         Let me subscribe to my favorite authors….

·         Keep books updated for one price….

·         Buy a print copy, get an electronic copy, too….

·         Give more of my money to authors….

·         Indie bookstores should sell ebooks….

Read this in full.

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On digital book world (@DigiBookWorld), editorial director Jeremy Greenfield (@JDGsaid) spoke with book industry experts, observers, and players to get their opinion on what’s ahead for us in this fast changing industry:

1. We will see more self-published best-sellers next year with an exponential rise in the number of million-selling authors.

2. Large publishing companies will go through major restructurings, creating new positions and redundancies of all shapes and sizes.

3. Amazon will come out with a larger tablet with an 8.9-inch screen and it will be priced at $299 or lower.

4. Apple will come out with a smaller iPad at a reduced price.

5. Sony will get a second life in the e-reader game when Pottermore launches in the Spring.

6. Literary agencies will engage in a campaign to communicate the value of their services to the book industry.

7. Authors will become disenchanted with the rights they sign away to publishers. Shorter and more flexible copyright terms will become more attractive to authors.

8. The standard ebook royalty from major publishing houses will rise next year and will escalate with increased sales.

9. Standards of what an app is and what a book is will change and apps will eventually be sold in the iBookstore.

10. More publishing companies will form in-house transmedia groups.

Read this in full.

Over on paidContent (@paidContent), Laura Hazard Owen (@laurahazardowen) writes “What’s Coming in 2012: Book Publishing,” part of the comprehensive series on the topic of all content, Coming in 2012.

·         Amazon and Barnes & Noble make a deal, sort of.

·         Ebook pricing will shift to quality-focused debates.

·         One big-six publisher will try a subscription scheme.

Read this in full.

And Noelle Skodzinski (@NoelleSki), editor of Publishing Executive (@pubexec), presents the results of a survey of her magazine’s readers concerning

·         the top 10 challenges publishing executives are facing,

·         the top 11 growth areas publishers are seeing, and

·         the top 11 publishing technologies/solutions for which publishers will be shopping in 2012.

Read this in full.

Stay current with news about the publishing world by bookmarking Somersault’s (@smrsault) SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

Jeff Sonderman (@jeffsonderman), digital media fellow at The Poynter Institute (@Poynter ), suggests that ebooks are causing change not only in traditional book publishing; they’re also causing a shift in news journalism. Here are lessons he offers:

·         Shorten the production cycle.

·         Crime and politics are popular topics.

·         Different price points.

·         Need to add value.

·         Don’t forget print books.

Read this in full.

Along the same lines, Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) is launching Christianity Today Essentials, a new series of “natural length ebooks,” described by editor-in-chief David Neff (@dneff) as content “longer than a longish magazine article, yet significantly shorter than the typical print book.” He says, “The format allows you, the reader, to go deeper and learn more than you could from a magazine article, without committing the time or money demanded by a full-length book.”

Leadership Network (@leadnet) is beginning a new series of "natural length experiences" under the brand Leadia (@leadiatalk). "Each piece is limited to 10,000 words and has live links to audio, video, and websites." A Leadia app is available for iPhones and iPads.

And Patheos.com (@Patheos) is starting Patheos Press, a "publisher of original ebooks."

Also read our blogpost, "Ebooks are the New Pamphlets."

As for changes in how news is reported, Meghan Peters (@petersmeg), Mashable's (@mashable) community manager, assesses in “6 Game-Changing Digital Journalism Events of 2011” the progress for online journalism in 2011, from breaking news curation to new revenue models:

1. Paywalls Find Their Footing

2. NPR’s Andy Carvin Proves the Value of Social Network Newsgathering

3. Journalists Flock to Google+

4. Mobile Gets Competitive

5. Facebook Makes Personal Branding Easier

6. The Pulitzer Goes Digital

Read this in full.

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

Stay current with news about the publishing world by bookmarking Somersault’s (@smrsault) SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

It is no exaggeration to say that the widespread acceptance of digital devices and a simultaneous contraction of shelf-space in stores qualify as a historic shift. The demise of Borders, the country's second-largest book chain as recently as a year ago, was largely offset by the sale of millions of e-readers and electronic books on a vast scale in a market now dominated by Amazon, Apple, Barnes & Noble, and Google. In May, Amazon announced that it was selling more ebooks than print books. On "Black Friday," November 25, Amazon said it had sold four times as many Kindles in a single day as it did in 2010. At this rate, it seems increasingly likely that ebooks will match printed books in the next few years, and eventually overtake them.

