Happy Groundhog Day!

The month of February doesn’t just mark this rather strange holiday; it also marks the 1 year anniversary of the launch of Writer’s Craft Academy, my private membership site and group coaching community for aspiring authors like you.

The idea for Writer’s Craft Academy came to me when I noticed a significant problem with online courses. At the time, I was selling two courses, one called The Novel Writer’s Blueprint and one called Smash Fear and Write like a Pro.

One of the things I noticed about The Novel Writer’s Blueprint was that, despite getting fantastic feedback on the course, students were not actually finishing the course's final modules. This was obviously troubling for me, but the more I thought about it, the more it started to make sense.

The course walked people through the entire project of writing a book from initial idea creation all the way through to completed manuscript. Most of the people taking the course were in the early stages of working on their book, which meant they didn’t need the latter stages of the course yet.

Sure, maybe some of them were planning to eventually come back and finish the course once they were at that later stage in their manuscript drafting, but I knew they probably wouldn’t end up doing. Let's face it, we all lose focus sometime. How often have you said to yourself that you were going to come back and finish something, only to end up not doing it?

I started to think that what writers need wasn’t this “module one, module two, module three” style of online course, but rather a whole Library of Resources that are available when the writer actually needs them. From there, the concept of the Writer’s Craft Academy video training library was born!

The other strange thing about being a writing coach who sold online courses was that I don’t actually want people taking courses.

I mean, of course, I want people continuing their writer's craft education, and courses can be a great way to do that, but I also want them actually working on their writing! A lot of the time people use education as an excuse to avoid doing the hard work of sitting down and actually writing.

Now that the library is created, when clients ask me questions, I'm able to say, “Go watch these three videos from our training library tonight. They will specifically address your questions and show you some examples. Then you can get back to your writing.”

The library format also allows me to create shorter training videos that don’t necessarily have to fit directly within the broader context of a course. For example, I have a video on how to use “Styles” in Microsoft Word, so that you can turn your chapter titles into hyperlinks and then have Word generate a Table of Contents for you automatically. It’s just a little bit easier of a way to organize a manuscript if you are writing in Microsoft Word. It doesn’t belong anywhere in a course on how to write a book, but it’s a video I knew some of my clients would find helpful!

The video library has continued to grow and grow since we launched last February. It now contains over 50 training videos for authors. It’s an absolutely incredible resource for Writer’s Craft Academy members, and it's only going to continue to grow as we move into our second year.

I want you to have access to those videos!

So here is what to do: Use the coupon code “anniversary” on the Writer’s Craft Academy checkout page, and you’ll save 50% off your monthly membership for as long as you are a member.

I can’t wait to have you as part of our community and checking out our incredible training library!

Your pal in writing,

Kevin T. Johns, writing coach

P.S. T.L.D.R.? Check out the podcast version of this email here.