On October 15th, 2009 Irene Watson and Victor R. Volkman spoke with greeting card and gift industry maven Kate Harper. Kate Harper started her line of humorous greeting card from a hobby of making greeting cards for friends as gifts. Over the next 15 years, Kate’s turned her hobby into a business, manufacturing and shipping cards to over 2,000 stores, including Barnes & Noble, Whole Foods Markets and the Papyrus chain. She informed us on key areas of getting started as a writer or self-publisher of greeting cards, including:
- Card terends: research, seasonal cards, occasional cards, and publishers
- What subject areas and categories to focus on, how to stay organized
- Test marketing your cards and card verse.
- Seven most common mistake card writers will make
- Why competition in the card business is vastly over-estimated
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| Two years ago, she transitioned out of manufacturing and into licensing, where she now designs cards for Recycled Paper Greetings (a subsidiary of American Greetings Corporation) and gift items for seven other companies. |
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| On July 23rd, 2009 Irene Watson and Victor R. Volkman spoke with book coach, professional freelancer, and author Cheryl Pickett. Her first book Publishing Possibilities: 8 Steps to Understanding Your Options & Choosing the Best Path for Your Book (2009) is specifically designed to help other writers navigate the publishing industry. She educated us about the three major models in her system: traditional, independent, and fee-based/POD/pay to publish. Her approach is goal-directed in narrowing the possibilities to the solution that best fits your publishing needs. We also covered how and when to use an Agent, the importance of establishing a platform, and how your personal style is reflected in which route to publish. |
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| Cheryl Pickett has been writing professionally for almost a decade. She got her start as a freelance writer in 1999 just before the turn of the new millennium. She has well over 120 articles to her credit which have appeared both on and offline in newspapers, ezines a trade magazine and more.A few years ago, she decided she wanted to take her writing in other directions and ultimately combined her life-long love of books with her research and reporting skills. Her personalized, step-by-step approach is unique and empowers new and would-be authors to make solid decisions throughout their publishing journey. You can find out more about Cheryl and Publishing Possibilities by visiting her site PublishingAnswers.com. or her blog publishinganswers.blogspot.com |
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On May 21st, 2009, Irene Watson and Victor R. Volkman interviewed Pete Masterson, veteran book designer, publisher, and owner of Aeonix Publishing Group. We had a wide-ranging discussion of all things vanity press, subsidy publishing, co-publishing, and employing a “self-publishing” company. Key discussion points included:
- The pros and cons of traditional large or medium sized commercial trade publishers.
- The pros (very few) and cons (many many) of subsidy publishers (or “self-publishing companies” as they’re calling themselves these days).
- Discuss the pros and cons of a do it yourself self-publishing process — with or without help from a book coach, packager, etc.
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| Pete Masterson is the author of Book Design and Production: A Guide for Authors and Publishers. He founded Aeonix Publishing Group in 1997 after having owned a print shop, managed a book oriented typesetting service doing work for large and medium sized publishers, and after managing the publications and graphic production contractor at NASA Ames Research Center.He is a publishing consultant, book designer, and cover designer — he is accepting a limited number of new clients. During his career he pioneered POD production for price list publications at Southern Pacific Railroad, and was an early participant with desk top publishing in a print shop setting. He has supervised production of more than 1000 publications. Currently, he is focusing on sales of his book and in sharing his publishing knowledge with the independent publishing community |
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