• Is your message clear?
• Are you confusing your audience with multiple messages?
• Your brand logo and your book cover need to be easy to read for every occassion, whether as big as a billboard or as small as a business card.

Consistency

• From cover to cover, and everything in between, does your book follow the same theme?
• Beyond your book, does your overall branding have the same core “look” as it is expressed across multiple markting outlets (website, blog, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.)
• Over time, your fans should be able to recognize your books and your brand because of its consistency.

Professionalism
A professional presentation is a must. Nothing screams amateur more than these five pitfalls:

• Low quality photo or illustration used for your cover. A snapshot from your last beach vacation might not be the best option. A good photographer or illustrator pays attention to composition, horizon placement, drama, light and dark, film grain, color selection and more.
• Boring or irrelevant visual composition. A photographer, illustrator, or designer can take your concept and develop something custom that is unique to your book.
• Low resolution. It is imperative to start with a high resolution photo or scan for every image used in your book and your marketing materials. Using proper software to layout your project will keep
• the resolution high when it is sent to press.
• Pre-press errors. While printing is not an exact science, there’s a
• lot that has to done to the file in order to get the most optimal print quality possible. Failure to do any one item poses the potential for a complete printing disaster. A professional designer knows exactly what needs to be done in order to get your book (or any printed material) to be the treasured keepsake it was meant to be.
• Fonts. Font selection is important. There is an unpublished library of fancy fonts that are overused and abused. You will recognize many of them since they come preloaded on your computer. If you want to make your designer cry, pick one of these notorious fonts:
  
  Trust your designer to help you pick fonts that are fresh and in alignment with your branding message, there are hundreds of top-notch fonts to choose from.

Memorable (there’s no shortage of average books) 

• Pull your audience in with unique visuals.
• Connect with your audience’s emotions.
• Keep their attention with compelling copy.
• Show them something they haven’t seen before.

One of the best ways to sell books is through the one-on-one contact that occurs with book signings. That’s why we’re recommending you check out P. A. Ritzer’s instructional guideon how to sell books at a bookstore book signing. P. A. Ritzer has sold thousands of copies of his first book, the award-winning historical Western Seven Ox Seven, Part One: Escondido Bound, at over 175 bookstore book signings (over 165 at Barnes & Noble stores alone). He has written Love and the Art of Bookstore Book Signing as an answer to authors, bookstore personnel, distributors, and others in the book business who have sought to know how he does it.

Ritzer does not just detail a method but goes to the heart of the matter. He exposes the real basis of his success in interacting with customers and the people who help him sell books. In Love and the Art of Bookstore Book Signing, Ritzer shows that an author need not be a celebrity to make book signings rewarding for himself and the stores and their customers. Rather, he can create the kind of experience that inspires customers to buy his book and managers to invite him back for 18 or more successful signings of the same book at one store.

Reviews

“This is a one-of-a-kind book on jumpstarting your book sales. P. A. Ritzer has achieved remarkable success in bookstore book signings. In ‘Love and the Art of Bookstore Book Signing’ he shares the principles and practices that have led to that success. It is a valuable read and resource for any who would like to make their book sail up the charts.”— Dan Poynter, author, The Self-Publishing Manual

“If P. A. Ritzer is open to sharing his passion for bookstore signings, we should listen carefully. His signings are a phenomenon the likes of which I have not seen in my 35 years in publishing and book distribution.”— Chris Bell, Vice President and Chief Operations Officer of Midpoint Trade Books

“P. A. Ritzer, author of Seven Ox Seven, is one of the best authors for a book signing for many reasons. First and foremost, he has a terrific work ethic. . . . He becomes and is a presence in the store. . . . Mr. Ritzer is versed in the art of a book signing and wields his knowledge and experience well.”— Joel McCree, Store Manager, Barnes & Noble, Colorado Springs, CO

“P. A. Ritzer has the art of author bookstore signings down to a science. His consistent sales results through in-store book signings are truly remarkable.”— Alexander M. Kampmann, Director, Trade Sales of Midpoint Trade Books

“P. A. Ritzer is an author, yes, but it is because of his great ability to engage our customers like a neighbor and a friend that he is also a regular bookseller in our store. I wish all authors would approach and sell to customers like he does. He has been by far the most successful author to sign and sell books in this store. He knows how to move books, and that is what the retail environment needs from authors today. Because of his gifted ability to sell, P. A. Ritzer has been and continues to be a tremendous asset to our team.”— Eric Welch, Store Manager, Barnes & Noble, Fort Collins, CO

If you haven’t had a chance to play with this little online program, you might want to put down your mouse and have some fun typing keywords into Worlde.

This little program will automatically generate designer-looking word clouds of any words that you enter. The more your enter a word, the larger it will appear in the grouping. Looking at a group of words together can really convey a message all its own and give you a greater appreciation for the language you employ.

Try your family members names, your mission statement, your favorite poems, quotes, speeches, blog posts, website categories, friends . . . the list of possibilities goes on and on.

Shake it up by letting it randomize the fonts, colors and positioning. Try customizing the settings too for even more control. Perhaps it will inspire you on a design you are working on that needs a little extra push.

This sample is from somethingtocherish.com. Now it’s your turn to worlde: try it out at : wordle.net.

As a web designer, we will always deal with colors. There are a lot of useful online color tools such as color wheel, color scheme, color palette, color picker, and etc.

When i try to search for a complete list of online color tools, i can’t found any. So, i decided to collect them and share the list as a useful resource for other web designers.

Let’s start looking at the list:

Color Wheel

1. 4096 Color Wheel

2. Color Wheel from Colors On The Web

3. Color Wheel Color Calculator

Color Scheme

4. Infobound Color Schemer

5. Color Scheme Designer

6. ColorToy 2.0

7. The Color Wizard 3.0

8. Hex Color Scheme Generator

9. Color Schemer Online v2

10. Color Combos

11. Instant Color Schemes

12. Color Schemer from dhtmlgoodies.com

13. Daily Color Scheme

Color Palette

14. Slayeroffice Color Palette Creator

15. Toucan Color Palettes

16. Pictaculous

17. Pro Color Palette Software from Colourlovers

18. Color Palette Generator from DeGraeve.com

19. Color Palette Generator from jrm.cc

20. CSSDrive’s Image To Colors Palette Generator

21. The Color Tool

22. Palette Man

23. Big Huge Labs Palette Generator

Miscellaneous Color Tools

24. Kuler

25. Kolur

26. Color Codes Matching Chart HTML

27. Color Combinations Tester

28. Color Explorer

29. Color Hunter

30. Website Color Match

31. Color Theory @ ColorJack

32. ColorBlender

33. ColorDb

34. ColorJack: Color Generator

35. ColorJack: Sphere (Color Theory Visualizer)

36. ColorMixers

37. ColoRotate

38. ColourGrab

39. Hex Color Code Chart & Generator

40. Unsafe Colormatch

41. Web Color Visualizer

www.functionfox.com/events/Proposals-Contracts-Getting-To-Yes

Here is a fascinating site if you need a little design, illustration or marketing inspiration from the days of olde. See what the hippest styles and products were for any decade for since the late 1800’s and search for terms that might interest you.

www.vintageadbrowser.com

Podcast Generator – Make your own podcasts
http://podcastgen.sourceforge.net/

Podcast Generator is a free web based podcast publishing script written in PHP: upload media files (audio-video) via a web form along with episode information and automatically create podcast w3c-compliant feed including iTunes specific tags. It also features a comprehensive web administration.