The popularity of multi-use tablets – Apple's iPads, the Kindle Fire (which has drawn criticism for a variety of technical glitches), B&N's Nook, and several others – has been another dominant feature of the year, serving up thousands of apps for games, music, magazines, and news sites, depending on your choice of device and price. As measured by IHS iSuppli research, and reported in the New York Times, Apple will ship about 18.6 million iPads in this quarter; the Kindle Fire, which went on sale in November, will sell about four million devices; and the Nook tablet will ship 1.3 million. While tablets have scores of uses, ebooks have so far held their own as defining attractions in the digital era. Their role is reminiscent of the way DVDs transformed the movie business in the 1990s, posing a major challenge for theaters while expanding the market for players to be used at home.

Bookstores have finally recognized the enormous potential of ebooks and the threat they pose to bookstores’ future share of the market. Hundreds of independent stores, with the strong backing of the American Booksellers Association, have signed on to a Google-supported system for ebook sales and now need to persuade customers that they can serve them digital products as well as Amazon, Apple, and the other industry leaders. The ABA said that members’ website sales were up 60% over last year, and that business overall was noticeably stronger.

Read this in full.

For digital book world (@DigiBookWorld), Jeremy Greenfield (@JDGsaid) wrote the article, “Five Big Stories of 2011 That Will Bleed Into 2012.” He advises readers to watch the following in the coming months:

·         As bookstores are closing, the issue of how new books will be discovered by consumers will continue to grow in urgency.

·         The new standard in ebook production, EPUB 3 and its inability to “play” with Amazon’s KF8.

·         The rise of the Kindle Fire and the role it will play in driving ebook sales, as well as its effect on other tablet sales.

·         The opportunity for US publishers to expand into foreign language ebook sales on the international market.

·         The “agency pricing model” for ebooks and the corresponding investigation of that model by the US Dept. of Justice.

Read this in full.

paidContent (@paidContent) has an entire series reviewing the Highlights of 2011, including "The Year in Book Publishing, By the Numbers" by Laura Hazard Owen (@laurahazardowen).

Stay current with news about the publishing world by bookmarking Somersault’s (@smrsault) SomersaultNOW online dashboard.

Nielsen BookScan's Tops of 2011

Christian Retailing (@ChristianRetail) reports that Christian publishers are getting better at targeting the covers of their books to the audiences for whom the content is intended.

“We have seen improvements from previous years” said Rick Hamm, announcing the above 3 winners of the Evangelical Christian Publishers Association’s (@ecpa) Book Cover Awards, sponsored by Dickinson Press. Director of consumer research group Marshall Marketing and judging manager for the program, Hamm said this year's entries—the best in the competition’s 5-year history—had a clearer focus and better descriptions.

Read this in full.

The ECPA | dp Book Cover Award is meant “to recognize the industry’s most effective book covers; i.e. those that best connect design components to their intended consumer.”

The judging criteria are based on research results drawn by Marshall Marketing to help Christian publishers “develop and design more on-target products” aiming at 4 book buyer “quadrants”:

·         Loyalists – favor community, and status quo. They value rules, authority figures, routine, and stability. They prefer subdued images, simple designs with natural colors, and a straight forward message.

·         Inclusives – favor community, but also change and progress. They are interested in diversity, health and well-being, ecology, cultural experiences and style. Inclusives favor bright colors, bold fonts, optimistic images, and prefer a sense of order.

·         Pioneers – favor individualism, achievement and progress. They are the early adopters of just virtually everything. They love to test, experiment, and to take risks. Pioneers prefer intense images, highly stylized designs, innuendo, the exotic, the unique and symbolism.

·         Individualists – are motivated by self-expression, fun, rewards, status and the status quo. They prefer easily digestible entertainment, mockery, and non-conformity. Individualists enjoy images of people having fun, images that are free-form or unique and images of materialism and/or consumption.

Read this in full.

Do you agree the above covers are the most effective covers of 2011?

Parable and Mardel launched in partnership with Ingram/Spring Arbor’s digital services division, joining Berean and Christian Supply. Signature Websites launched its ebook capabilities in a partnership with eChristian (@eChristianInc), formerly Christianaudio.com. Other independent bookstores sell ebooks in partnership with Google eBooks.

Ebook selling in brick-and-mortar stores is a main topic at CBA’s Next 2012: Meeting the Challenge, an event in cooperation with Atlanta’s AmericasMart (@AmericasMartATL) gift mart show Jan. 12-13.

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Ebook sales in general continue to grow. For the first 10 months of 2011, ebook sales were up 131.1%, to $807.7 million.

