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Simultaneous media use has become deeply embedded in the day-to-day habits of US tablet owners, with more than two-thirds regularly going online via the devices while they watch TV.

A new media trends report, State of the Media Spring 2012 (part 2), from market researcher Nielsen (@NielsenWire), says 45% of people who own devices such as Apple's market-leading iPad "multi-screen" at least once a day, while 69% do so on multiple occasions during the average week.

·         61% say they check their email on their tablet while watching TV and

·         47% access their social media profiles.

·         Over one in three (37%) look up information related to the TV program they’re watching on their tablets, while more than 1 in 5 (22%) say they look up coupons or deals related to a TV ad as they watch.

Read this in full.

The average American watches nearly 5 hours of video each day, 98% of which they watch on a traditional TV set, according to the Nielsen Cross-Platform Report. Although this ratio is less than it was just a few years ago, and continues to change, the fact remains that Americans are not turning off. They are shifting to new technologies and devices that make it easier for them to watch the video they want, whenever and wherever they want.

Read this in full.

According to ABI Research’s (@ABIresearch) new report, Connected Home Devices Market Data, about 21% of US homes, or about 27 million, have an Internet-ready TV, game console, Blu-ray player, or smart set-top box that’s connected (not just owned, but connected) to the Web. By far, a gaming console is the most popular route to the Web — it reaches 80% of connected homes.

Read this in full.

American teens are well-known for their consumption of online video content, but they're also among the biggest producers, according to the latest findings from the Pew Research Center’s (@pewresearch) Internet & American Life Project (@pewinternet). The project's latest report, Teens and Online Video, estimates 27% of Internet-using teens (12-17) record and upload video to the Internet.

"One major difference between now and 2006 is that online girls are just as likely these days to upload video as online boys," Pew notes, citing a similar study conducted 6 years ago.

The study also finds that 13% of Internet-using US teens stream live video to others on the Internet, and more than a third (37%) regularly participate in video chats utilizing applications such as Skype, Googletalk, or iChat. Girls are more likely than boys to have such chats.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you communicate your publishing content from screen to screen.

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Digital Book World (@DigiBookWorld) editorial director Jeremy Greenfield (@JDGsaid) postulates on what the Microsoft/B&N deal could mean to book publishing:

Imagine a Windows-powered Nook Tablet (@nookBN) that breaks the iOS and Android stranglehold on the mobile device market.

Imagine turning a PowerPoint slide deck into an enhanced ebook and distributing it to a dozen e-booksellers with the press of a button.

Imagine a book discovery engine built into every version of Internet Explorer and connected to one of the world’s leading e-bookstores.

These are the dreams that book industry players were having last night as the news sunk in of a sweeping new partnership between tech giant Microsoft and the second-leading US e-bookseller, Barnes & Noble.

Read this in full.

In “B&N and Microsoft: Why It's Not About Ebooks,” Joe Wikert (@jwikert), general manager, publisher, and chair of the Tools of Change conference (@toc) says, “Success in this venture will not be measured by sales of ebooks. Microsoft should instead use this as an opportunity to create an end-to-end consumer experience that rivals Apple's and has the advertising income potential to make Google jealous.”

Read this in full.

It makes sense that B&N wants to keep improving its Nook Tablet. According to a new BISG (@BISG) study, dedicated e-readers are losing their hold, paving the way for publishers to introduce richer ebook content on multi-function tablet devices.

In another B&N development, Laura Hazard Owen (@laurahazardowen) reports on GigaOM (@gigaom) that the Nook will soon be used for more than reading ebooks.

On the heels of yesterday’s news that Microsoft is investing $300 million in Barnes & Noble’s Nook and college businesses, B&N CEO William Lynch says that the company plans to embed NFC (near field communication) chips into Nooks. Users could take their Nook into a Barnes & Noble store and wave it near a print book to get info on it or buy it.

