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Shelf Awareness (@ShelfAwareness) reports that attendance at BookExpo America (@BookExpoAmerica) (#BEA, #BEA11, #BookExpo) last week, including Blog World Expo NY (@blogworld) (#BWENY), was 23,067.

Excluding BlogWorld, whose participants were not included in last year's attendance figures, attendance was 21,664, down just 255, or 1.2%, from 21,919 in 2010. BEA emphasized that this year’s slightly lower number reflected higher standards: the show “strategically vetted more attendee groups to improve the quality of those participating in BEA.” One resulting major change: there were 500 fewer attendee authors this year, authors distinct from those appearing for signings, panels and other events.

Also in Shelf Awareness, Ron Hogan (@ronhogan) recaps the Book Blogger Convention (@bookbloggercon) (#BookBloggerCon) where a blogger speaker is quoted saying: “authenticity, consistency, and generosity [are] crucial to any successful blog.”

More BBC recaps at The Reading Ape (@readingape), write meg! (@writemeg), and As I Turn the Pages (@bookangel224).

And watch the Book Business video "Voices From BookExpo America 2011."

The Religious Booksellers Trade Exhibit (RBTE) will be held next Tuesday through Friday at Pheasant Run Resort and Convention Center in St. Charles, IL. Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) explains what it’s all about:

Back when independent bookstores dotted the landscape like churches, religion publishers represented only a fraction of the overall number at ABA's annual trade show. Apart from a few large trade houses that published the occasional book in the category, publishers whose focus was religion had other avenues to reach their audience. Their primary sales channels were not trade bookstores but denominational or larger chain religion outlets or independent evangelical Christian stores....

Then, in the early to mid-1990s, America's interest in religion mushroomed, and religion publishers responded with books that ranged over diverse topics, from angels and pyramids to the debates between religion and science, new archeological discoveries, interreligious dialogue, critical readings of sacred texts, and the recovery of ancient religious traditions—not to mention faith-based fiction.

Burgeoning reader interest coincided with the rise of the chain bookstores that pushed many independents out of business, and religion publishers began to see what had by then become BEA as a way to reach a wider audience by expanding their sales and marketing channels to include general trade and chain bookstores, using the show to gain exposure and publicity as they moved into the retail mainstream.

Read this article in full.

UPDATE: See exhibit wrap-up coverage by Publishers Weekly, "Smaller Liturgical Booksellers Trade Show Hits 20 Years."

One of the featured titles at this year’s RBTE is the Common English Bible (@CommonEngBible & @VersesForToday), the newest translation by the largest number of biblical scholars & church leaders in words 21st century readers use every day, balancing academic rigor with modern understandability, proven through extensive field-testing with, and acting on feedback from, hundreds of readers. It’s the only Bible to include National Geographic maps and to extensively use contractions where the text warrants an engaging conversational style (not used in divine or poetic discourse). This translation is necessary to clearly communicate God’s Word because 9,000 new words & meaning revisions are added yearly to the English lexicon. Professional communicators (preachers, professors, speakers, leaders, etc.) who use this authoritative translation (not a paraphrase) will be great communicators, effectively reaching their audiences with biblical text their audiences readily understand because the text is written the way they naturally talk.

See the website for more information.

Even though students have yet to energetically catch on to the digital book revolution, Mashable (@mashable) highlights 6 publishers targeting the digital textbook niche:

1.    CourseSmart

2.    CafeScribe

3.    VitalSource

4.    enTourage Systems

5.    Inkling

6.    Nook Study

Read this in full.

How are you preparing for the changes in the textbook publishing market? Let Somersault help.

Publishers, authors, booksellers, and agents are crowded together this week attending the annual BEA (@BookExpoAmerica) (#BEA, #BEA11, #BookExpo) convention in New York City. Read the latest news:

• Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly)
• The Washington Post (@washingtonpost)
• Google News (@googlenews)

Book Business (@bookbusinessmag) reports “preliminary results from an ambitious new book publishing industry survey show growth in both revenues and units sold across the contemporary book publishing landscape.” The "BookStats" survey shows

Growth was seen for publishers of all sizes with medium- and small-sized publishers leading the way. Over 50% of the publishers surveyed were enjoying growth, Kelly Gallagher, vice president of publishing services at RR Bowker, said.