As for physical books, according to Nielsen BookScan (@NielsenWire), sales of print books in the stores it covers totaled 12.0 million the week ending Nov. 27 and then jumped to 15.5 million units the week ending Dec. 4. The following week, units rose again, to 18.6 million, and increased 26% the week of Dec. 18, to 23.4 million.

Compared to the same week in 2010, unit sales the week of Dec. 18 were down 14%, with the closing of Borders and the growth of ebook sales likely the two biggest factors in the decline. During the last week, print backlist was doing better than frontlist, with backlist sales down 9% compared to a year ago and frontlist off 19%.

Read this in full.

Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you navigate the churning waters of 21^st century publishing. And remember to bookmark and use daily our SomersaultNOW online dashboard of news and information from more than 300 sources.

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life’s (@pewforum) Global Christianity: A Report on the Size and Distribution of the World's Christian Population concludes that the number of Christians around the world has more than tripled in the last 100 years, from about 600 million in 1910 to more than 2 billion in 2010. But the world's overall population also has risen rapidly, from an estimated 1.8 billion in 1910 to 6.9 billion in 2010. As a result, Christians make up about the same portion of the world's population today (32%) as they did a century ago (35%). This apparent stability, however, masks a momentous shift.

Although Europe and the Americas still are home to a majority of the world's Christians (63%), that share is much lower than it was in 1910 (93%). And the proportion of Europeans and Americans who are Christian has dropped from 95% in 1910 to 76% in 2010 in Europe as a whole, and from 96% to 86% in the Americas as a whole. At the same time, Christianity has grown enormously in subSaharan Africa and the Asia-Pacific region, where there were relatively few Christians at the beginning of the 20th century.

Read this in full. See the interactive maps. Review the sortable data tables. Take the quiz.

Also see our previous post, "Poll: Religion, Faith Still Important to Most People Around the World."

What are the implications of this information on your publishing agenda? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

Religion News Service (@ReligionNewsNow): “Report shows Christianity shifting to Africa.”

Baptist Press (@baptistpress): “Pew: Christianity has become global faith in past century.”

The Christian Post (@ChristianPost): “Christianity Is the World's Largest Religion, Says Pew Forum Survey.”

CBN (@CBNNews): “Christian Population Declining in Europe.”

CNN (@CNNbelief): “Christianity goes global as world's largest religion.”

Shelf Awareness (@ShelfAwareness) reports that Jay Schwartz, Dictionary.com’s head of content, said, “We’re taking a stand on this choice. We think that it’s immensely rewarding to find existing words that capture a precise experience, and this year, tumult has been the norm rather than the exception. There are contested public spaces around the world, where people are demonstrating in one direction or another. Opinions and circumstances have been oscillating so much.”

This year’s verbal shortlist included “occupy,” “austerity,” “jobs” (both the noun and the person), “zugzwang,” and “insidious.”

Oxford Dictionaries (@OxfordWords) declared its Word of the Year 2011 to be “squeezed middle” (“the section of society regarded as particularly affected by inflation, wage freezes, and cuts in public spending during a time of economic difficulty, consisting principally of those on low or middle incomes”).

Other words and phrases considered by OED included Arab Spring, hacktivism, phone hacking, sodcasting, bunga bunga, crowdfunding, facepalm, and fracking,

Also see OED’s “What Makes a Word of the Year?”

Merriam-Webster’s (@MerriamWebster) word last year, as listed in its archive, was “austerity.” In 2011, Merriam-Webster lists the words that “spiked in lookups” each month because of events in the news (such as “vitriol” in January, “inclement” in February, and “prefecture” in March). For its 2011 word of the year, Merriam-Webster selected “pragmatic.”

Wikipedia chronicles a history of words of the year as selected by the American Dialect Society (@americandialect) (#woty11). ADS will chose its 2001 Word of the Year at its annual meeting in January in Portland, Oregon. Last year’s word was “app.”

1.   Tablets. Yep, more tablets. The iPad and Kindle will continue to dominate. But expect other players to be competitive with next generation tablets, and new players (Microsoft) to finally enter. The other big news in the tablet space will be integrating them into our work life as enterprise IT deals with employees using tablets for work and a flood of B2B applications that will make tablets more than a media tool.

2.   Interfaces.

3.   Social.

4.   Internet of Things.

5.   Apps.

6.   Big Data.

7.   Analytics.

8.   Storage.

9.   Entertainment Everywhere.

10. Cloud Computing.

Read this in full.

Stay ahead of the curve by using the SomersaultNOW online dashboard of news and links; especially the Futurist news tab.