Today we’d like to introduce you to Kierra Walker.
Kierra, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
My journey as a writer began in early adolescence. My grandmother, or Nana, has played a significant role in introducing the creative nature writing possesses. Taking a trip down memory lane, Nana would dedicate her nights to reading to us before bed, but her reading and storytelling abilities weren’t ordinary. She read with emotion and enthusiasm, breathing life into each book and the characters. Around age ten, I was tasked with a creative writing assignment by my English teacher. I took the assignment home and with Nana’s support, the assignment was a great success. It was at that moment I knew creative writing and storytelling was my “thing”.
After graduating high school, life happened and creative writing was placed on the back burner until a young lady I attended high school with tagged me in a Facebook post in the latter half of 2016. The social media post was regarding a short story that she’d written and she challenged me to write one. I accepted the challenge and penned my first short story titled Love and War. The story became a fan favorite and was just the motivation I needed to persist. With in-depth research regarding writing and publishing, I decided to self-publish.
Following Love and War, I made the difficult decision to place writing on the backburner to put my focus on academics. After completing an undergraduate program with the University of Phoenix in 2015, I took interest in a graduate program with John Brown University (JBU) and pursued an MBA with an emphasis in Leadership & Ethics. I appreciated the business aspect of the MBA program but the Christian values, alongside the elective leadership and ethics courses, truly added value to my life academically, personally, and professionally. I completed JBUs MBA program in December 2017.
After graduation, I returned to writing and penned my first of many Amazon Bestsellers. Although I worked fulltime, I dedicated time to perfecting my craft and methods of publishing and in March 2019 I applied for an LLC. My brand, Literary Freedom Publishing (LFP), was officially established in April 2019. In May 2021, I committed to walking away from my fulltime career as a Program Manager for Arkansas’ State Unit on Aging to write and publish adult literature and create educational content for children.
Literary Freedom Publishing LLC takes pride in offering authors a unique publishing experience. With a mission to foster an environment for authors and writers to flourish while remaining expressive and unique to their skills, my primary goal at LFP is to assure I’m assisting authors in achieving their literary goals. I publish a variety of literature, from nonfiction literature to fictional literature like Romance, Urban Fiction, Christian Fiction, Young Adult, Science Fiction, Mystery, Suspense, and more. LFP currently has five authors, me included, who take advantage of our publishing services. With LFP, there are no upfront publishing costs to authors.
We are staffed to provide professional editing, typesetting, graphic design, as well as assistance with social media marketing and branding. Recently having added Writing Coach to our list of publishing services, the authors of LFP can now work one-on-one with a certified, experienced individual on our team to help strengthen plot and character development, syntax, and the overall readability of their literature prior to publishing. Including competitive royalties, I’d say LFP is a one-stop-shop for authors who lack the knowledge and funds to self-publish but have the yearning to learn and understand their craft.
In addition to publishing fictional and nonfictional literature, LFP has recently introduced LFP Kids. LFP Kids is an addition to LFP that offers young children the educational content they need to succeed. LFP educational content has been designed to be simplistic in nature but focuses on penmanship mastery, basic numbers, sight words, reading comprehension, and so much more. My goal with LFP kids is to inspire the next generation of writing by focusing on the basics of learning. We currently have five workbooks available on Amazon for purchase. Our website hosts the workbooks as well as digital versions of each workbook for parents, teachers, or guardians who prefer to download, save, and print the worksheets at their leisure. LFP even recommends laminating the worksheets for a better learning experience. LFP Kids recently partnered with Walmart to assist in the distribution of LFP Kids educational content, so starting October 1, 2021, workbooks will also be available for purchase on Walmart.
Thinking back, I started LFP by using a portion of my biweekly paycheck to purchase my LLC. When I started, I utilized the royalties from books that I’d penned prior to starting the company to fund the services I wanted to provide to my authors. It may not have been smart at the time because I didn’t have the money to spare, but I’m grateful I stepped out on faith and continued. In my ability to consistently evolve, I’ve taken a $300 royalty check and turned it into grossing 30k+ annually for LFP. I recently decided to start a blog called Entrepreneur Woes, where I discuss my struggles in entrepreneurship and tools and resources that I’ve found helpful on my journey. I believe the blog is just one avenue of many that I have available to invest in others as others have invested in me along the way.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
Entrepreneurship has been far from easy.
My primary issue was having the time to fully devote to publishing and creating content full-time. Working full-time, I’d come home and be mentally spent and wouldn’t have the mental intensity I needed to write, edit, or create new educational content. Prior to leaving my job, I only had the capacity to maintain what I’d already established for my company. It wasn’t until I left my fulltime job for entrepreneurship that I truly analyzed every aspect of my business and owned the fact that there were some imbalances.
First, I wanted to include myself as an author in the growth of my company. That may be possible in time, but, truthfully, for now, my career as an author has to take a backseat. I have the ability to write but it’s apparent to me that my company requires more of me at this time. LFP has many moving parts that require my attention and it’s my duty to cater to and nurture those moving aspects. In that, the time I spend operating as an author versus the time spent operating as the CEO of Literary Freedom Publishing, LLC is far less. It was a hard truth to swallow but now that I’ve accepted it the growth LFP has made in 2021 demonstrates I made the right decision.
