Today we’d like to introduce you to Kathryn Starke.
Hi Kathryn, we’re thrilled to have a chance to learn your story today. So, before we get into specifics, maybe you can briefly walk us through how you got to where you are today?
I started my career as an elementary school teacher in Richmond Public Schools in Richmond, Virginia. While I was teaching second grade, I realized that my students had a lot of social studies and science standards to learn, but the textbook was written significantly above many of my students reading abilities. Therefore, I started using children’s picture books to teach objectives. When the unit to teach the seven continents came up, I couldn’t find one picture book to teach them all, so I wrote one. To support marketing, sales, and distribution, I founded a publishing company, which I ran on the weekends while teaching fulltime.
Amy’s Travels, which celebrates its 20th anniversary this year, became the first book published by Creative Minds Publications, an award-winning publishing company headquartered in Richmond. While building my company, I became an elementary school reading specialist, a district literacy coach, then a national literacy consultant. Today, I lead my company fulltime and help even more authors from around the country bring their own books to life.
I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
While my passion is in reading and teaching and my expertise is in writing and teaching, I know that this career path was created especially for me. However, it certainly wasn’t a smooth road. In 2005, when children’s books were not published by one of the Big Five publishers, they were not always treated with the same attention and respect. When I started the business, I wasn’t taken very seriously. I was told my company was cute and that the book was too child-friendly, which is interesting since my book was written for children and my company was originally created to help teachers teach reading. I’ve had to put my head down and let our work speak for itself. This included increased data in helping schools achieve literacy success, standing room only when I would present at a reading conference, or the number of awards and accolades our books received. We continue to allow our books, events, authors, awards, and results to represent us.
Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
Creative Minds Publications is an award-winning publishing and literacy consulting company founded by an elementary school teacher. We specialize in helping fellow educators bring their children’s books to life while helping to teach the world to read. Our independent company is selective about the authors and books we choose to publish, but the collaboration between our authors and our team is amazing. Like a traditional publishing company, we provide professional editing, illustrations, design, marketing, publicity, and outreach. Our authors are a part of the creative process, and while the author invests financially in the project (as I did 20 years ago), we take zero royalties until the author makes all of their investment back.
Our company is also the creator of the 10th annual Tackle Reading event, a philanthropic collaboration with the National Football League, which focuses on loving literacy with a passion for football.
Is there a quality that you most attribute to your success?
In this industry, creativity, resilience, and perseverance are most important to my success.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://creativemindspublications.com/
- Instagram: https://instagram.com/kathrynstarke
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathryncstarke/
- Other: https://instagram.com/CreativeMindsPublications
