Write Your Book, Tell Your Story by Karen Stuth

Write Your Book, Tell Your Story by Karen Stuth

The simple truth is this:  every person is a visionary with a unique story to tell.

Whether that story is your own autobiographical story, whether it is a work of fiction, whether a children’s book, told through the medium of poetry or whether you tell your story through art, music, dance or some other medium, we all have a story worth telling. If you have yearned to write a story or a book or to bring forward your voice in any form, this is your own soul path calling you to share who you are and what you have learned so far with others, not only for their benefit, but especially for your own.  

At all times, our own life is a wonderful tale worth telling.  You might believe your life events are simply a series of unimaginative or unimportant days, but that is never true.  Any good storyteller could tell your story to others so that your life story becomes a kaleidoscope of people, places, events, ideas and occurrences which are in fact fascinating to others. It’s all in the telling, but it is also a matter of perspective, especially including how your perspective of your life events have changed as you have grown in every way.

If you have been journaling or you enjoy writing letters or long emails or you host a blog where you convey your own ideas, you likely already know the power of writing down your thoughts and experiences in organizing and making sense of your life and its particular patterns and rhythms. Writing our experiences helps us to begin to see emerging or reoccurring themes that perhaps we didn’t notice before. It helps us to record our life events, big and small, so that we can meaningfully observe our own life history. It helps us to become our Observer Selves, learning to observe and experience our life events without judgment. Writing down your story can help each of us to become more clear about our emotions and it can often help us to see how far down our road we have journeyed toward greater personal awareness, peace and inner development.

Whether your work is your own story or the story of someone else, whether fiction, non-fiction, autobiography or something else, your unique perspective of your subject matter is suffused into your written work and will, without question, also offer someone else answers or guidance to the questions which with they are confronted in their own life experience.  This can be a very great gift.  It matters not whether your written work is completely new or different than any other work.  Through your own words and the experience of your life, your storytelling will reach those people who need to hear your tale where the words of others will not.

At Satiama, publishing quickly became part of our clear path forward.  We didn’t start our business with the idea of becoming a publishing house, but clearly it was meant to be part of who we are, because of the excellent publishing opportunities that were presented to us only one year after opening our virtual doors.  Through the years we’ve garnered 60 national awards, accolades and honors for our publications, but as a small publishing house, we wanted to manage our growth and so I often found myself turning down manuscripts and publishing projects that I found simply wonderful.  I spent hours upon hours with writers, authors, musicians and artists, explaining to them how to achieve their goals and trying to help them bring their work to a public forum.  I enjoyed this activity enormously; nothing is more fulfilling than to help someone to bring their passion forward to tangible form.

Finally, we decided to offer our publishing expertise in the form of a structured set of services, and Satiama Writers Resource was born.  

Today we are helping writers and authors to bring their own projects to fruition, and the doing of this feels very important to why Satiama was originally founded.  Our name Satiama, a word we made, comes first from the Sanskrit word ‘sat,’ which has multiple meanings including ‘the true essence.’ It also includes the “I am” of something divine that resides within each of us and is completed with the addition of the final ‘ah’ sound, the sound of the heart chakra.  Satiama is meant to be an invitation to everyone to experience the truth of who they really are and to find their connection to something transcendent.  We believe that writing and creating from your life experience is a very big part of that journey for everyone.

Through Satiama Writers Resource, an author or writer with a manuscript at any stage of development can find mentoring, professional assistance, expertise and even partnership.  We encourage authors to begin with our ‘publishing school,’ an individually-crafted seminar we give in person or by phone and internet to those who want a complete ‘soup to nuts’ course in how the world of publishing and self-publishing works.

Satiama Writers Resource also offers a complete set of editing and coaching/mentoring services; writers are paired with an award-winning author to help them begin or complete their manuscript.  Our editors provide six types of editing to assure each manuscript is well-developed, polished, stylistically consistent and uses storylines and language that best support the story being told without disturbing the author’s unique voice. We often tell authors that a great story is worth telling well and this is the intent of our editing and coaching services: to support writers to become visionary messengers, no matter what the subject of their writing.

Satiama Writers Resource also offers assistance and mentoring through the printing and production phase, including file preparation, title selection, pricing, industry identifiers, illustration, book design, cover design and even support to assure authors are not falling into some of the typical pitfalls that ‘print on demand’ or vanity press services sometimes present. Because we well understand that most self-published authors have little means to get their book to the printer, we offer crowdfunding management, a set of skills in which we are quite experienced, to help authors to pre-sell their book through Indiegogo so that they can raise the money they need to move forward.

Finally, we offer both marketing and marketing coaching to help authors to market their book to greater prominence with accompanying sales.  Each book project receives a personalized plan depending on the intended audience and format. We offer marketing plans, help with book tours, complete advertising and marketing communication services, input into award programs, press release development, and the development of a look-and-feel for both print and digital advertising, helping each book and its author to craft and manage the brand that they are building. We also offer access to our substantial list of wholesale accounts and major distribution agreements. Satiama Writers Resource offers international distribution services and order fulfillment for those authors who simply don’t want to spend their days -- and nights -- packing boxes.

Even today, as you read this article, your life story is unfolding, an epic adventure, a great tale, a set of experiences that can be the basis of a fiction or non-fiction work. Your experiences matter and your voice is important to others. Don’t discount the idea that your writing or your creative work is a key part of life on this planet right now and that your experiences, ideas and voice are meant to be shared with others. We hope you will choose to offer what is uniquely yours --  the truth of who you are -- with the connected community of our beautiful world.

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