Another challenging aspect of entrepreneurship as a publisher has been branding. Going into the field, I knew my personal reasons for creating my company but I had to understand how to convey that to others. I needed an identity, otherwise, I’d just be another publisher in a sea of publishers.
The challenge has been getting others to see my vision and to believe in it, to trust in my knowledge and expertise to provide them with the best experience, product, or service possible. If I may be honest, I’ve only recently fully understood my identity and how to convey it to the public. I’ve caught more traction by gaining more understanding of this foundational aspect of my business, so I can only imagine where LFP will be a year from now.
Appreciate you sharing that. What should we know about Literary Freedom Publishing, LLC?
As I previously mentioned, my top priority at LFP is to assure I’m assisting authors and writers in achieving their literary goals. It’s not about what I feel is best, but what is best for the author. Before signing an author, I consider their individual aspirations as authors so that I may best understand how to aid in achieving those goals. Prior to publishing, I was an author, therefore I understand the needs of an author. With that in mind, I’ve partnered with credible sources to provide authors with a publishing experience that’s unique to their needs. Things as simple as the formatting of their manuscripts or details of their book covers are transparent. Our authors have a voice.
I take pride in covering publishing costs for my authors. Typesetting, professional editing, and graphic design can be expensive for aspiring and new authors, not to mention establishing a new fan base, branding, marketing, and so on. Writing a book is challenging within itself, but it’s only half the feat when you’re looking to get your work published and in front of readers. That’s why LFP is here. LFP is equipped, eager, and committed to assisting authors in achieving their literary goals. Each author is unique and I build rapport with my authors based on that, providing them with the necessary tools and resources to be successful.
As a mother of three school-age children, it’s long been important to me that my children are learning beyond the classroom. They’re 15, 13, and 11 now, but during elementary years I invested in workbooks, online sites, and templates to aid in their learning process. It was a good thing I invested in such things for my children because soon after the school district introduced Chromebooks and there hasn’t been a textbook in sight since. I do understand we live in a technological era but with everything we do revolving around technology, we find ourselves taking on large amounts of screentime. I designed LFP Kids educational content with this single thought in mind.
My goal is to create educational content that serves as a reflection of the standard educational curriculum while maintaining the simplicity and imagery that keeps children interested in learning outside the classroom. With LFP Kids, my hope is to provide educational content at a foundational level so that these same children may grow into their dream of being a doctor, philanthropist, or a widely known bestselling author. No matter what we aspire to be in life, the foundation of education remains the same. With LFP Kids, I hope to continuously provide resources that assist our children in the fundamental aspects of learning. As I tell my children, learning is knowledge and knowledge is power.
Brand wise, I’m most proud that we committed to bringing a writing coach onboard and the content embedded within the educational workbooks for LFP Kids. Every day I strive to find avenues, tips, and tricks for LFP authors to utilize in their authorship. I share these valuable sources with them but assure them I’m available to provide hands-on guidance as necessary. I’m extremely proud of the educational content LFP has produced and grateful to the parents, teachers, and guardians who have purchased educational content to invest in their child’s academic future. More importantly, I take pride in the fact that I individually create each workbook for LFP Kids, right down to the cover. So, each workbook has my personal touch while still including valuable content.
LFP will soon be implementing more services for authors and creating new content under LFP Kids that will be beneficial to furthering the academic growth of our children today.
As a content creator and publisher of literature, I’ve been blessed with gifts and it’s my goal to share my gifts with those who are willing to also invest in themselves. To those of you who’ve been allowing your manuscripts to collect dust or sitting on that book idea, Literary Freedom Publishing is here for you. I take great pride in assisting authors and writers of all ages to become published, sharing valuable knowledge to encourage individual confidence and independence along the way.
How do you define success?
My definition of success is simple.
During my undergrad program with the University of Phoenix, one of my first classes concentrated on defining and setting goals. I remember explaining to my spouse that I wished such topics were covered when we were in high school. This course, I can’t recall the name now, was introductory but the information I pulled from it was valuable. In this course, the necessity of defining goals based on the SMART system was introduced. SMART is an acronym for specific, measurable attainable, relevant, and time-bound. This course with the University of Phoenix taught the importance of using SMART to accomplish goals. I use SMART to clearly define what I want to accomplish. Next, I apply a timeframe to each thing I want to accomplish, therefore creating a goal. I even go as far as creating milestones for each goal, to lessen the daunting factor that some goals can bring.
I said all this to say, I define my success by the things I’ve accomplished. While my accomplishments may not be meaningful to others, they are my accomplishments and I take pride in the completion of each goal I’ve set for myself.
In that, I’d like to leave others with this thought in regard to success: Your success should not be defined by that of others. Create a system that’s unique to you and is comprised of the things you want to accomplish. Think SMART.
Contact Info:
- Email: KierraWalker@literaryfreedompub.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/literaryfreedompub/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/literaryfreedompub
- Other: https://www.amazon.com/Kierra-Walker/e/B07KPLQ6J2?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1631737960&sr=8-1
