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Writing in The Atlantic (@TheAtlantic), Peter Osnos says, “For all the complexities that publishing faces, the notion that books are somehow less of a factor in the cultural or information ecosystem of our time doesn't hold up to the evidence.”

Whatever else may be happening in this tumultuous period of transition in how books are produced and distributed, the sheer range and quality of so many titles is indisputable proof that our marketplace has writers and readers in impressive numbers....

Instead of the competition among traditional booksellers for the attention of readers that was for so long the way books were sold, publishers now must confront the immense power and reach of tech giants and adapt to their influence. These companies are so much larger than even the biggest of publishers that accommodating their demands on price and promotion is a formidable task and is the reason why it looks (and often feels) that publishers are on the defensive.

We are in a whirlwind of change. A writer with the ambition to reach a maximum audience needs at least some understanding of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, blogs, Tumblr, LinkedIn, GoodReads, and Google+ (a hat tip to my colleagues at the Perseus Books Group who are making significant headway in providing guidance to our authors in all these marketing tools). But even in the midst of so much change, the main challenge of publishing remains the same: finding and supporting good books and then working closely with authors to identify and reach their readers through every way possible. With all the hubbub of today's technology and media landscape, that still is the best route to success.

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you take advantage of today's technology to publish and market your content.

Learn about online marketing with SomersaultSocial.

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

Some book authors have a tendency to minimize the effectiveness of social media marketing. And, because of that perspective, they neglect to fully engage with it as a way to advance their personal brand among their readers and to introduce themselves to new readers. So let’s take a look at why Pres. Obama and Gov. Romney believe social media marketing is so important and how they approach it.

The New York Times Technology (@nytimestech) journalist Jenna Wortham (@jennydeluxe) reports that “both [parties] rely heavily on Facebook and Twitter to solicit donations, blast out reminders of events, and share articles and videos conveying their stances.”

If the presidential campaigns of 2008 were dipping a toe into social media like Facebook and Twitter, their 2012 versions are well into the deep end. They are taking to fields of online battle that might seem obscure to the non-Internet-obsessed — sharing song playlists on Spotify, adding frosted pumpkin bread recipes to Pinterest and posting the candidates’ moments at home with the children on Instagram.

At stake, the campaigns say they believe, are votes from citizens, particularly younger ones, who may not watch television or read the paper but spend plenty of time on the social Web. The campaigns want to inject themselves into the conversation on services like Tumblr, where political dialogue often takes the form of remixed photos and quirky videos.

Read this in full.

Replace “votes” with “book purchases” and you see that social media marketing should be taken seriously by authors.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you plan your social media marketing strategy. And to learn more about SomersaultSocial.

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

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

Christian fiction readers now have the first “all-in-one” site to discover the latest information about Christian fiction including updates, recommendations, new releases, commentary, and exclusive articles from their favorite writers.

NovelCrossing.com (@novelcrossing), “the Intersection of Faith and Fiction,” is a website aimed at building a community of Christian fiction readers by being the most inclusive site on the subject of inspirational novels.

Developed by WaterBrook Multnomah Publishing Group (@WaterBrookPress), NovelCrossing.com features content from all publishers of Christian fiction, allowing readers to discover new titles from across the publishing universe. Currently the site provides data on 10,000 titles from 50 different publishing houses.

“While there are a number of informative sites featuring Christian fiction book reviews and interviews, no one site combines a searchable database of books and authors, across all publishers in this category, with reviews, interviews, features, and a community component,” says Shannon Marchese, WaterBrook Multnomah senior fiction editor. “We built Novel Crossing to fill that gap. We wanted fans of Christian fiction to have a “one-stop” destination for finding authors and new reads, for leaving comments and making friends who love the books they love.” She explains more in the following video.

Read the news release.

See our previous blogposts on book discoverability.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you publish and market your brand content in the new world of digital publishing.

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

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

The American Christian Fiction Writers (@ACFWTweets) conference (@ACFWConference) (#ACFW) is being held in Dallas, TX and Somersault (@smrsault) is here telling authors, agents, and publishers about

• our online dashboard for publishers and marketers, SomersaultNOW
• this blog as a telescope helping industry professionals “see around the corner” to prepare for the future of publishing
• and SomersaultSocial, our new program to educate authors and speakers in the strategic and effective use of social media marketing.

Congratulations to Allen Arnold, winner of the ACFW’s 2012 Lifetime Achievement Award “in recognition of his impact on the Christian fiction industry, its authors, and its readers.” He’s the former publisher and senior vice president of Thomas Nelson Fiction, having launched the Fiction group in 2004.

ACFW’s other awards are Julee Schwarzburg - Editor of the Year, Nicole Resciniti - Agent of the Year, Allison Pittman - Mentor of the Year, Genesis winners for the best unpublished Christian fiction projects, and the Carol Awards for the best Christian fiction published in the previous calendar year.

If you’re attending the conference, please come to our exhibit booth and say hi!

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New findings from a Nielsen (@NielsenWire) online survey of respondents from 56 countries:

·         Nearly half (49%) have purchased a product online.

