Working with a proven team saves time, adds quality and reduces cost.

Karen Saunders

Art director and team leader

Karen established MacGraphics Services in 1990 and has been a graphic designer since earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Western Michigan University in 1982.

In 2006 Karen authored and published Turn Eye Appeal to Buy Appeal: How to easily transform your marketing pieces into dazzling, persuasive sales tools! The book won a 2006 “APEX Award for Publication Excellence,” the 2007 “Best of Show” “EVVY” and 1st place in the “How To” category at the Colorado Independent Publishers Association (CIPA). It also won CIPA technical awards for cover design and book design. Her eye-catching designs have played in the success of 35 award-winning and several best-selling books including the 2005 Writer’s Digest “Grand Prize” for the best-self published book in America.

Her expert brand of design advice has been featured in numerous print and online publications. In March 2006 Karen presented a breakout session on visual branding at Mark Victor Hansen’s “Mega Marketing Magic” conference in Los Angeles. She also has given presentations on logo design, book covers, graphic design and production to many other national groups and organizations.

An avid sports enthusiast, Karen enjoys the fun and challenge of windsurfing, waterskiing, snow skiing, volleyball, and bike rides. When she is not riding bikes with her husband, Tom of 19 years, they enjoy spending time in their pop-up-camper with their two yellow labs, Cody and Logan under the Colorado stars.

Patrice Rhoades-Baum

Marketing Consultant and Copywriter

If you own a business or run an organization, your website is your most powerful marketing, sales, and communication tool. Marketing consultant and copywriter Patrice Rhoades-Baum teams with businesses and organizations to make their websites DELIVER: clients, income, results, and more.

Patrice offers 30 years of strategic marketing expertise, including more than two decades of high-tech corporate marketing experience. She specializes in branding for entrepreneurs and small businesses, plus strategic development and copywriting for websites and one sheets. In addition, Patrice offers marketing consulting and copywriting for direct-mail, advertising, and public relations campaigns. She also offers copywriting for your book's back-cover copy and introduction, ensuring this important content appeals to buyers.

Kerrie Lian

Graphic Designer

Kerrie and I met 23 years ago when I hired Kerrie at her first design job with a cutting-edge multimedia production firm. She was part of the phenomenal team that put together the presentation that convinced the Major League Baseball Commission to bring professional baseball to Denver. Because Kerrie changed to an art career later in life, she brings to the team firsthand experience in multiple profit and non-profit arenas and the understanding of what it takes to keep businesses profitable.

In 1991, Madison Ave. Design was born. Kerrie’s company offers high quality, innovative design for all printed material, including book cover and interior design, product illustration, brochures, trade show displays, one-sheets, product manuals, graphics for website design, logos, stationery, technical drawings and, most recently, photo/graphic collages (e.g., pictorial biographies, graduation/wedding/memorial announcements).

• 2009 Second Place Award Winner in the Technical Category for Cover Design at the Colorado Independent Publishers Association EVVYs for Tears of a Warrior, by Tony and Janet Seahorn.

Lauren Klopfenstein

Graphic Designer

With 30 years in the design and printing industry, Lauren Klopfenstein has owned and managed Lauren Graphics for over 20 years. Today, Lauren Graphics is a customer service-oriented team of 3 designers, offering high-quality design for all marketing and business collateral including logos, brochures, annual reports, publications, advertising, and more. Lauren Graphics specializes in website creation, offering extremely high-quality designs as well as programming for all website development requirements.

Melanie Mulhall

Editor and Writer

Melanie can make your words sing, dance, and get attention. As an award winning author and editor and owner of Dragonheart, Melanie Mulhall knows what it takes to make marketing materials magnetize business, a book shine, or an article become worthy of reading. Everyday words transform themselves into extraordinary ones . . . all while retaining the client’s authentic voice. It is copywriting and copy editing you can count on.

• 2008 First Place and 2009 Third Place EVVY Award winner in the Technical Category of Editing; 2003 First Place EVVY Award Winner for her book, Living the Dream—A Guidebook for Job Seekers and Career Explorers.
• Former co-editor of Business Scene Magazine and staff writer for Enlightened Woman and Noahsports and Health magazines.

Barbara McNichol

Expert Editor

Add power to your pen with the expertise of this editing specialist. Barbara edits nonfiction books, one sheets, and articles in a variety of areas. The creator of Word Trippers, Barbara brings artistry, persuasion, and consistency to every client project. Her trophy shelf displays 200+ books, including:

• Robert Shemin’s How Come that Idiot’s Rich and I’m Not? reached #3 on the New York Times bestseller list.
• Sourena Vasseghi’s book Love Your Life and It Will Love You Back received 2008 Indie award for the Best Business Book.
• Karen Saunders’ Turn Eye Appeal into Buy Appeal won 2007 Best How-to, Best of Show EVVYs, 2006 Apex Award for Publication Excellence.

Barbara Munson

Versatile editor, writer, copywriter

Barbara is a professional book editor and ghostwriter with more than 25 years’ experience. Her clients’ books have earned 38 book awards, including 5 first-place awards from Writers Digest, National Indie Excellence, Next Generation Indies and Colorado Independent Publishers Association. She specializes in non-fiction titles including how-to, inspirational, business, financial, pets, spiritual, memoir and biographies. She also is a skilled copywriter, having produced numerous press releases, book proposals and back-of-the-book content that get results. Believing that an author’s success is her success, Barbara supplements her editorial offerings with book consulting and project management. She is a member of CIPA and Gotham Ghostwriters.

