Story Grid Guild

Hello and welcome to the Storygrid podcast. This is a show dedicated to helping you become a better writer. I'm your host, Tim Grall, and I am a struggling writer trying to figure out how to tell a story that works. Joining me shortly is Sean Coyne. He is the creator of Story Grid, the author of the book Storygrid, and an editor with over 25 years experience. In this episode, we finish up our discussion about publishing and we make a really cool announcement about something that we're doing here at Story Grid that you can be a part of. So make sure you listen through this episode and then I will tell you more at the very end. It's really exciting, so I hope you'll listen to the episode. Stay on to the end, but let's jump in and get started. So, Sean, we've been talking about just publishing and the publishing landscape, and we spent a good amount of time last week talking about basically if we could wave a magic wand and come up with the perfect publishing house, and we tried to do that with Storygrid, what would it look like? And you know, the first thing you talked about was focusing on the process, not the results, right? And how whether you're traditionally published or self published, it's really focused on the results of like, okay, we got to sell a bunch, we got to make a bunch of money to pay everything back. And even, you know, you've talked about how you started a publishing house, you know, several years ago and you had to get funding and it was really expensive to start. And so but if we're going to do things differently, it's really nice to say, okay, we're going to start a publishing house and we're going to be focused on the merits of the work and the process of the work. But at the same time, publishing books cost money. So we obviously have to sell books or, you know, we're not going to be able to be viable. And the way that you do that is by having best selling books, which then gets us back into that same process of going after people that can do best sellers and thinking results oriented. It's to me, so easy to fall back into that paradigm because that's the world we live in. So how do you think we should do this differently when we're looking at doing Story Grid publishing?

Well, obviously I've been thinking about this for a long, long time, and I often call it like the white whale of my existence is to figure out how you can create a publishing house that is not results oriented. So I divide the Book publishing universe into pre 11-19-2007 and post November 19, 2007. I think that's the right day. Anybody who Googles that day in terms of book publishing will understand that that was the day that Amazon released the Kindle Reader and thousands and thousands of titles that were immediately available digitally for people to download. And that was a seismic shift in book publishing in a way that was opened up the floodgates to our current sort of situation. And our current situation is we have a book publishing process, results oriented process that is driven by historical factors. So those are the big publishing houses that are from the traditional model for 300, 400 years, ever since Gutenberg started the printing press. So that model is about scarcity. That model is about getting approval by experts within a publishing house that will decree your title's validity. And you know, over time that worked because there were very limited places to sell titles. So the major publishers had a lock on the distribution networks because they form these very close relationships with all the booksellers, the bookstores and the big giant booksellers like Barnes, Barnes and Noble, etc. And the Independent sellers. So the only way to get your book in front of a consumer was to go through the big publishing houses. That's why pre 2007 there wasn't all that much of a market for self published work. That's because the self published people just couldn't get their books in front of anyone. 99.9% of books were sold in bookstores or libraries, etc. So it was a full stranglehold prior to 2007. After 2007, then it opened up the marketplace and it shifted from a marketplace of scarcity into abundance. So abundance means that there are no barriers to entry anymore. So that opened the floodgates to self publishing companies, self publishers, and what they did is they began to flood the market with titles. And those titles for the most part were on edge. They were written by people who didn't really have a craft. Some of them were natural storytellers and they sold extraordinarily well. And some were just the work of amateurs who thought that having a physical copy of a book in front of them was validation enough. So it moved from a world of say, 100,000 books a year that were published by the major publishers to a million titles per year. So in the world of abundance, the consumer has lots and lots of options, right? So over the preceding, let's see, 12, 13 years now what we're facing is this two model system. We've got the Old school traditional publishers who are continuing to publish and continuing to shut people out and continuing to not really explain why it is that they choose what they choose to publish. There's no real differentiation between the major publishing houses. A title that appears at Simon Schuster could very well be published by Random House. There's no real distinction between that. There's no ethos of a particular publishing house. There's no brand value. The only thing that the major publishers still have is they have entree to a certain degree into the major media markets. Now, we also know major media markets have fragmented, right? So people who watch Fox News don't watch cnbc. So in order to reach a multiple mass of people through advertising or through promotion is much more difficult today because our world is very fragmented. We live in an abundant world where you can get your own feed from Facebook and not read anything from anything that you don't already agree with. So there's all kinds of obstacles today. Meanwhile, in self publishing, there's millions and millions of titles that come out every year. So what's the consumer to do? They don't really have any understanding about how to differentiate certain titles. There's no brand value with the major publishers when they go to Amazon. There's hundreds and hundreds of titles that are advertised under the one search box that they're looking for a particular title. So there's a lot of confusion. There's a lot of things that don't add up. So we've got the chaotic vortex of self publishing which just floods more and more units and more and more titles into the marketplace. And then we've got the archaic sort of orderly system of gatekeepers which is still operating under a scarcity model and not pretending that abundance isn't a problem.