Data is broken down by content categories (trade fiction and non-fiction, juvenile, religious, K-12, higher education, professional and scholarly); formats (physical and non-physical delivery platforms); and distribution channel.

Not surprisingly, hardcover and softcover markets have seen declines, while digital formats such as e-books and apps are growing.

Adult fiction is "a stalwart category" enjoying healthy growth, as are all categories of juvenile titles, Gallagher said. Nonfiction adult, however is "struggling."

While chain bookstores are registering predicable declines, independent bookstores are holding their own, showing stable sales or just slight declines. "I think it's a great story line that the independents are showing some resiliency," Gallagher said.

Book Business also reports on the International Digital Publishing Forum conference at BEA about “surprising new information on consumer and student ebook reading habits.

Of consumers surveyed in January 2011, 77.3% are "satisfied" or "highly satisfied" with the price of ebooks.... The feature sets most desired in ebooks are affordability (seen by 75% of respondents as "very important"), followed by readability, ease of acquisition, portability (all over 70%) and speed (over 60%). Searchability and eco-friendliness were important to 35% of respondents, though the later is growing as a factor.

Among reading devices, consumers are most satisfied with Amazon's Kindle (75%) followed by the Nook (70%) and iPad (60%).

Laura Hazard Owen (@laurahazardowen) reports on paidContent (@paidContent) about Barnes & Noble announcing a new WiFi-only Nook and Amazon responding with a cheaper 3G edition of the Kindle.

And Shelf Awareness (@ShelfAwareness) covered the American Booksellers Association's annual meeting, where CEO Oren Teicher called for new business models for the trade; he

dispensed with the usual CEO report reviewing the association's activities of the past year and instead gave a wide-ranging talk outlining how booksellers and publishers "can work more closely together in the common goal of selling more books" and maintaining bricks-and-mortar bookstores' role as "the essential showroom in ensuring the sales of a broad spectrum of titles," a browsing experience no one else can offer.

Also read CBA's coverage, "Ebooks command BEA spotlight, but stores still needed, many say." Then read our wrap-up blog post "BEA, Blog World Expo NY, & BookBloggerCon."

A story in the Los Angeles Times (@latimestech) features Robert Kiyosaki, who’s written more than a dozen titles under his "Rich Dad" brand of financial education books, which together have sold more than 30 million copies worldwide. His new book Unfair Advantage released in stores April 12. It’s also available as an ebook. But the signed ebook version will only be available May 26 during a live chat streamed on the author's Facebook page. The special edition of the book will be available only for Amazon Kindle ereaders and will sell for $9.99.

The new version differs from the standard copy by offering a new page with a digital copy of the author's autograph, as well as a bonus chapter about the "corruption of capitalism" and extra photos.

As soon as the streamed chat is done, the special edition of the book will no longer be available for sale, says Shane Caniglia, vice president of the Rich Dad Operating Co., which hosts financial education seminars focused on the advice published in the "Rich Dad" books.

Read this in full.

Also see our April 28 blog post, “How Authors Can Autograph Their eBooks.”

What are your thoughts about digitally autographing ebook editions?

Publishers Weekly (@PublishersWkly) reports “the number of books produced by traditional publishers rose 5% in 2010, to a projected 316,480, according to preliminary figures released from R. R. Bowker (@Bowker). That number, however, is dwarfed by the growth in output of nontraditional titles, which jumped 169% to 2,766,260. As Bowker notes, the majority of nontraditional titles consists largely of print-on-demand editions of public domain titles. Self-published titles are also included in the figure. Based on the preliminary figures, the combination of traditional and nontraditional books totaled a projected 3,092,740 in 2010, up 132% from 2010.

The Religion category of publishing ranked 5th overall in 2010, behind Fiction, Juveniles, Sociology/Economics, and Science.

Since 2002, the production of traditional books has increased 47%, while nontraditional titles have risen 8,460%.

Read the Bowker news release.

