I am fairly confident that most of us writers want to know if there is a secret on how to write and sell a book. Or many books.

As the secret is to keep going and don’t give up, wouldn’t it be great if there was some sort of learning site? A site where you could develop your skills as a writer, learn platform building, and have peers to gain feedback and beta reading from? Keep reading because I have good news for anyone who wants to learn how to write and sell a book.

During NaNoWriMo, otherwise known as November, I have been working on a new project with my sister. This project is a teaching and learning network (mostly for the home education community). You can read about the ups, downs, and victories of my own NaNoWriMo attempt on my personal blog. What I want to write about today is the other project. The one that is that learning site.

Between myself and a few other family members, we have started to put together packages of learning for the home education community. As part of that, we registered hekids.co.uk to act as a hub. I blogged about that too.

But I’m not a kid, you might say. At 43, neither am I. However, I still think of myself as just a big kid. After all, I like to daydream and make up stories. I became a writer so I never had to grow out of that habit. I like making things up and writing them down. Making things up and writing them down is what storytellers and writers do.

Which is why the first course “Creative Writing free-form learning” is free to join and open to all ages. You can find it at matt.hekids.co.uk. It is a course that you do in your own time and, I warn you now, it gets progressively harder. This is in order to get you to push yourself and discover just how much you can really do. You can always pop back here and post questions in our forum if you need additional help.

You will have access to a personal wiki, workshops, collected resources, videos, and activities that will challenge you to develop your skills. Eventually, you will write and sell a book – one of the last challenges you will unlock.

Included in the course are many of the resources we created for Thanet Creative as well as some tools, that (until now) I have kept only for me.

There will, in time, be other non-free courses. Many aimed at teens and pre-teens but as long as you know how to keep your language age-appropriate, I doubt anyone will mind you taking part too.

The “Creative Writing free-form learning” course will not remain open to free self enrolment forever. Just until I am done testing the new site. If you want to write and sell a book, go grab a spot while they are free.

Update: The writing course can now be found at skills.thanetcreative.org and is still free.