So what do we do? We're Storygrid Publishing going to do this? It's really nice and cute and sweet that Storygrid wants to be process driven, but it seems like there's a lot of people competing for people's attention. How are we ever going to be viable? How's it going to work? How are we going to be process driven when we need to create enough revenue in order to pay for the publication of the titles? Now, it's not as expensive as it once was to publish. And the other great thing is that the last time I checked is the estimates are that 70%, it's probably 75 to 76 now, of all books are bought online. What that means is that, wow, I guess we don't really have to work so hard to get into Barnes and Noble in order to have a presence in front of consumers. If we spend a lot of time trying to do that, it would probably be wasted effort because we'd be trying to get into a marketplace that has exposure to 20% of the market, whereas if we focus our attentions on the Internet space, we would have exposure to 76%. So the necessity of getting into bookstores isn't really there anymore. Okay, so we talked about last week. We want to be process driven. We want to go under the assumption that if we create better stories for very specific markets, and if we use the Storygrid methodology as a constraint to what we publish, and we let people know that all the books that we publish conform, assimilate into our methodology, we would be able to establish a relative brand among people who care about quality. That's pretty cool. That's a really cool ethic. But oh my gosh, how are we going to pay for all these systems in order to properly publish, to get really nice covers, to have our books competitively look as good as the major publishers? That's expensive. We need really good professional designers and copy editors and real pros. We don't want to half ass this thing. So that's going to cost some money. How are we going to pay for that if we don't care about who buys our books, if we're not results driven? Well, what it finally dawned on me after year after year after year and was the notion of the guild. Now, a guild is sort of an old timey kind of group. It's an association of people who care about craft. So back in like say the, you know, the medieval times, and even up until even now, they have guilds. Guilds are about groups of people who care about a specific kind of domain of life who come together and try and improve the works that fall within that domain. So there were guilds for cobblers. So people who really cared about the craft of shoemaking would come together, they would compare notes, they would all kick in a little bit of money to pay for the grog at the local pub. And they would meet once a month, maybe once a week, and they would talk about business. How's it going? How's your shoemaking going? Well, let me show you this new shoe I created. People would comment and help each other. And there were stonemason guilds and there were craftsmen who made leatherworks. All these guilds were a major part of a community. And I thought to myself, well, what have we been doing at storygrid? Well, we've been creating a community. A community of what? Well, it was a community of people who care about writing better stories, who become better craftsmen at storytelling. And we have a lot of them. We have a lot of people. We started the website five years ago. And in those five years, we've accumulated a lot of people who get our weekly updates and emails or Fundamental Fridays posts. They come and they listen to me on the podcast. They listen to you on the podcast. We have two other podcasts now. We have a big community of people who care about the same things that we care about. So I thought to myself, what if we created a guild and the guild would support the publication of titles that would help the guild members become better, it would improve their craft, and it would also support the introduction of new stories, new works of fiction that were written by people who believe in our guild. So it would be this place that would be self supporting. It would raise enough capital in order to meet the minimum viable expenses for the publications for that entire year. So how would this guild work? Well, it would be very similar to the guilds of yesteryear. We wouldn't have a pub, but we would have a virtual meeting place so that people could come, you know, when they could. There would be a weekly meeting, and certain things would happen in that weekly meeting that would allow people to level up their craft. So if we were able to create a revenue platform that would provide the minimum viable amount of production money to keep our publications viable and interesting even before we hit the marketplace, wouldn't that be something? So that way we would be able to enter into this new.