Another report, this one by the AAP (@AmericanPublish), says ebook sales increased 169% in the first two months of 2011 and 146% in March (to $69 million), bringing the total sales for the first quarter of 2011 to $233 million. Religion ebook sales were up 27% in March and up 14% for the quarter. Digital audiobook sales rose 9% in the quarter. Read the Publishers Weekly article.

And Amazon (@amazon) just announced it now sells more Kindle (@AmazonKindle) ebooks than pbooks – paperback and hardcover – combined. Since April it’s sold 105 Kindle editions for every 100 print books. Read the PW article.

Fuller Theological Seminary, Pasadena, CA, has approved the new Common English Bible (@CommonEngBible & @VersesForToday) as a translation for use in biblical studies courses for its more than 4,000 students, and particularly for all master’s-level instruction in the seminary’s School of Theology, School of Psychology, and School of Intercultural Studies on all eight of its campuses.

“Fuller's mission is to prepare men and women for the manifold ministries of Christ and his church. We work out this calling with an eye toward both academic excellence and service to the church. The Biblical Division's decision to approve the Common English Bible for classroom use reflects these commitments,” says J. R. Daniel Kirk, assistant professor of New Testament at Fuller. “We’ve approved the Common English Bible because it’s an academically excellent translation, because it communicates the underlying Greek and Hebrew texts in a clear and accessible fashion, and because it reflects the reality that the communities for which the Bible was written consist of both women and men.”

Fuller has more than 35,000 alumni in 130 countries, serving as pulpit ministers, mission leaders, academic leaders, mental health professionals, chaplains, translators, and community and marketplace leaders. The Common English Bible joins two other translations officially approved by Fuller: the New Revised Standard Version and Today’s New International Version.

Combining scholarly accuracy with vivid language, the Common English Bible is the work of more than 200 biblical scholars and church leaders, including members of more than 20 denominations, who translated the Bible into English directly from the original Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek texts. More than 500 readers in 77 groups field-tested the translation. Every verse was read aloud in the reading groups, where potentially confusing passages were identified. The translators considered the groups' responses and, where necessary, reworked those passages to clarify in English their meaning from the original languages.

The digital revolution is accelerating changes in language and its everyday usage. The new Common English Bible is written in contemporary idiom at the same reading level as the newspaper USA TODAY—using language that’s comfortable and accessible for today’s English readers. With the complete Bible arriving in stores in August, this new translation strives to make Bible reading more clear and compelling for individuals, groups, and corporate worship services.

“The Common English Bible is a brand-new, bold translation designed to meet the needs of people in all stages of their spiritual journey,” says Paul Franklyn, associate publisher for the Common English Bible. “For students—whether at colleges and seminaries or outside a formal institution—it combines and balances highly respected ecumenical biblical scholarship necessary for serious study with responsiveness to 21st century clear communication requirements for comprehensive clarity. The Common English Bible can help students experience the insight and knowledge that comes from a fresh reading of the Bible.”

The Common English Bible is an inclusive translation, using male and female pronouns where appropriate to indicate the meaning of the original Hebrew, Aramaic, or Greek text when referring to general human beings. Pronouns for God, Lord, Jesus, or the Holy Spirit are translated as he, his, or him.

Another unique feature of the Common English Bible is the inclusion of exclusive, detailed color maps from National Geographic, well known for its vibrant and accurate map making.

Visit CommonEnglishBible.com to see comparison translations, learn about the translators, get free downloads, and more.

The Common English Bible is a denomination-neutral Bible sponsored by the Common English Bible Committee, an alliance of five publishers that serve the general market, as well as the Disciples of Christ (Chalice Press), Presbyterian Church (Westminster John Knox Press), Episcopal Church (Church Publishing Inc.), United Church of Christ (Pilgrim Press), and United Methodist Church (Abingdon Press).

(To schedule an interview with Paul Franklyn, contact Brandi Lewis at 615-749-6211).

Start getting the Common English Bible verses on your Facebook page.

Listen to audio samples from the Common English Bible audioBible (like you’ve never heard before).

Previous post: “The Common English Bible Translation is Complete.”

