Creative Minds Publications founder Kathryn Starke at the ninth annual Tackle Reading Day literacy event in partnership with the NFL
This year marks a major milestone: 20 years in business for Richmond-based publishing company Creative Minds Publications. To celebrate, the business is giving 20 local debut authors an opportunity to see their manuscripts developed into a finished product.
Founded by author, literacy consultant and reading specialist Kathryn Starke, the business first began as a conduit to help publish and market her children’s story, “Amy’s Travels,” the first picture book to teach kids all seven continents.
“In 2005, believe it or not, children’s books were only done really by Simon & Schuster, Random House, and Scholastic,” Starke says. “Even the companies around here that have been doing children’s books for the last 10 years, they weren’t for the last 20 years, so I started the company for that purpose.”
Over its history, CMP has evolved to focus more on publishing, though it does offer literacy consulting services. This year is its most ambitious to date, with the goal of a 20-book push. Typically, the company averages five to 10 releases annually. It primarily releases children’s, middle grade and YA books, self-help titles, memoirs, and women’s fiction.
As part of this year’s goal, selected authors will receive a discounted collaborative agreement, and CMP will purchase the first 100 copies of their books for the writers to use for anything from promotion to direct sales, however they see fit. One manuscript in the batch will be published at zero cost. “We help with everything all the steps of the way, from taking that idea through the editing … to the actual book launch,” Starke says. “People have this dream, but then how do you make the dream come to fruition? And I think me having been an author myself and staring at 1,500 copies of ‘Amy’s Travels,’ I learned how to do this from myself doing it.”
One of the selected authors is Elaine Honeycutt, a Midlothian mother and high school English teacher who wrote “Chop It Chip: Quest of a Ninja Chef,” which released in May. The book follows a young chef as he travels the world learning about different cultures and local dishes. After doing some research on a publisher, Honeycutt felt CMP was a good fit. “I really like that Kathryn was a teacher and an educator. I also really, really liked that it was a local business,” she says. “I felt like I wanted to have face-to-face contact with the person who was working with me … so that was really appealing.”
Richmond muralist Sir James L. Thornhill’s accepted manuscript is a civil rights journal and coloring book titled “Journey Beyond the Walls,” featuring his street art around the Jackson Ward neighborhood. He says the book is geared toward children and adults, and it explores the stories behind the people he depicts in his art. “Each one of those coloring pages are of the murals that we painted, and then it has some questions in there of different things from history and some facts in there also,” Thornhill says. “It’s like a walk-through timeline of history and great people who have accomplished things.” The book is scheduled to be released in late August.
The deadline for submissions to be a part of the 20 selected authors is Aug. 15, but Starke notes that CMP accepts submissions on a rolling basis, so interested authors are still welcome to submit for traditional publication.
Starke says, “I love that we can share this out with the masses, with Richmonders, because I feel like there’s a lot of buried talent there.”