Publishing world that's filled with abundance, with a brand new paradigm. It would be a paradigm that would be based upon a community of people who believed in the same things and also had very reasonable expectations. Nobody in this guild would believe, oh, as long as I join this guild, I'll become the best artisan ever. No, they know it's a process driven guild, that it's a place where they can go in and ask questions to those members who are maybe a little bit more experienced. Maybe somebody has run the cobbler shop for 20 years and there's another young apprentice cobbler who gets to enter the guild. And they would ask the questions of the master cobbler, and the master cobbler would share her opinions about how to make the best shoe. So that's kind of what I think could be a really interesting model, because then you wouldn't be results driven. The guild itself would support the creation of these works that would help guild members become better. Plus, it would encourage guild members to seize the day and to put their works up for, you know, for readers in the commercial landscape. So I love this paradigm because it navigates in between these two former ways that book publishing worked. It sort of takes the best out of the gatekeeper arena. And the gatekeepers are all about judging the best stories. Right. So we still have that element of really leveling up the quality of the work. And it also takes advantage of the self publishing paradigm, which is there aren't any barriers to entry. And if we want to share our work, we can do that. We can do that without having to raise seven figures worth of capital in order to, you know, create the systems necessary to have a book in Barnes and Noble. That's not required anymore. So let's not worry about that. So this new paradigm would be a publishing house that has a core ethic based upon a methodology that was developed by a story lover for 30 years. And it would have a whole community of other people who believe in that ethic and are there to help each other. And that way, the meritocracy that's built into this publishing house could have the room without the pressure to start to be able to express itself. So that's the key thing. It's like, we don't want massive expectations. We don't want to come out with a big announcement in Variety saying, oh, brand new publishing house is going to blow the doors off of everybody else. No, we need to be humble. We need to have humility and say, hey, let's all work together as a team. We'll all kick in a few bucks in order to pay for the community function. But let's work on it. Let's all work on our craft. And if we can work on our craft and make our stories better, then chances are our stories might be better than what's already out there. And then people will be attracted to that quality, not overnight over the long term. So I think this is a really kind of cool model that doesn't require massive capital to get started. And it also enables people to get better at their craft. So I love the concept of the guild, and I think the notion of the guild, you know, being the source of capital that keeps a publishing house alive and, and able to release books into the world is a really cool idea.

Yeah. When we first started talking about this and you kind of floated the idea to me, it got me really excited because I feel like, yeah, it hits all of those things where one is, we're going to be able to provide really great content to the members of the guild and provide somewhere where they can, you know, come to level up their craft, as we talked about. And then also it allows us to publish whatever we want without having to be beholden to shareholders or, you know, Barnes and Noble or even Amazon, you know, because Amazon's a business too, and they've already started making changes that aren't in the writer's best interest. So putting us in a place where we can continually focus on just becoming better writers, releasing the best books that we possibly can, and not having to constantly say, well, okay, we got to make this concession because we've got to pay the bills next month.

The other thing that's a great advantage to me is having started Black Irish Books with Steve, because one of the great things about Black Irish Books is that Steve and I started that publishing company with the belief that we'd probably each lose some money. We had extremely low expectations, but we had reached a point together just to refresh everybody's memory. Black Irish Books started when the War of Art had come up for renewal for its license at Grand Central Publishing. So the War of Art was published by my original publishing company called Rugged Land Books, which published it in 2002. And when we published the hardcover, Grand Central Books offered us an advance to license the paperback rights, which was very lucrative. So I asked Steve at the time, of course, I was the publisher of Rugged Land. And I said, hey, do you mind if we license the paperback rights to Grand Central? He said, no. So we did a nine year license. So in 2011, the license had come up for renewal. And so I said, steve, why don't we just start our own little publishing house and get the War of Art out there and you and I will go 50, 50 and we'll see what happens. And he said, yeah, let's do that. Because we had some other ideas too, to do some publishing stuff. So we had very low expectations. And what happened was, is the War of Art became sort of like the concept of the guild I was just talking about. It became the revenue engine that allowed us to try new things. So whenever we get a little bit of extra money in the account, I would say, steve, why don't you do a follow up to the War of Art? Because, you know, we have some extra cash now and, you know, you'll be able to make more money that way. And a lot of people want extra stuff about the War of Art. So he wrote Turning Pro. And so that's what generates the publishing platform of Black Irish books. And we don't publish a lot of books, but we get to publish what we'd like. And the revenue seems to be working. It seems to drive the ability to keep trying something new. And in addition to that, as you say, we have our own bookstore, right? We have BlackIrishBooks.com and we sell quite a few books directly to consumers. So a lot of people love Black Irish books, so they want to buy directly from us. And for every copy we sell at Blackirish Books, it's the equivalent of selling like 7@Amazon.com so the BlackIrish Books bookstore drives additional revenue. So we'll have a story grid bookstore too. And that way, if people want to buy our books directly from us, and we certainly encourage that, that will be another little revenue trickle, as Steve and I like to call them. So, yeah, the trick is to keep the thing moving forward, not worrying so much about trying to hit a home run. It's just, let's keep this thing going. Let's just keep the wheel turning with the right minimum viable revenue. And if we keep working on the process of making our storytelling better in the long term, we may be able to hit a couple accidentally that drive even considerable revenue. And we'll share that revenue in a really equitable way. You know, the writer will get half, the editor will get 10%, and the machinery that enables that will get 40. It seems like a really reasonable, rational way of looking at book publishing without falling into all that trap of, oh, well, I've never heard of Storygrid Publishing. Therefore your book doesn't make. I don't care about. If we don't worry about third party validation from strangers at cocktail parties who haven't heard of Black Irish books, then we can navigate the world in a more healthy way. I can't tell you how many times people ask me what I do and I say, well, I'm a book publisher. Really. Have you published anything I've ever read? Chances are not. Chances are you've never.

