BLOG: Eye-Popping Tips

From Karen Saunders

Your Branding, Marketing & Self-Publishing Coach



Archive for the ‘Book Publishing’ Category

September 26th, 2013 | By: Karen Saunders

3 Creative Ways to Sell More eBooks: Matchbook, Kobo, Ganxy

Kindle Matchbook Program Amazon has just unveiled Kindle Matchbook for ebook publishers. This special program encourages their customers to buy two copies of your book; the printed version at the regular price and the ebook version at a discounted price. Publishers receive approximately 50% royalty on the ebook sold and a standard royalty on the printed book sold. What this means for the publisher is increased revenue; they’re selling two books at one time. The book buyer can immediately download the Kindle version while waiting for the printed version to arrive in the mail. Publishers will need to discount the…

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July 30th, 2013 | By: Karen Saunders

Tips on Creating Eye-Catching Book Covers

Shown below are a few covers our team recently designed for our clients. We strive to create unique eye-catching book covers with attention-grabbing graphics and compelling titles and subtitles. To reach the right target market we need to understand what intrigues and interests those folks. By using carefully chosen keywords and appropriate fonts in the title, selecting symbolic colors and imagery, and using the right style of photos and/or graphics we can create the most effective message for each specific target market. As a result, each book cover appeals to the right audience. The following 2 books are for managers, leaders and directors…

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May 23rd, 2013 | By: Karen Saunders

5 Self-Publishers win CIPA EVVY Book Awards

Five of our clients won won book awards at the 2013 Colorado Independent Publishers Association EVVY Book Awards banquet held on May 18th. Here are the 5 award-winning books we designed. Noted below are the team members who have participated in the production of each book. John Hall is all smiles with a copy of his book and his award certificate. John’s book Do What You Can! won 3rd place in the “Self-Help” category. Several team members participated in the production of his book: Barbara McNichol edited the book, I came up with the cover concept, Kerrie Lian designed the cover and interior, Helena Mariposa proofread…

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April 25th, 2013 | By: Karen Saunders

Creating Julia Spencer’s New Brand, Website & Speaker One Sheet

Spotlight on a Client Project: Building a New Brand Last year our team designed Julia Spencer’s award-winning book, Looking Through a Key Hole. The memoir is about her challenges with severe and progressive vision loss. She relies on her Seeing Eye guide dog, Irene, for independence. Since self-publishing her book, Julia’s speaking business has grown so she needed to clarify her brand and update her marketing materials. Julia asked for our help with creating a tag line and updating her website and speaker one sheet. Team lead, Patrice Rhoades-Baum – who is our branding expert – helped Julia nail her brand and created…

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April 1st, 2013 | By: Karen Saunders

Use Google AdWords Keyword Planner to Help Market Your Self-Published Book

You can use the Google AdWords Keyword Planner tool to research and choose productive keywords to use in your book marketing campaigns. This free tool allows you to type in a word or phrase then see the results of your search term and additional keyword ideas. Each word or phrase is ranked by competition and by the number of global monthly searches on Google. You want to select and use keywords and phrases that have low competition and high search volume. Go to this page: https://adwords.google.com/KeywordPlanner For this exercise, let’s suppose I’ve published a book on puppy training. I’ve typed in…

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February 26th, 2013 | By: Karen Saunders

Build a Powerful Author Platform to Sell More Books

Publishing industry leaders say successful authors and publishers build their book sales by having a strong author platform. What is an Author Platform? It is a combination of how you share your core message, what exactly is marketing message and who is listening to you. The larger the number and the depth of your personal relationships with your followers, the stronger your platform. This is what’s called “relationship marketing.” It is optimal to have a powerful platform before you launch your book, but it is never too late to begin building your platform. An author’s goal is to develop a funnel of…

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November 26th, 2012 | By: Karen Saunders

It Takes a Community to Make Your Book an Amazon Bestseller

At a recent Colorado Independent Publishers Association (CIPA) meeting we had a panel speak on the topic of how to make your book an “Amazon Bestseller.” One of the panelists was Marcia Reece whose book, Secrets of a Marriage Mouse became the #1 bestseller in three Amazon book categories: Marriage, Personal Relationships, and Health. She shared with us a few of the many very specific techniques she used to sell 3700 books in 3 days on Amazon.com. Marcia occasionally offers one-day workshops where she explains ALL the important steps in this process. Shown below are some of the highlights of her…

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November 24th, 2012 | By: Karen Saunders

You Can Make Your Book an Amazon Bestseller

You Can Make Your Book an Amazon Bestseller – Even if You’re a First Time Author or a Marketing Novice It’s true…my friend, Marcia Reece Can Help You Make Your Book A Bestseller! If your book is not yet finished, Marcia will show you exactly what you need to do while writing and marketing your book to make it a bestseller–and create more business when your book is finished. If your book has already been published, Marcia will show you how to start a sudden surge of sales carrying your book to bestseller status in your category–even if your book…

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October 28th, 2012 | By: Karen Saunders

Guidelines for a Properly Formatted Manuscript

Sometimes our team will receive a partial manuscript or a manuscript that has not been edited or proofread. If a self-publisher provides us with a properly formatted manuscript, we can save them time and money on editing and proofreading services. Once the manuscript has been edited and proofread we can move on to the design and layout stage. Your manuscript should be formatted in a typical 8.5″ x 11″ MS Word document so it is easy for you and our editor to review, markup and make text changes. While your manuscript is in the editing stage it will NOT resemble a book page layout. Our graphic designer will do that later during…

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July 26th, 2012 | By: Karen Saunders

Five Ways to Use Pinterest to Market Books

I’ve asked team member Mary Walewski to contribute an article this month and she introduced me to Pinterest. This relatively new social media site intrigued me because it’s all about images. I posed the question to her, “How can self-publishers use Pinterest to market books?” I discovered this is a perfect way to quickly post portfolio samples from recent projects completed by my team. I’ve already created a set of Pinterest boards dedicated to samples of book covers, logos, business cards, speaker one sheets and branding projects. There are many reasons why you should join interest, and Mary has listed 5…

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