·         46% have used social media to help make purchase decisions.

·         37% purchase from online-only stores most frequently.

·         1 in 5 global respondents plan to purchase electronic books and digital newspaper and magazine subscriptions in the next 3 to 6 months.

·         The online purchase intent of hard copy books and physical subscriptions declined from 44% in 2010 to 33% this year.

·         Categories with growing global purchase intent include computer/game software (+18%), entertainment tickets (+10%), computer/game hardware (+6%), video/music production (+5%), cars/motorcycle and accessories (+4%) and apparel/accessories/shoes/jewelry (+1%).

·         More than one-quarter (26%) of global respondents plan to purchase food and beverage products via an online connected device in the next 3 to 6 months — a jump from 18% reported in 2010.

Also see the Infographic “The Pre-Purchase Habits of Shoppers” and our previous blogposts, “Why Shopping Will Never Be the Same” and “Tablets Change Shopping, Media Habits.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help digitally publish and market your content.

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

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

CMO.com’s (@CMO_com) latest Guide to The Social Landscape (interactive version; pdf version), developed by 97th Floor (@chrisbennett), offers helpful analyses in the categories of
          • Customer Communication
          • Brand Exposure
          • Traffic to Your Site
          • and SEO
for the social media marketing sites of
          • Twitter
          • Facebook
          • StumbleUpon
          • Google+
          • Pinterest
          • Reddit
          • YouTube
          • SlideShare
          • Delicious
          • Digg
          • Flickr
          • LinkedIn
          • Quora
          • and Instagram.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you leverage the power of social media marketing for your branded content.

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

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

The above Infographic (enlarge it) is by Fast Company (@FastCompany) in its September 2012 issue (#therules). Submit your own rule.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you strategize and execute social media marketing for your brand.

Get our blogposts delivered into your email inbox.

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

LEGO (@LEGO_Group) turns 80 this year. To celebrate, the company produced this 17-minute cartoon about its humble origins and how it revolutionized the toy industry. 17-minutes long and it succeeded in getting 2 million views in 2 weeks. 17-minutes! And the pace of it is slow-moving, at that!

If a slow-moving 17-minute-long video can get more than 2 million views, it proves viral videos don’t need to be constrained to only 3-minutes of flash mobs or kittens!

Also see our previous blogposts, "Unlikely Videos Go Viral" and “The 3 Qualities That Make A YouTube Video Go Viral.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you produce creative and effective videos promoting your branded content.

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

Knowledge@Wharton (@knowledgwharton) says, “Our current multi-channel, multi-screen, ‘always on’ world is giving rise to a new form of storytelling, dubbed ‘transmedia,’ that unfolds a narrative across multiple media channels.”

A single story may present some elements through a television series or a motion picture with additional narrative threads explored in comic books, video games, or a collection of websites and Twitter feeds. Depending on their level of interest, fans can engage in selection of these story elements or follow all of them to fully immerse themselves in the world of the story.

Andrea Phillips, author of A Creator's Guide to Transmedia Storytelling: How to Captivate and Engage Audiences across Multiple Platforms, offers her observations on the current shift happening in marketing, including stealth advertising across media:

It has to do with experience. There's a point where you enjoy ambiguity. The problem is that that point is a little bit different for everyone. And the audience wants to be in control of knowing where that line is. When you present yourself as real, you open yourself to creating problems for people.

Assuming that your audience can't possibly know it's fictional is ridiculous on the face of it…. The idea that admitting that something was fictional would ruin the whole thing winds up being a non-starter. An audience is a little more robust than that. They're not so fragile that when they can find out that it's not real, it will ruin it….

There's a myth that if you make something interesting and you tell a couple of people, it will spread virally across the Internet. That is, by and large, a terrible, terrible lie. It is not true that the cream rises to the top on the Internet.

When you launch something, don't just send someone a mysterious box. Send them a mysterious box if you have to, but also send them a letter with a URL telling them what you're doing. Send out a press release. Make sure people know what it is you're going to do, and make sure that they know before it's almost done or nobody will look at it.

These things do have to be marketed and promoted exactly the same way that every other entertainment medium does. It's frustrating to see campaigns start with no concept of a marketing budget, no concept of how they're going to spread the word beyond, "Well, people will know because it's cool."

...There's a lot of talk about the attention economy, where we're in a flat-out war for attention. Marketers have cottoned to the idea that people aren't going to look at marketing just because you put it in front of them. People simply don't notice banner ads. Calling [the impact of a banner ad] an ‘impression’ is a terrible lie, because it isn't making an impression on anybody. You just tune it out. It might as well not exist.

Marketers have started to realize they need to create content people will seek out because it has value to them, independent of the value to the marketer. You're seeing things like the Old Spice guy, which has tremendous entertainment value — partly because it's really funny and partly because Isaiah Mustafa is extremely beautiful to look at — and people seek that out because there's something there that they want. And the marketing comes in subtly.

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you cover all the bases in your marketing strategy.

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