That could help someone gain quick information on their Nook about a book, making it easy to go from browsing to buying. Consumers could also choose to just buy a printed book in the store with the additional information gleaned from the Nook. The model would help ensure that showrooming leads to sales through Barnes & Noble, whether users ultimately purchase a print or ebook, instead of sending them online and possibly Amazon.

Read this in full.

In these fast-changing times, contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you publish and market your content.

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

Mothers are spending a surprising amount of their daily time with media and they’re among the earliest adopters of new technology platforms, according to Nielsen’s (@NielsenWire) and BabyCenter’s (@BabyCenter) new study.

·         The research shows an increased rate of smartphone adoption with 65% of moms navigating their busy lives on the mobile Web.

·         Mothers are 38% more likely to own an Internet TV device and 28% more likely to own a tablet.

·         1 in 4 moms talk on the phone while watching TV or are online; and they like to shuffle through social media sites while watching online video.

While the figures are new, these trends have been building for years now. Previous Nielsen studies had shown that nearly 1 in 3 bloggers are moms, with women making up the majority of bloggers in 2011. Yet, just because moms are voracious digital consumers doesn’t mean they’re easy targets for brands and advertisers. According to the BabyCenter press release, “Three in four moms say that they skip all of the ads they can while watching television content — a rate that is 20% higher than the general online population.”

For brands it would appear that mobile is the way to a busy mom’s heart as usage of mobile for product/brand recommendations has almost doubled in 2011 to 33%. With moms relying on smartphones more than ever before, brands may want to think about upping their mobile targeting ad campaigns to reach moms directly at the point of purchase.

Moms are 50% more likely to watch video online compared to the general population.

Read this in full.

Read the news release in full.

Also see our previous blogposts, “2 Out of 3 Moms Now Use Smartphones While Shopping” and “Motherhood Sends Moms to Smartphones.”

Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you plan your strategy to communicate your brand’s message in the most effective way.

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

The above Infographic is by Adweek (@Adweek).

According to Tapping Into Tabletomics, a new study released by Viacom (@Viacom), tablet devices have emerged as the leading second-screen alternative to television for viewing full-length episodes. The new research examines consumer behavior and emotions around the tablet user-experience, with a focus on tablets as TV and the dual-screen experience.

Today's Tablet User:

·         62% use their tablets daily.

·         Daily tablet users spend an average of 2.4 hours per day on their tablets.

·         85% of tablet use is for personal reasons versus business.

·         77% of tablet use is alone.

·         74% of tablet usage is done at home.

·         Most media activities on the tablet, such as playing games and watching TV shows, peak with the 18-24 demo.

Read the full news release.

Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you prepare content for tablets.

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

In this article, Wired’s (@wired) Angela Watercutter (@WaterSlicer) writes how “with tablets selling at mind-boggling rates, book publishers are scrambling to figure out how to bring their ancient medium into the digital realm.”

Though the rewards promise to be great, the adaptation book publishers must make is far more complicated than that faced by the music and movie industries, which essentially needed to digitize their current products. Bookmakers must become multimedia companies — creating audio, video, and interactive components for their immersive, built-for-tablets offerings.

They also face a dizzying array of decisions brought on by evolving standards and platforms: Should a certain book come to life as a dedicated app, an approach that, until iBooks 2 was released, offered more flexibility in terms of features like video and audio on the iPad? Or should it be turned into an “enhanced ebook,” which will work on Apple’s tablet as well as Amazon’s Kindle Fire, Barnes and Noble’s Nook, and other devices, but must be re-created several times over to meet each device’s specs?

Read this in full.

Therein lies the rub: are enhanced ebooks a profitable return-on-investment for publishers? This is explored by Digital Book World (@DigiBookWorld) in Andrew Rhomberg’s (@arhomberg) “Some Tough Questions for Enhanced Ebooks.”

Also see our previous blogpost, “Extensive New Study: The Rise of E-reading” and Mike Shatzkin’s (@MikeShatzkin) analysis, “A feast of data to interpret in new Pew survey of book readers about ebooks.”