They probably haven't read anything.

You've never heard of anything I've been associated with. And I don't ask you, have you ever operated on anyone famous? You're a doctor, so tell me the people you've operated on and then I can pass judgment on you. You don't do that kind of thing, so why should we do that with our creative work too? That's the other thing that I love about Storygrid Publishing is that that's going to be our ethic. Right? If you want third Party validation from strangers.

You're not going to get it at Story Grid Publishing, but what you will get is the ability to get better at your craft. So it's a self supporting place that I think the right kind of person who's interested in writing for the right kind of reasons will really find attractive. It's not going to be attractive to people who want to hit a home run and be number one on the New York Times bestseller list right out of the gate. Because we're not going to play that game. That's not our thing. Our thing is about let's work the process. And the other thing that we talked about earlier off of this call was what's going to be our publishing process? What's our marketing and promotion? We just so happen to have you. And you've been working in the online bookselling arena in marketing and promotion for over 10 years. You've literally written a bunch of books about how to market the work. So you're like this.

Added weapon that I think is going to be even more and more important about outreach and reaching the core markets and teaching our editors and our writers how to approach getting your title into the right hands as opposed to trying to get it to number one on the New York Times bestseller list. I think our process and our systems will be driven by how can we find those people who will love this title the most? So anyway, you can tell how thoroughly I've been thinking about this and you have been right alongside. Because I had all these sort of strange notions that couldn't be sort of linked together until I sat down with you over these past three, four years to come up with how we could create a new kind of mousetrap that would have the greatest probability of sustainable life for the longest possible amount of time. And when we came up with the idea of the guild, it really came together I think, because it's like, let's bring those people who are committed now storygritters and give them added value while also giving them the opportunity to possibly reach the standards of Story Grid Fiction and have their works published too.

Yeah, well, and that's the part that we've talked about before that I just get excited about as the marketing side because yeah, I've been working with authors for over 10 years to help them do all the marketing stuff. And it's always seemed weird to me that it's 100% on the author to market their own books unless they're like a brand name author. It's 100% up to the author to market their books. And so what I think is really neat is that, you know, we'll have the nonfiction craft side of Storygrid Publishing, where we're releasing books that help people become better writers. But then for the fiction side, we have built in an audience that's going to be excited to read the books. So, you know, with the threshing coming out in February, we're going to release the Contender guide along with it, and we're going to have this big batch of readers for all of the fiction that we publish, which is something that no other publishing house does. No other publishing house has their own email list, their own following, their own membership that is going to get access to. To a book. And so I really like that we're offloading not all of the marketing responsibility, but we're taking on a good portion of it. And that's a lot of what we were talking about earlier today with just like, well, what are we going to be able to do for all of the authors and how is this going to work? And, you know, we're going to put that out soon. But that's exciting to me of, like, how all of this just kind of synergizes together where we have a large group of people that are dedicated to becoming better at the craft, and those are the people that we're going to support and in turn will support the publishing house. And to me, it's neat to be a part of something like this. It's like, you know, you go to, like, those schools that have, like, the bricks on the sidewalk with all the names on it, Bill in the school. Like, there's something about, like, knowing, you know, when you join the guild, yes, you're going to get training. We'll get into that in a second. Yes, you're going to get all this great stuff, but at the same time, like, you know, you're buying a brick that's a part of a publishing house that literally couldn't exist if you weren't willing to be a part of it. And so for us, it's really fun to do something that isn't supported by deep pockets, isn't supported by investing, it's supported by this exact writers we've been trying to help for the last four years. So that's what gets me excited about it, too.

Yeah. And the other thing that is really great about the guild is that there's just a resource to when we all reach an impasse, when we get stuck writing something, we need advice, and oftentimes people don't want to ask the head of the system something that they think might be a stupid question. Right. So although there wouldn't be, but I have limited amount of time. Right. So what I love about the guild is it also brings a lot of opportunity to the super well trained Story Grid certified editors. Because these people.

