Here are images from the International Christian Retail Show (@ICRShow) (#ICRShow, #ICRS, #ICRS2011) in Atlanta, GA. Wish you were here.
This video on Kottke.org (@Kottke) shows that back before print on demand, laser printers, and the Internet, printing was a time-consuming laborious process, that took teams of people working together to produce just one book. Amazing to watch and reflect on just how revolutionary digital publishing is!
The Business & Books (@businessnbooks) section of the International Business Times reports on "Harry Potter" series author J. K. Rowling announcing she will release for the first time the Harry Potter works in ebook form.
Ordinarily, that would not be big news, an author releasing traditional books in ebook format. But Rowling is taking a different path, releasing and selling the books herself through a new website she named Pottermore (@pottermore). In other words, Rowling, one of the bestselling authors in the history of the world, is bypassing not just one traditional channel with her plan but two -- the publisher and the retailer…. Rowling will be bypassing leading ebook distributors Amazon and Barnes and Noble with the direct, do-it-herself model.
All of Rowling's 7 "Harry Potter" books will be released on Pottermore.com in the fall. She's even giving fans who buy the digital books direct from her site a magical treat -- 18,000 more words that will be distributed throughout the series. So it's not just the Harry Potter of old she's selling, but also the new and revised Harry Potter fans can find at Pottermore.com.
Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) says "Although some are likely to see Rowling's decision to be her own publisher for her ebooks as a significant one for the industry at large, Potter is a unique franchise. 'Everything is different with Harry,' says one person involved with the Potter books."
Read the Publishers Weekly article in full.
Shelf Awareness (@ShelfAwareness) reports what other media and booksellers are saying. And Fast Company (@FastCompany) has this Infographic about the Potter empire.
Shelf Awareness (@ShelfAwareness) reports “a solid majority of adults in the US believe in the importance of multicultural picture books for children, but many find it difficult to obtain them.” According to a recent survey commissioned by the Ezra Jack Keats Foundation, 78% say they believe it’s important for children to be exposed to picture books that feature main characters of various ethnicities or races, while 33% report it’s difficult to find such books.
The survey also shows 73% of parents and 49% of adults have purchased a children's picture book with a protagonist of a different race or ethnicity from the child who will be reading the book, while only 10% consider it important to match the race or ethnicity of the main character of a picture book to the race or ethnicity of the child who will be receiving the book.
The factors adults consider when selecting a children's picture book are:
- Interesting stories (62%)
- Important lessons (61%)
- Eye-catching pictures (41%)
Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you discern strategic publishing research that’s important to you. And use the SomersaultNOW dashboard every day; especially the Research tab. Also subscribe to the free Somersault Research Daily News.
Mike Shatzkin (@MikeShatzkin) says, “It never took me much time to find what I wanted to read next until I started reading ebooks.”
Just about every new book I’d want to read is available for my device of choice (the iPhone) and the digitization of the backlist just carries on going deeper and deeper into publishers’ repositories.
But the merchandising, at least for somebody who shops on the iPhone (it’s a bit better through the ereading devices or PCs), leaves a lot to be desired. My shopping experiences are actually a bit of a random walk. I ask my ebook retailer to show me books by category and, since my categories don’t change much (and haven’t since I was a kid) I tend to see the same books over and over again, far too many of which I have already read....
A short time ago I was shopping for my next read on the iPhone. I started out shopping with Kindle (@AmazonKindle) and then Nook (@nookBN) and a few minutes on each of their mobile sites didn’t turn up anything that moved me. Then at Google Ebooks (@googlebooks) I found Making of the President 1968 by Theodore White. That was definitely one I wanted to read. I bought it and I’m in the middle of it.
There is no particular guarantee that I’ll find my next book on Google. I haven’t found any clear pattern yet among the four stores I shop regularly (Kobo (@kobo) being the fourth). Obviously, if I know I want to read another James Patterson or John Locke thriller, any of them would deliver it to me quickly and painlessly in response to a search. It is when I am hunting by subject that the search returns seem to be pot luck. I’m probably not making it any easier on the retailers by spreading my shopping around; if any of them actually did have a good engine to take my purchasing and reading profile and make the next great recommendation, I’d be screwing it up by spreading around my data.