And then there’s the article, “A Billion-Dollar Turning Point for Mobile Apps” by New York Times (@nytimestech) tech reporter Jenna Wortham (@jennydeluxe) that, even though it focuses on the Web strategy of entrepreneurs and start-up companies, may have implications for publishers preparing ebooks and ebook apps for tablets.

The path for Internet start-ups used to be quite clear: establish a presence on the Web first, then come up with a version of your service for mobile devices.

Now, at a time when the mobile start-up Instagram can command $1 billion in a sale to Facebook, some start-ups are asking: who needs the Web?

“People are living in the moment and they want to share in the moment,” says professor S. Shyam Sundar, a director of the media Effects Research Lab at Pennsylvania State University. “Mobile gives you that immediacy and convenience.”

Read this in full.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you plan your strategy for ebook (as well as pbook) publishing.

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

According to a new report by the Pew Research Center’s (@pewresearch) Internet & American Life Project (@pewinternet), 43% of Americans age 16 and older read long-form digital text such as ebooks and magazines, and many say they’re reading more because books and other long-form material are in a digital format.

One-fifth of American adults (21%) report they’ve read an ebook in the past year; this number increased following a gift-giving season that saw a spike in the ownership of both tablet computers and ebook reading devices such as the original Kindles and Nooks. In mid-December 2011, 17% of American adults had reported they read an ebook in the previous year; by February, 2012, the share increased to 21%.

The average reader of ebooks says she’s read 24 books (the mean number) in the past 12 months, compared with an average of 15 books by a non-ebook consumer. For device owners, those who own ebook readers say they’ve read an average of 24 books in the previous year (vs. 16 books by those who don’t own that device). They report having read a median of 12 books (vs. 7 books by those who do not own the device.

·         30% of those who read e-content say they now spend more time reading, and owners of tablets and ebook readers particularly stand out as reading more now.

·         The prevalence of ebook reading is markedly growing, but pbooks still dominate the world of book readers.

·         People prefer ebooks to pbooks when they want speedy access and portability, but print wins out when people are reading to children and sharing books with others.

·         Ebook reading happens across an array of devices, including smartphones.

·         Those who read ebooks are more likely to be under age 50, have some college education, and live in households earning more than $50,000.

·         11% of all Americans age 16 and older – or 14% of those who have read a book in the past year – consume audiobooks.

·         The majority of book readers prefer to buy rather than borrow.

·         61% of e-reading device owners said they purchased the most recent book they read, compared with 48% of all readers.

·         Owners of e-reading devices are more likely than all Americans 16 and older to get book recommendations from people they knew (81% vs. 64%) and bookstore staff (31% vs. 23%).

·         26% of those who had read a book in the past 12 months said that what they enjoyed most was learning, gaining knowledge, and discovering information.

Read this in full.

Also see Mike Shatzkin's (@MikeShatzkin) analysis in "A feast of data to interpret in new Pew survey of book readers about ebooks."

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you plan your strategy for ebook (as well as pbook) publishing.

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

E-readers may soon be thinner, lighter, and supple. LG (@LGUS) has just announced it’s beginning mass production of the world’s first flexible, plastic e-ink display. This is opposed to the hard, heavy, prone-to-cracking glass-laminate e-ink displays found in devices such as the Kindle and Nook.

The new plastic display has a resolution of 1024x768 and is 6 inches across the diagonal, comparable to the Kindle and Nook.

The LG display is half the weight and 30% thinner (0.7mm) than a comparable, glass e-ink panel. Existing ebook readers need to be thick (and heavy) to protect the glass display, but LG says its display is more rugged. The press release says the plastic display survives repeated 1.5-meter drop tests and break/scratch tests with a small hammer, and that it's flexible up to 40 degrees from the midpoint.

Read this in full.

Also see USA TODAY's article, "Flexible displays bend what's possible for computers."

And see our previous blogposts, “Why Your Next Phone Might be Bendable” and “Revolutionary New Paper Computer Shows Flexible Future for Smartphones and Tablets.”

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you plan your strategy for 21st century digital publishing.