Will be, you know, available at these sort of guild places and meeting spots online to ask those questions. Like, well, I'm a little bit concerned about X. I'm having a hard time finding what genre I'm writing in. I don't really understand the notion of conventions and obligatory scenes. All of these things that we cover a lot. And we have plenty of explanation on the storygood website. Sometimes you just need a direct answer from a single person who you respect, who you know, cares about what you're all about. So the guild is also sort of like this ability for the membership to hang out together and to be able to ask those questions that they really wouldn't feel comfortable.

Going into a zoom call that I'm doing a Q and A on. They can say, ask a question of Jari Bolander and he would get right back to them within a couple of hours. So it's bringing together a community of people that is really sharing a thing that's near and dear to my heart and making it better. Right. Like, I'll be the first one to say that there are things that I'd like to improve about the storygrid methodology. Some of them I'm aware of and some of them I'm not aware of yet. So that's the other thing that the guild will provide. It's going to make the methodology better. It's going to improve it through the communitas of everyone saying, you know, I'm not really sure about that one point in Western. Why is it that that is an obligatory scene that doesn't make any sense to me. So to be able to pick all of those details apart and to make them more laser focused is really exciting. And also, I mean, I do want to just quickly review the kind of books that we would be publishing. And the first ones would be these really laser specific books called Storygrid Beats. And these books would be really specific for story gridders. So they would talk about conventions and obligatory scenes with high resolution, or they would talk about genre at high resolution or specific kind of genre. So these would be really guild member driven books that they would want to have in their bookcase all the time. And then the second ones would be storygrid global concept books. So we'd want to have like a bible on my genre concept. And we're working on that now. Rachelle Ramirez and I are working on that. And we'd want to have a lot of examples of storygrid masterworks and storygrid contenders. So say you're writing a specific kind of books. You would have a catalog of all kinds of the classic masterworks that have been analyzed using the storygrid methodology. And that way you can look at a genre that you're writing in and say, oh, this is how X, Y or Z solve the problem that I'm facing now. So these sort of nonfiction core publications in storygrid publishing will really be guild driven titles. Right? So when we say the guild will be the capital source of the publishing house, that's because we're going to produce books the guild members are going to want to have and they're going to get them. Then lastly, we would have the Story Grid fiction program, which would be story grid editions. And as I said last time, the editor is going to have their name on the front cover. The editor is going to be on the copyright page. The editor is going to share in the revenue stream. There's going to be a real team concept of making these titles as best as they possibly can be. And all storygrid guild members will get those titles first. So I think you can tell, like, I'm starting to sound like Ron Popeil here, but.

He'S the guy who always did like the late night commercials about selling like the steak knives and stuff. But not only that, if you act now. So that's why I love the guild, because it's the core of the publishing program, is directed directly for the guild. And there will be all kinds of ability for the guild members to work together and to better the story grid methodology, which would make our stories better. You can see how this sort of cycles upward. The process is the guild members get together, talk about the methodology, make the methodology better, which helps the guild members write better novels, which helps our story grid publishing editions be better novels, etc. So it's a really kind of cool dynamical system that we think will spiral upward and level all of us up.

Okay, so let's talk about what specifically guild members get. Like, if you join the Story Grid Guild, what's involved in that?

