We were lucky to catch up with Karen Stuth recently and have shared our conversation below.

Karen, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your business sooner or later

I’ve often been asked if I wish I had started my publishing company sooner. The answer is neither yes nor no. I believe Satiama was founded exactly when it was supposed to be, but I do wish I had another 30 years to expand it into its full vast potential. But had I started it with my sister Susan any sooner, I believe neither of us would have had the foresight and confidence it really took to believe we could do it, or the maturity to admit there was a lot we would need to learn. Although we both had experience in mainstream corporate America in high-level jobs, and myself an additional legal career, the transferable skills we possessed were less important than simply learning to recognize what we needed to learn to succeed. And it was a steep learning curve, to be sure.

Our willingness to dive into the unknown, to do the research and the footwork, and to identify areas in which we needed to become immediately proficient might have been less had we decided to found our company earlier. We might have tried to outsource a lot of areas that, in truth, we needed to become experts at for ourselves. So, Satiama was founded when we were ready, and exactly when it needed to come into being.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I have a diverse, and some might say strange, professional background, ranging from two music performance degrees and a law degree and license to professional global research and publishing. It always seemed in my life that a path was constantly opening up in front of me, leading me to the next place, a new destination where I was able to assemble and integrate the skills obtained on the road, and I was always excited to see another door opening in front of me. If I tried to map it out, it would look very much like an Etch-A-Sketch that someone dropped by accident. Yet, it always made a lot of sense to me, and the opening door always in front of me always made me curious, even if I didn’t fully understand its potential at the time.

I am most glad of my ability to flex, to appreciate the gifts of surprise and opportunity, and to be curious enough not to force myself down a straight line. Bringing that attitude every day to Satiama is core to how we are building our brand, not according to any case studies or traditional thinking about how a publishing company or publisher should be, but instead to follow our nose toward the many and unbelievable opportunities with which we have been presented. My motto: make a plan but be willing to deviate toward a better plan. It’s always out there. This is what has allowed us to thrive in a publishing market that is vastly different from even five years ago. Flexible thinking and attitudes will allow any of us to access the small nuggets of gold that are given to us almost daily.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

My sister Susan was my co-founder in Satiama LLC, which now includes Satiama Publishing, Satiama Writers Resource, Magical Planet Publishing, and soon True Wisdom Academy. She left to pursue a business opportunity that really called to her, and I was alone at the helm until 2021, when a new retailer called me, asking to place an order for our entire catalog. While chatting with him on the phone, I visited his Facebook business page to learn more about the kinds of inventory he carried. This was my usual practice, as it helped me suggest titles and products best positioned to sell in specific types of stores.

What I learned was that this retailer’s Facebook page had some of the best content I had ever seen for a retail establishment, telling the business’s story through graphics and words, making it fun, and truly creating an online personality for the establishment. It was colorful, exciting, and delightful to read! I begged for the name and phone number of his social media guru! He gladly shared it, I reached out to her, and a mere two years later, Amy Koenig became my business partner, bringing essential skills, invaluable insight, and immense talents that were an absolute fit for what I needed, what Satiama needed. I’m still to this day unbelievably grateful to have discovered her.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

This is an important question, and one that I believe new business owners don’t spend enough time thinking through. We are a small publisher in an industry dominated by very large companies. But our reputation was built organically, even starting with the word “satiama,” which we coined in 2009 to embody the three qualities we wanted to be evergreen for us: that we represented the best content, that our offerings were heart-based and without judgment or rancor of any kind, and that the content was non-exclusive. In other words, the content represented or respected “the many pathways” of any subject, rather than purporting to be the only method or only truth about anything. We offer different paths leading into the same forest. So we engineered a word from three ideas, and it became a core part of our brand’s reputation and personality.

Our market reputation is for offering a small, hand-curated collection of titles and products. Amy and I seek to provide a thoughtfully tended library of meaningful things. We don’t strive to be a big company. We instead seek to be an excellent company that says, “Here is something beautiful and thoughtful. See what it awakens in you.” Rather than chasing trends, our brand represents curated books, decks, games, and transformational resources that invite readers into deeper conversations with themselves, each other, and the mysteries of life. Rooted in imagination, wisdom, and personal growth, Satiama brings forward meaningful works that inspire reflection, healing, wonder, and authentic transformation.

But we have always committed to high quality in every aspect of what we do: in the customer experience with our company and website, in the experience they had with our books and authors, and especially in our business practices. We set a goal to never have an unhappy customer, and we have never. In 17 years, we have never had a returned product, nor have we had a customer we did not work to serve to the fullest possible extent. Unhappy customers are costly and a bad investment for any business.

We are also very choosy about selecting titles for publication, not seeking those that are just another book or card deck, but rather those that really contribute something special or new to the literature and to the betterment of people’s lives. Because of this, we have received more than 100 international awards and honors for our books and company. Retailers often tell us they would take a chance on a new book from our company over a book from a bigger publisher because we are not bringing out more of the same. This makes it easy for them to choose from our offerings, knowing it will give their store something it did not have before. Our reputation is based on that in particular.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.satiamapublising.com
• Instagram: @satiamaforlife
• Facebook: @satiamaforlife

Image Credits

No image credit — it is AI.