Karen L. Reddick

Author, Editor, Author’s Assistant

Karen founded The Red Pen Editor and V and E Services in 2001 after spending 26 years in the corporate world as an executive assistant to CEOs of various organizations. She is a freelance book editor and  master virtual author’s assistant committed to helping authors take their writing concepts to publishing success. Karen was the editor for the 2009 1st place EVVY award-winning book, Tears of a Warrior by Janet & Tony Seahorn.

Her services include:

• Developmental, content, copyediting and proofreading for fiction and nonfiction books
• Consultation and guidance for authors to help them walk through the self-publishing process
• Support and manage authors’ marketing efforts including, social networks, virtual book tours, live book tours, web maintenance, blogs, articles, ezines and ecommerce.

Karen is the author of two self-published books: Grammar Done Right! Revised & Expanded 2nd Edition, and The A-Z Guide: The Best Ways to Work with a Virtual Assistant. Karen also hosts a weekly podcast entitled, Grammar Done Right!, which can be found on iTunes and offers a weekly ezine on grammar, usage, and style tips.

Kelly Johnson

Online Business Manager

Cornerstone Virtual Assistance specializes in working with coaches and authors to manage the technical, creative and administrative projects for your business. Kelly Johnson, owner and Online Business Manager, strives to move your business to the next level by ensuring that the foundation of your business is supported through managing projects and proposing creative ideas to help achieve success. Kelly's certifications include Professional Author’s Assistant, Shopping Cart Certified Strategist, and Article Writing Coach.

Services offered include:

• book publishing support
• website and blog maintenance
• newsletter creation
• Facebook Fan Pages
• creating videos with Animoto
• teleseminar management

Joyce Miller

Copyright Clearance Expert and Permissions Tracker

Joyce Miller has been a copyright manager for NASA-funded programs and an associate editor for an academic/trade journal on technology transfer. She has a working knowledge of copyright issues associated with print and with the new digital technologies. Her articles related to copyright in writing, publishing, and art appear in print periodicals, on blogs, and in newsletters. She conducts copyright workshops, teleseminars, and training sessions for illustrators, web designers, marketing professionals, authors, and artists.

• Joyce offers copyright project management, copyright research, and permissions tracking for items such as prose and poetry quotations, maps, photographs, song lyrics, graphic design works, and works of fine art.
• She helps clients ensure their work on websites and blogs, in articles, and in books is safe from infringement and plagiarism.

Helena Mariposa

Proofreading and Digital Conversions

Helena’s career began as a mathematics instructor. After seven years of teaching, she felt compelled to acknowledge her passion for books and began studying the craft of writing at the CU graduate program, the Iowa writing program, and through a variety of seminars and workshops. She won a first place award for a short story from a local literary magazine and another story won honorable mention in Writers Journal. During this time, she became a proofreader and has been involved in the field for eight years. She also has explored computer programming, such as actionscript and a smattering of C++. She became curious about e-books soon after someone gifted her with a Kindle. In addition to writing and proofreading, she runs an e-book conversion service called Mariposa E-book Transformation.

Judy Gordon

Proofreader and Indexer

Judy's passion is working with words and supporting others in communicating their ideas. Every book deserves a professional proofread, and Judy provides that additional set of fresh and objective eyes that picks out inadvertent typos, style inconsistencies, and errors in punctuation and grammar in an author’s pride and joy.

For nonfiction books, there is nothing more useful to a reader than to have a comprehensive, intuitive, and elegant index. A good index increases book sales—and satisfies readers. An index serves as a map to the depth and breadth of content. An index gives readers multiple access points to that content. And an index supports readers in finding and revisiting the content that they are interested in.

Mary Walewski

Social Media Guide

Mary Walewski of Buy The Book Marketing offers social media training and coaching on how to effectively build your online platform using blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Pinterest. Wondering if social media will take over your life? Mary can give you strategies and technical training to be effective and save time in your online marketing. Areas of expertise include:

• One on one social media training
• How to sell and promote your book on Amazon.com
• Content creation and editorial calendars for social media

Mary draws on over 25 years of sales and marketing experience and combines that experience with current online technology. A librarian by education, she loves to work with authors and author-entrepreneurs. Books are in her blood!

Joyce Mihran Turley

Award winning Illustrator and Graphic Designer

As a former engineer, Joyce offers a unique combination of artistic and technical skills to provide distinctive book illustrations and logos. Specializing in natural science topics for children, she also provides line art, complex diagrams, interior art, and cover illustrations for readers of all ages.

Career highlights include:

• National recognition including a Skipping Stones Honor Award and Mom's Choice® Award for children's books she has illustrated
• Contracts to illustrate three children's books on Grand Canyon, Glacier, and Yellowstone National Parks
• Working with the independent publisher members of PUBWEST

Raised in upstate NY, Joyce operates her illustration studio, Dixon Cove Design, in the foothills of the Colorado Rockies. Talented, professional, and personable, Joyce provides her clients with high-quality, hand-rendered and digital illustrations to meet their needs, budget, and timeline.

Marty Petersen

Illustrator and Designer

Marty is an established professional commercial illustrator and designer based in the Colorado front range. He's been in the business for over 26 years, 12 of those being focused in digital media. Marty illustrates science fantasy and children's books, creates logos, event posters, interface designs, splash screens, static images & layered art for animation, digital photo retouching, technical and medical illustration. A very versatile artist, he can illustrate anything from basic line art to full color highly detailed illustrations in many styles; airbrush, watercolor, pen & ink. All of his creations are completely hand painted, digitally.

Joyce Jay

Photographer

Joyce has over 30 years experience with professional photography for corporate and editorial applications. She has done fabulous photos for book covers, magazine ads and brochures for MacGraphics for nearly 20 years. Talented and resourceful, she is creative with concept ideas, set design and execution. Joyce enjoys working with or without specific client direction.