I recently sat down with Ken Streater, an author I’ve worked with on three books, to talk about his publishing journey. Ken is a former river guide and the writer of The Gift of Courage and Be the Good, with a third book, The Art of the Heal, nearly ready to be published. His story has quite a few lessons for anyone thinking about writing or publishing a book.
Where it started
Ken grew up in a challenging family and told me that the steady connection he didn’t have at home, he found later as a river guide, in a job where you wear a life jacket to work, you’re responsible for the people in your raft, the guides around you, and the river itself. That sense of mutual care is the core of everything he writes.
His first book grew out of the experience of a friend, Kelley Kalafatich, a pioneering female river guide who was paralyzed after contracting a waterborne parasite during the first descent of the Blue Nile River in Ethiopia. Ken started writing to draw attention to her story and her work mentoring guides in Zambia and Zimbabwe. That became The Gift of Courage, a collection of stories of people whose small, courageous actions ended up changing their communities.
Showing up, even when it’s hard
When I asked Ken what he wished someone had told him before his first book came out, he didn’t talk about writing itself. Instead, he said if you wait to feel inspired to write, you won’t write. Writing creates the inspiration, not the other way around. He wrote The Gift of Courage between 4AM and 6AM in the morning, with three kids five and under at home and a 60 to 70 hour work week to manage. Mornings were his only option and he stuck with it for months. That discipline paid off: at a personal development retreat some time later, someone stood up in a room of 200 people and said the book had changed her life. Ken told me that moment blew his mind, and that it’s his definition of success as an author. Not sales. One person, changed, who goes on to do something because of it.
“If you wait to feel inspired to write, you won’t write. Writing creates the inspiration, not the other way around.”
That same honesty carried into a conversation about his new book. Ken admitted he’d been holding back the release of The Art of the Heal, waiting for some sense that the moment was right, then caught himself mid-sentence and said that was exactly what his own books argue against. He hadn’t been following his own advice.
Choosing a small press
Ken chose a small press for his first two books over self-publishing or chasing a major house. He’s impatient by nature and wanted the book out in the world, but he also needed guidance and distribution he couldn’t manage alone. A small press gave him both.
For The Art of the Heal, he’s pursuing literary agents instead, and he’s candid about what that requires: publishers want a following, usually meaning an active social media presence, something he’d stepped away from a few years ago. He’s slowly building it back.
What he says about design
Ken told me, only half joking, that he’s a little neurotic about books. If the typesetting in one is bad, he can’t get past the first couple of pages no matter how good the writing is. The layout is what gets a reader in the door (obviously I wholeheartedly agree 🙂 ) He told me about his first book’s cover: he had a clear vision, directed a designer to execute it exactly, and was thrilled, until he saw what a different approach could produce. By Be the Good, he handed me the manuscript and simply said, do your thing. Trusting the process made all the difference.
Ken co-owns the building that houses Grace and Hammer, a pizza restaurant inside the oldest church in Redmond. He told me the name originally came from a philosophy he wasn’t sure he agreed with, until he reframed it: everyone gets hammered by life at some point, and what helps is a little grace from the people around you. That framing is very Ken.
If you want to read more from him, The Gift of Courage and Be the Good are both out now, with The Art of the Heal on the way. Find him at kenstreater.com.
If you’re an author weighing the same decisions Ken faced, that’s exactly the kind of question I help with: Book a Strategy Session, or bring me on as your designer, self-publishing coach, or book project manager.