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

Julie Bosman (@juliebosma) and Matthew Richtel (@mrichtel) write in this New York Times (@nytimesbusiness) article about the many ways tablets – by providing too many options – can distract people from concentrating on the books they’re reading; fragmenting their experience or stopping it altogether.

Email lurks tantalizingly within reach. Looking up a tricky word or unknown fact in the book is easily accomplished through a quick Google search. And if a book starts to drag, giving up on it to stream a movie over Netflix or scroll through your Twitter feed is only a few taps away.

That adds up to a reading experience that is more like a 21st-century cacophony than a traditional solitary activity. And some of the millions of consumers who have bought tablets and sampled ebooks on apps from Amazon, Apple, and Barnes & Noble have come away with a conclusion: It’s harder than ever to sit down and focus on reading.

Read this in full.

The article focuses on apps and email being distractions, but we also ask the question, “When do you think the digital features and creative apps of an enhanced ebook cross the line from augmenting the book reading experience and become a distraction and interruption? Write your comments below.

Contact Somersault (@smrsault) to help you plan and execute your ebook publishing and marketing strategy.

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

Education Week (@educationweek) reports that US Secretary of Education Arne Duncan and Federal Communications Chairman Julius Genachowski unveiled the new Digital Textbook Playbook, a resource designed by the Digital Textbook Collaborative to help guide educators in their transition to electronic resources, as the pair headlined a national online town hall meeting for the inaugural Digital Learning Day (@DLDay2012) Feb. 1. Specifically noting that South Korea plans to use only digital textbooks by 2013, Chairman Genachowski declared,

If we want American students to be the best prepared to compete in the 21st century global economy, we can’t allow a majority of our students to miss out on the opportunities of digital textbooks. Today, I want to challenge everyone in the space – companies, government officials, schools and teachers – to do their part to make sure that every student in America has a digital textbook in the next 5 years.

He and Secretary Duncan plan to meet with CEO’s of relevant companies to spur movement toward this objective.

Read his remarks in full.

Read the Education Week article in full.

What do you think? Is a digital textbook for every US student in 5 years a realistic and helpful objective? What will it mean for your textbook publishing agenda? Write your comments below.

Let Somersault (@smrsault) help you in your textbook publishing and marketing needs.

Bookmark and use daily the SomersaultNOW online dashboard, created especially for marketing and publishing executives.

Since 2002, the United States has lost roughly 500 independent bookstores — nearly 1 out of 5 — due in many instances to the dominance of the Barnes & Noble (@BNBuzz) bookstore chain. Now, however, it’s B&N that’s fighting for survival.

Julie Bosman (@juliebosman), book publishing reporter for The New York Times (@nytimesbooks), writes a behind-the-scenes look at Barnes & Noble, a company that started in 1873 by Charles Barnes in Wheaton, IL.

In March 2009, an eternity ago in Silicon Valley, a small team of engineers here was in a big hurry to rethink the future of books. Not the paper-and-ink books that have been around since the days of Gutenberg, the ones that the doomsayers proclaim — with glee or dread — will go the way of vinyl records.

No, the engineers were instead fixated on the forces that are upending the way books are published, sold, bought, and read: ebooks and e-readers. Working in secret, behind an unmarked door in a former bread bakery, they rushed to build a device that might capture the imagination of readers and maybe even save the book industry.

They had six months to do it.

Running this sprint was, of all companies, Barnes & Noble, the giant that helped put so many independent booksellers out of business and that now finds itself locked in the fight of its life. What its engineers dreamed up was the Nook (@nookBN), a relative e-reader latecomer that has nonetheless become the great e-hope of Barnes & Noble and, in fact, of many in the book business.

Several iterations later, the Nook and, by extension, Barnes & Noble, at times seem the only things standing between traditional book publishers and oblivion.

The article goes on to say B&N plans to unveil another e-reader soon.

At its labs in Silicon Valley last week, engineers were putting final touches on their 5th e-reading device, a product that executives said would be released sometime this spring.

Read this in full. Also on CNBC.com (@CNBC).

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