All of this underscores how difficult is the challenge being faced by Bookish in the US and aNobii (@aNobii) in the UK, two “find what to read next” sites financed by major publishers. And they join a long line of sites that have tried to build recommendations and community conversation around what people are reading: Goodreads (@goodreads), Shelfari (@shelfari), LibraryThing, (@LibraryThing), and the new ebook platform, Copia (@TheCopia).
Other book sharing websites Mike doesn’t mention, but you may want to check out, are BookRabbit (@thebookrabbit) and ShelfLuv (@shelfluv).
What are some ways publishers and etailers should help consumers effectively find ebooks?
The editorial director for the international publishing strategy and services agency Somersault Group (http://somersaultgroup.com) (@smrsault), Dave Lambert, is a finalist for Fiction Editor of the Year, a category in the 2011 Golden Scroll Awards sponsored by the Advanced Writers & Speakers Association (AWSA).
Responsible for managing the editorial development process for each manuscript at Somersault, Lambert is also the owner of Lambert Editorial. He’s the author of 10 books (including The Missionary); a requested speaker; former senior fiction editor at Howard Publishing, a division of Simon & Schuster; and former executive editor for fiction at Zondervan, a HarperCollins company. Lambert was a previous finalist in this category in 2009 and the winner in 2002.
Honored for outstanding ministry partnerships with their authors, nominees for this award are selected by authors, and the voting is done by authors. “Dave has a reputation of pushing authors beyond their comfort zone to help them hone their writing craft and achieve their best book possible,” says John Topliff, Somersault general manager. “This recognition reflects Somersault’s commitment to the highest editorial standards.”
Other finalists for Fiction Editor of the Year are Vicki Crumpton of Baker Publishing Group and Jan Stob of Tyndale House Publishers. Along with Fiction Editor of the Year, the 2011 Golden Scroll Award categories are Publisher of the Year, Editor of the Year, Novel of the Year, and Nonfiction Book of the Year. The winners will be announced at the AWSA awards banquet, July 10, at the Omni at CNN Center in Atlanta during the International Christian Retail Show annual convention.
On Wired’s (@wired) epicenter (@epicenterblog), John C. Abell (@johncabell), Wired.com's New York editor, gives his reasons why ebooks are fundamentally flawed:
1) An unfinished ebook isn’t a constant reminder to finish reading it.
2) You can’t keep your books all in one place.
3) Notes in the margins help you think.
4) Ebooks are positioned as disposable, but aren’t priced that way.
5) Ebooks can’t be used for interior design.
About the last point, Abell says
It may be all about vanity, but books — how we arrange them, the ones we display in our public rooms, the ones we don’t keep — say a lot about what we want the world to think about us. Probably more than any other object in our homes, books are our coats of arms, our ice breakers, our calling cards. Locked in the dungeon of your digital reader, nobody can hear them speak on your behalf.
Do you agree with this assessment? Write your comments below.
It turns out you can do more with a printed book than read it (ebooks eat your heart out). My Modern Net (@mymodernmet) features Brian Dettmer who uses knives, tweezers, and surgical tools to carve one page at a time and create stunning works of art. Nothing inside the out-of-date encyclopedias, medical journals, illustration books, or dictionaries is relocated or implanted, only removed.
Dettmer manipulates the pages and spines to form the shape of his sculptures. He also folds, bends, rolls, and stacks multiple books to create completely original sculptural forms. A totally different approach to editing a book!
Business Insider (@alleyinsider) highlights charts from a 115-page report on the state of the tablet market by Jefferies analyst Peter Misek. “The tablet industry is set to explode this year and next, becoming a worldwide phenomenon. He expects Apple and the iPad to be the biggest winner, but Samsung is looking like the strongest no. 2 right now.”
Compare book reading with other media consumption on tablets vs. computers:
Also see Marketing Charts (@marketingcharts) “Tablet Users Buy/Browse Online More than Smartphone Users.”
And MobileBeat’s (@VentureBeat) “New York Public Library brings history to your fingertips with Biblion for iPad.”
The New York Times article, “Retailers Offer Apps With a Catalog Feel” tells how new apps are turning tablets into digital catalogs.
Are you publishing content for the tablet market? Let Somersault help.