Having cut her teeth in the publishing industry in the UK and Canada, Meath native Katie Meegan has created a virtual assistance agency for the sector called Cuala Creative.
Katie initially moved to England to pursue an MA in Publishing Studies at University College London and stayed there once qualified for better career opportunities.
She is a graduate of the Back for Business programme backed by the Irish Government aimed at supporting returned or soon to be returning Irish emigrants in staring and developing a business in Ireland.
“My goal is to be able to easily slot into whatever a particular publisher needs at a particular time”
The free programme, which is funded by the Irish Abroad Unit, Department of Foreign Affairs, was created to foster and support entrepreneurial activity among emigrants recently returned to Ireland.
Now in its ninth year, the programme has up to 50 places available. The deadline for the next phase is 16 January and interested entrepreneurs can apply here.
Global perspective
“The Irish publishing scene is very small. It’s a lovely scene, but it’s very difficult to start as a junior, hence why London was a perfect fit,” Meegan explains.
“I wanted to be closer to family, and I had just got engaged, and my fiancé really wanted to return home as well”
From Kells in Co Meath, Katie had completed a BA in English Studies at Trinity before moving to London. While at Trinity, she completed an Erasmus exchange in Canada, where she gained her first experiences of international publishing in a Toronto-based literary agency.
In London, Katie worked for two top publishing companies in their editorial and international rights departments.
Before returning to Ireland in early 2024, she took a year out to travel around Southeast Asia, Australia, New Zealand and Fiji, and she came up with her business idea when looking into things she could work at while travelling.
“I came across the concept of virtual assistants, and I thought it made so much sense for publishing because publishing is already an industry that relies really heavily on freelancers, and is dominated by small houses run by passionate individuals who need that multifaceted support,” she says
She wrote a business plan while at a friend’s house in Brisbane and returned to Ireland to set up the company. She got her first client within six weeks.
“What I do day-to-day really varies. For some clients, I would take on more of a marketing role, and with others, I would help with the operations and sales side as well as market research and general PA and inbox management for publishing CEOs. My goal is to be able to easily slot into whatever a particular publisher needs at a particular time.”
Her decision to return to Ireland was mainly for personal reasons. “I wanted to be closer to family, and I had just got engaged, and my fiancé really wanted to return home as well,” she explained.
She says she is really enjoying the slower pace of life in Dublin when compared with London while still having access to the benefits of city life. “I love being only a short drive from nature, in particular Dublin’s beaches. It has also been great to be so close to family.”
Advancing the business plan
Katie says one of her biggest challenges in setting up Cuala Creative was getting business-support agencies to grasp the concept of a virtual assistance company. “They essentially don’t know what to do with me, because I straddle the admin services sphere and the art-focused publishing sphere.”
However, she received great support from the Society of Virtual Assistants Ireland, who awarded her the Creative Services Provider of the Year Award in 2025 and the Newcomer of the Year Award in 2024.
Katie says the Back for Business programme was very helpful with advancing her business plan, defining her offerings and creating marketing and sales funnels and that there was great support from the other participants and their Lead Entrepreneur.
“It was so great to have a group of people from many different industries who understood exactly what we were going through,” she says.
Katie says her immediate plans are to refine Cuala Creative’s offerings to the publishing sector, both in Ireland and overseas, as well as continuing to expand her team with experienced publishing professionals.
- The deadline for completed applications for Back to Business 9 is midnight on Friday, 16 January. For more information or to register your interest in receiving an application form, click here
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