Well, I don't know how many hours we talked about this, but what it came down for me is that what a Story Grid guild member is going to want is they're going to want exposure to the primal. The principal tools of StoryGrid. So what that means is that they're going to want to know how to do the macro foolscap page. They're going to want to start to look at stories with the telescope. They're going to want to be able to pick out the beginning, hook, middle build, and ending payoff. So we want to help train StoryGrid guild members into that sort of lens. So every month, the Story Grid certified editors, they have to recertify every year. And what they do in the recertification, and I ask them to do this, is they have to take three masterworks, and they have to do foolscap pages for them. And so they have to answer the editor's six core questions and then convert that into a foolscap page. So essentially, they're breaking down these masterworks into one sheet that answers all of the editor's questions. These are resources that are just. They're a gold mine. So each month, during the first week, I think it's the first Wednesday of the month, the guild members will be able to download four brand new foolscap pages based upon the masterworks in particular genres. So we haven't quite figured out the organization of these four. We might break it down into, like, January will be Action Month. February would be Horror Month, and then each one of these four foolscaps will be an action story. We haven't really figured that out yet. We're going to talk to the Story Grid editors and get their input. So the very first Wednesday of every month, the guild members will be able to click and find these four foolscap pages that will be done professionally by the Story Grid certified editors. And the editors will be named. So everyone gets credit for the work that they've done. That's a principal ethic of StoryGrid. And remember, these have all been reviewed by me. So I think we have about 50 StoryGrid certified editors, and each one of them has done three of these. So we have a nice library of stuff. I approve. I certify everybody. I go through everybody's work. And I was just shocked. Not shocked, but I was just overwhelmed by how well they did this work. So that would be the first Wednesday. The second Wednesday would be pub Day. So the second Wednesday of every month, the guild member will be able to click through into their account and get that month's book, the ebook, and the audiobook, if that's appropriate. We're not going to do audiobooks for contenders or masterworks, but because it's not a format that suits it. But the ebook will be available. And then also if the guild member subscribes to the print edition, the print edition will be mailed and hopefully it'll land on the second Wednesday in their mailbox. If not, it'll be a couple days earlier or later, depending upon where they live. So the second Wednesday would be pub day, and then the third Wednesday would be sort of a thematic one hour training session. And in this training session, I will be on the call me specifically, and it will also include that month's author. So for example, we'll be publishing a book that was co authored by Leslie Wells and Shelley Sperry in March. So those two will be on the call with me and we'll talk about the title that they have worked on. So you'll have a week to read the title and then I'll do a general Q and A afterwards. So all the guild members will have the opportunity 12 times to ask me a direct question on whatever technology it is that we use for these calls. So that's the third Wednesday and then the fourth. The fourth Wednesday I'm really excited about. This came directly from the editors again is one of the most successful things that we did at StoryGrid Live is we broke into sessions and we did scene analysis. So this was your idea at the start, Tim. So we hooked up these StoryGrid certified editors with about five people at the live event. And they sat through for about a half an hour. Everybody read a scene and then the Story Grid certified editor walked them through the five commandments of storytelling and talked about the beginning, hook, middle build, ending, payoff of the scene. And it was extraordinarily successful. In fact, I think it was the number one thing everybody appreciated about Story Grid Live beyond your talking or me talking. So on the fourth Wednesday, we're going to have a Story Grid certified editor lead a micro analysis of a scene. So that will be sort of the microscope version of the primal tool in StoryGrid methodology. So at the beginning of the month, you get the macro. At the end of the month you get the micro, you get books in the middle. And lastly, I think you're setting up a forum so the forum will be available to all guild members at all times. And all of the Story Grid certified editors are already in that guild. So if someone gets stuck on something and it's Thursday morning, at 2 o' clock in the morning, you can go into the guild and there's probably some night owl like you awake and you can ask them advice and work through your problem. So every month, Wednesday after Wednesday after Wednesday after Wednesday, you're getting StoryGrid content and training throughout the entire year. So I'm extraordinarily excited about it. And I think what we didn't want this to become was, hey, buy a brick for our building and then you get your name on the brick and that's it. We actually wanted this to be a process, a guild, a literal guild that levels up everyone's craft month by month by month. So at the end of the year, guild members will have analyzed 12 scenes with an expert StoryGrid certified editor. They're going to have 48 foolscap pages. They're going to probably get between 15 to 18 books from StoryGrid Publishing. They're going to have access to all the StoryGrid certified editors in this forum, as well as the other story gridders who join the forum, too. It's like being at Oxford, I think, for a semester and being able to go into the cafeteria and getting your lunch and you're always around other people with similar interests.

I love this guild. I mean, it's been a lot of work to set this up, and I think a lot of people are going to take advantage of it. I'm so excited about it because it's obviously going to be a major commitment on my part and your part. Doing these calls every month and doing the Q and A is going to be really fun. I like to do that. It's one of my favorite things about doing. I do the Q and A's for the Level up youp Craft and for the ground you'd craft courses in the summer. Also, I think you're going to give people discounts on the Story Grid University courses.

So there's a lot of bells and whistles to this thing that I think is going to be really cool. And the bottom line is it's going to support a publishing company. I just love this concept of a publishing company that isn't beholden to the New York Times Bestseller list.

Thanks for listening to this episode of the Story Grid podcast. If you want to learn more about the guild and how you can join up and be a part of that, you can go to storygrid.com.

That'S G U I L D storygrid.com guild we're really excited about this. Hopefully you are too. We've been building to this for a long time and we're excited to share it with you, so make sure you check it out. Storygrid.com guild.

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