MacGraphics Services has grown and evolved over 25 years, and to better reflect who we are and what we do, I’ve re-branded my business as Karen Saunders & Associates. My award-winning team of professionals provide a wide range of services for speakers, authors and consultants. I’ve also changed the name of my blog/ezine to Eye-Popping Tips From Karen Saunders. I’ve spent the last 5 months building my new website with the help of my team. It was an exciting and rewarding experience for all of us. We strived to a create friendly, inviting, and informative website. If you take a look, I…
I attended the CIPA (Colorado Independent Publishers Association) meeting last month and their topic was “self-publishing bloopers.” I took some notes, added my own items and compiled a list for you. The number one mistake is not having your book professionally edited. There are different levels of editing: content editing, copy editing and proofreading. In my August 2014 post I describe in detail these three types of editing services. Missing the bar code. If you don’t have a bar code on the back cover of your book you won’t be able to sell your book in bookstores or on Amazon. Bad cover design. Your…
Book marketing guru Brian Jud spoke at the September CIPA (Colorado Independent Publishers Association) meeting about ways to sell books to other markets besides bookstores. He published the book Beyond the Bookstore back in 2009, and has a new updated edition, How to Make Real Money Selling Books. These books show you how to reach unique retail and non-retail market segments, where you can sell mass quantities of self-published books at a time. Many independent publishers have realized the unfortunate impact of returns when working with bookstores. Returns are shipped back to the publisher at the publisher’s expense and often arrived…
Happy fall everyone! Congratulations to our client Gina Meagher and to Helena Mariposa who is our ebook conversion expert for winning a first place CIPA (Colorado Independent Publishers Association) book award for Gina’s ebook, There Is Something about Gina: Flourishing with Diabetes and Celiac Disease. Helena did a fabulous job of converting Gina’s print book into ebook format. Our graphic designer Kerrie Lian created the striking cover and interior layout for this award-winning ebook.
Smart self-publishers have their manuscripts edited and proofread by professionals. To meet this need, we offer an assortment of editorial services, from content editing to proofreading. Our award-winning team of editors and proofreaders specializes in a wide range of genres with a variety of skill sets in both fiction and non-fiction. It’s so important to find the right fit for each client, and we feel it is our responsibility to educate our clients about the different types of editing and proofreading services. As a visual person, I like to make analogies with visual images. I think about editing from the…
Here are the Details of Our 7-Step Brand, Marketing and Website System Are you a new speaker, author, or consultant? Perhaps you’ve been in business for a while but want to raise your presence in the marketplace. We can guide you through the process of branding and marketing your business online. Our experienced team of branding experts, graphic designers, copywriters, website designers, programmers, and search engine specialists will create a dynamic brand and powerful website to help you meet the marketing goals you’ve set for your business. We’ve developed a seamless 7-step system that builds on and leverages the content…
Testimonials, endorsements and case studies are such an important part of marketing yet most small business owners just don’t take full advantage of their power. We all know that referrals from others are our best prospects. Why is that? When a prospect hears good things about you from people they know and trust, they get a sense of confidence you can deliver. In that sense a referral is like an endorsement. How to Get Endorsements Endorsements and testimonials are the bedrock of any marketing program. As a business owner you should ask for endorsements and testimonials immediately after any job…
Our client, Shima Shanti, of Peace Waters Publishing came to us with a collection of illustrations and text to combine and arrange into a children’s book. The picture book design and layout needed something to tie all the pages together and unify the collection of drawings. I came up with the idea of using stock images of abstract watercolors in the backgrounds of all the pages to enhance and support the drawings. My designer, Kerrie Lian looked at the book one spread at a time to coordinate the watercolor backgrounds with the colors, patterns and imagery in the drawings. Shown…
Heartbleed is a computer security issue that got world wide notice in early April. It affects websites and computer systems that use the OpenSSL encryption. It is not a virus or trojan horse or scam. OpenSSL had a type of encryption vulnerability that was discovered by security engineers at Google and Codenomicon. The world became aware of the problem on April 7th when a fixed version of OpenSSL was released. It is possible that some criminals or hackers may also have been aware of the OpenSSL vuneraliblity and exploited it by stealing identities, passwords, financial information or other data. However,…