Meet Nancy
Nancy Ostling Starkman is the founding member behind the Author Book Studio, and is the co-founder and president of Star Print Brokers, Inc. this site, AuthorBookStudio.com, is about book design.
About a book designer
She is also a book designer with decades of experience. Nancy spent over a dozen years in her family business as publisher and art director. However, later she was working in executive positions with other companies.
In the 1970s, the Ostling family and other executive team members began publishing Whole Valley Catalogue, an advertising newspaper out of Walnut Creek, California. At its peak, the newspaper was serving 330,000 readers in the San Francisco East Bay Area.
Well-rounded experience and learning about book design
Nancy’s experience includes publishing, printing, color reproduction, color separations, graphic design, and book design. Her experience spans several decades and includes starting Whole Valley Graphics.
This division grew out of her successful newspaper. She worked in literally every job in the newspaper which includes the executive team, publisher, and art director.
Nancy’s career history includes designing thousands of ads. She and her staff also designed collateral materials and ads for other publications including businesses advertising in daily, suburban, metro newspapers and magazines. She won several design awards and attended Diablo Valley College.
Advancement
A decade later, Nancy was hired at Lesher Communications at the Contra Costa Times, as an account executive in major accounts. She worked with about 20 major account advertisers. She chose to pursue sales versus design because at the time the executive position paid more, and she was supporting her family.
Target, Mervyn’s and Good Guys were among those on her account list. Her job meant selling advertising and inserts into six daily newspapers, a dozen weekly papers, a magazine, and direct mail programs.
Moving to Seattle from the San Francisco Bay Area
Nancy began selling color separations, printing, direct mail, and fulfillment services. She was the display advertising manager for a Seattle Times owned newspaper. Nancy also created a major accounts department for a chain of community newspapers in the Seattle area.
Star Print Brokers, Inc. and Author Book Studio
Her parent company was incorporated in Washington state in 1999. Author Book Studio is a division of Star Print Brokers, Inc.
Nancy has designed many books for self-publishers, given advice, or fixed design or layouts that were not working. Sometimes the book was not working because of technical issues or needed a new design approach.
In conclusion, Author Book Studio was established in 2020 and is about book design. So, read more in our blog. Please see our mission statement below.
Genius doesn’t come from the idea, it comes from the execution.
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Our Mission
Our mission at Author Book Studio is two-fold.
Authors and Self-Publishers with Book Design
To give self-publishers the knowledge, tools, and resources to design their books so most importantly, they can have beautiful, well-designed books that can be sold at a higher retail price.
Graphic Artists becoming Book Designers
To enable graphic artists to take on new book projects with confidence and thereby command a higher rate for their book design. Therefore, our mission is to provide them with the knowledge, tools, and resources to learn more about book design and confidentially add it to their services.