While at Apple, Mike Matas (@mike_matas) helped write the user interface for the iPhone and iPad. Now, co-founder of Push Pop Press (@pushpoppress), he's helping to rewrite the electronic book. In the above video he demos the first full-length interactive book for the iPad – with clever, swipeable video and graphics, and some cool data visualizations to play with. The book is Our Choice, Al Gore’s sequel to An Inconvenient Truth.

See the video at TED.

Be sure to read the discussion started by David Wees (@davidwees) titled “What is this ‘ebook’ missing?”

I'd have to argue that this ebook is missing some of the most important features of the interactive Web.... [W]hat I see is interactivity with static content, which in my mind is a dead concept.

...Most importantly, how is this book integrated with social media? How can we comment on the book, annotate it, share passages of the book with other people? If I want to share the book, like we can do easily and all the time with print text, do I need to share my entire iPad? How do we tag content? How do we set multiple bookmarks, so we can go back and reread our favourite sections? Can I read the same book on my laptop? Is it possible to make edits to the book when I see errors or omissions, or just want to play with the text?

In today’s digital age, we should be very suspicious of any ebook which doesn't offer all of the features listed above.

Read this discussion in full.

Let Somersault help you publish meaningful enhanced ebooks.

Alberto Vitale was running Bantam Books, the world leader in paperbacks, when the Newhouse family recruited him to become the COO of Random House (@atrandom). In that role, and later as the CEO of one of the world’s top publishing firms, Vitale oversaw huge changes in the publishing industry. In this interview with Stephen J. Kobrin, publisher and executive director of Wharton Digital Press and Knowledge@Wharton (@knowledgwharton), Vitale discusses the rise of digital publishing, the future of bookstores, and the globalization of copyright, among other issues. Among his statements:

Digital technology may allow a lot of individual authors to self-publish. That's the power of digital technology, of the Internet. But still, the role of the publisher will continue [to be] as strong as before. You still have to figure out which book you want to publish. And, how do you want to publish it? There are obvious synergies between paper and digital [media]....

Absolutely [bookstores will survive]. However, they're going to undergo major changes. Three [or] five years from now, up to 70% of the space in [big box bookstores, such as Barnes & Noble] may be dedicated to other products. It makes sense. You have the universe that is digitalized now. You don't need these huge stores anymore....

Everybody's online now. The access to information is tremendously enhanced. But remember, the publishing model will change. And the product will change. The prices of hard cover books are now still $27.95, $26.95, which I find ridiculous. They cannot possibly make ends meet with those prices. They are going to grow to $36.95, $46.95. But the reader will have a much better product to purchase. Better paper, better type, better binding. And so, you will have a book to cherish....

Read the transcript in full, listen to the audio, and watch the video.

Do you agree with his views? Post your comments below.

An article in The Chronicle of Higher Education (@chronicle) by Harvard professor and librarian Robert Darnton says, “The nature of the so-called information age has led to a state of collective false consciousness.” He singles out 5 statements to dispute:

1. “The book is dead.”

2. “We have entered the information age.”

3. “All information is now available online.”

4. “Libraries are obsolete.”

5. “The future is digital.”

Regarding the last one, he says it may be not so much mythological as misleading.

In 10, 20, or 50 years, the information environment will be overwhelmingly digital, but the prevalence of electronic communication does not mean that printed material will cease to be important. Research in the relatively new discipline of book history has demonstrated that new modes of communication do not displace old ones, at least not in the short run. Manuscript publishing actually expanded after Gutenberg and continued to thrive for the next three centuries. Radio did not destroy the newspaper; television did not kill radio; and the Internet did not make TV extinct. In each case, the information environment became richer and more complex. That is what we are experiencing in this crucial phase of transition to a dominantly digital ecology

He says these misconceptions “stand in the way of understanding shifts in the information environment.”

They make the changes appear too dramatic. They present things ahistorically and in sharp contrasts — before and after, either/or, black and white. A more nuanced view would reject the common notion that old books and ebooks occupy opposite and antagonistic extremes on a technological spectrum. Old books and ebooks should be thought of as allies, not enemies.

Read this article in full.

Let Somersault help you see pbooks and ebooks as allies.