Here are images from the International Christian Retail Show (@ICRShow) (#ICRShow, #ICRS, #ICRS2011) in Atlanta, GA. Wish you were here.
Digital Signage: It's all around us [Infographic] compliments of DigitalSignageToday.com (@DigSignageToday)
A combined 55.8% of online consumers rate Facebook pages influential (32.9%), very influential (16.7%) or extremely influential (6.2%) in making purchases from the retailer or brand behind the page, according to data collected by Compete (@compete) in April and May 2011. Data from the spring 2011 Online Shopper Intelligence study also indicates 27% of online consumers often visit the Facebook pages of retail and consumer goods companies in spring 2011, up a little more than 10% from 24% in spring 2010.
Read the news release in full.
Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you establish a strategy for your Facebook engagement.
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?
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%.
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.
This article by Laura Hazard Owen (@laurahazardowen) on paidContent.org (@paidContent) says a company called Enthrill Entertainment Inc. (@Enthrill) plans to partner with bookstores to sell “physical” copies of ebooks in brick-and-mortar bookstores.
Enthrill’s model will allow bookstore to sell physical cards with an image of the book’s cover on one side and a QR code (which provides access to extras like sample chapters and trailers) and download code on the other side. After consumers purchase the card, they go to Enthrill’s website and use their code to download the book as a PDF or EPUB file, which is readable on any device. If they then download other titles as well, those sales are credited back to the bookstore where the customer made his or her original purchase.
Read Enthrill’s news release (pdf).
Enthrill’s explanatory video above looks much like Zondervan’s (@zondervan) Symtio (@Symtio) business model (see video below) when it was first launched in 2008, but then was divided in two in 2010, with the online portion sold to LibreDigital (@LibreDigital) and the in-store portion discontinued (see Christian Retailing‘s (@ChristianRetail) “Zondervan suspends, sells Symtio ebook program”).
Also see our Feb. 10 blog post “Is there hope for small bookstores in a digital age?”.
Do you tend to read at least one review of a book before purchasing it?
Web consultant, blogger, and author Tim Challies (@challies) surveyed his readers to find out where they buy Christian books and why they buy the books where they do. More than 1,800 people completed the survey; 67% of the respondents were male; 82% lived in the USA; 88% identified themselves as Reformed in theology. His conclusions:
First, Christian bookstores are barely competing with one another; they are competing together against Amazon. Even in a relatively niche market Amazon is dominant. Of course books are popular and even a small share of the market is significant, so those Christian bookstores can still make a go of it. But they need to fight this perception that Amazon offers the best prices.
Second, if we are truly committed to good prices, we should shop carefully and compare pricing before hitting the “checkout” button at Amazon. Unless there are other reasons to buy from Amazon (we are Prime members; we want to buy other items at the same time), we should look carefully at the Christian e-commerce stores to see if they offer better pricing.
Third, Christian bookstores need to maintain (or increase) their commitment to ebooks. The market is heading in that direction and the stores will need to be certain that they do not miss their opportunity. The big challenge, of course, is that Kindle owners will almost always get their books from Amazon; the most popular device has pretty much guaranteed that you will also use it to buy your books.
MobileMarketingWatch (@MobileMW) reports on the findings of a new Greystripe (@Greystripe) study that says better than 66% of moms are plugged into their mobile devices while engaged in the act of shopping:
- 57% search for mobile coupons via their mobile device.
- 45% of connected moms use their smartphone to locate stores.
- 36% utilize some form of price comparison app or service.
- 31% use their smartphones to research products, read reviews, and check product availability.
- 91% prefer free apps with ads over paid apps without ads.
Also see our April 14 blog post, “Motherhood Sends Moms to Smartphones.”
And see Marketing Charts' "1 in 3 Smartphone Shoppers Often Accesses In-store Coupons."
What are you doing to publish content that will reach these moms? Let Somersault help.
Trendwatching.com (@trendwatching) has coined “The F-FACTOR” to describe the power and reach social media has on commerce and branding.
- The F-FACTOR is currently dominated by Facebook, as over 500 million active users spend over 700 billion minutes a month on the site. (Source: Facebook, April 2011)
- And its impact isn’t just on Facebook itself. Every month, more than 250 million people engage with Facebook across more than 2.5 million external websites. (Source: Facebook, April 2011)
- The average user clicks the ‘Like’ button 9 times each month. (Facebook, 2010)
- Three-quarters of Facebook users have 'Liked' a brand. (Source: AdAge/ Ipsos, February 2011)
Here are 5 ways the F-FACTOR influences consumption behavior:
- F-DISCOVERY: How consumers discover new products and services by relying on their social networks.
- F-RATED: How consumers will increasingly (and automatically) receive targeted ratings, recommendations and reviews from their social networks.
- F-FEEDBACK: How consumers can ask their friends and followers to improve and validate their buying decisions.
- F-TOGETHER: How shopping is becoming increasingly social, even when consumers and their peers are not physically together.
- F-ME: How consumers’ social networks are literally turned into products and services.
Read further explanation of the above points.
Also see Marketing Charts (@marketingcharts) “Consumers Tap into ‘F-Factor’”
Keep in mind, according to a March 2011 survey by RetailMeNot.com and Harris Interactive, search engines are still the most popular online means of finding deals (67%), outpacing retailer emails/ads (30%), coupon websites (23%), and price comparison sites (22%).
Let Somersault help you optimize the F-FACTOR for your brand.
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.