Teachers of Fiction Writing
You love helping writers. But how do you build an audience, create courses that people love, master the technology, develop a reliable full-time income, and keep track of everything in your business -- without staying up all night and burning out?
Teachers of Fiction was a hit last year and is coming back for year two. Register now to reserve your seat.
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How this will work
You enjoy working with writers and you're a good teacher.
Maybe you've got an approach that worked well with past classrooms and clients, but now you're wondering -- what's the system to getting my teaching in front of new writers?
Maybe you've come to webinars hosted by successful online teachers and thought, "I could do that..." [the teaching part] but also "How on Earth do they get all these people to show up?"
Or maybe you've been doing this for a while and want to grow your business to the next level. How to feel great about your teaching enterprise rather than worrying how you'll pay for the different subscriptions next month?
This is an event for people who want to teach, coach, edit, or make tools for writers.
- You'll hear how teachers design compelling self-study courses that writers love to work through and complete.
- You'll learn paths through those difficult initial years where you are earning money but feel overwhelmed by marketing and coming up with new sales.
- You'll discover how established teachers think about their business growth and the frameworks they are following to scale to the next stage.
This is a four-day event about the practice of teaching writing independently online -- how to teach well and be financially rewarded for it.
How do the experts create successful businesses as teachers, editors, and coaches? Find out how they earn a good living and create loyal fans.
This event is primarily aimed at teachers, editors, coaches, and toolmakers who help fiction writers, but most of the sessions will be applicable to nonfiction teachers as well.
We’re focused on independent teachers: people who enjoy full creative control, flexible schedules, and deep connections with their students — without needing a prestigious name tag.
If you love taking notes live, the free ticket gives you full access during the four days. But if you’re the kind of person who wants to pause, rewatch, or listen on a walk — the $79 ticket gets you lifetime access, transcripts, and a private podcast feed.
My Story
Several years ago, I ran a small blog about books and writing. I'm so grateful for those early readers who kept coming back to the site, month after month.
But -- if it's okay to admit this -- I felt exhausted keeping the blog going. I was constantly afraid that if I took a break from posting, my readers would leave, and I rode the wave of every tiny spike in traffic, only to see the visitor chart flatten the next day.
Once in a while, a Reddit thread or significant scholar would find the site, but I had no way of building on that brief attention.
What I didn't realise is that I had already honed approaches, frameworks, and concepts that could really help writers. I just needed a system, something that could turn the ideas I loved into a real teaching practice, and a sustainable, rewarding business.
How I found my way as a teacher
Around the time my first child was born, my wife started talking to me about "professional blogging." Although I agreed that our small family needed more income, I didn't actually believe that "professional blogging" was real. However, she was deep in researching her food blog, and kept sending me articles and podcasts from the food blogging world.
One specific interview struck me: a conversation with an automation and funnels expert, Chris Davis. He described a straight-forward but powerful technique for building a long-term audience: the automated email welcome sequence. This was a pre-written series of emails sent to every new email subscriber.
It sounds so simple now! But at the time, this concept woke me up. I could stop hoping people would come back to my blog and start offering them valuable writing insights as soon as they discovered me.
And I felt confident I could write a good welcome sequence. After all, I'm a writer.
Six months after that insight, I was ready to re-launch my old blog in a new "professional" form, focused around building an email mailing list -- and six months after that, I created my first online course.
In the years since then, I've sold over a million dollars in courses and event ticket sales. It hasn't always been easy. As a person that got into this work because they loved books, I've had to learn a huge amount about marketing, technology, and sales.
And so I wanted to create an event for fellow teachers.
You’ll hear from teachers at all levels, pick up practical strategies, and maybe even find your next collaborator.
Whether you are like the Daniel at the start of this story (not sure that you can ever make a living teaching) -- or like I was in the middle part (struggling to record the videos for my first course while working full-time and caring for a new baby), this event can help you achieve your goals for your teaching and build a creative business you feel proud to keep developing.
And if you're an established teacher, there are several advanced sessions that just might provide the next step you want to take.
This is a friendly, welcoming community
This is a gathering of like-minded people who want to support one another.
You might know me from my online conferences for writers, especially Escape the Plot Forest, which runs every October and welcomes over 5,000 attendees each year.
This event shares some of that structure: a great lineup of speakers, and a free ticket if you’re able to attend live. But the tone and scale are a deliberately different. Teachers of Fiction is smaller by design — a quieter, more focused space for the teachers, coaches, editors, mentors, and platform-creators who help writers do their best work.
Featured talks
Not sure what to watch? Here are some talks you won't want to miss.
Everyone Is Welcome
if you want to teach, we can help
This is the second year of Teachers of Fiction, and we’ve kept one principle at the heart of the event: anyone who wants to teach fiction — and teach it well — should have the tools and support to do so.
Our focus this year is still on the how.
How do you reach students? How do you build courses that actually help? How do you turn insight into income, without burning out?
To put it simply: this event is not interested in gate keeping. You don’t need a particular degree or credential to belong here. And you definitely don't need a Substack or a lead magnet (although you might want to create one after you attend this summit).
Part of my logic for this approach: in my experience, people who want to teach writing have no shortage of unique ideas. It is rare to meet a person who says, "I want to get into teaching writing purely for the money -- what should I talk about?" Such people generally move into other fields. While, on the other hand, it is sadly NOT rare to encounter brilliant, heart-felt teachers with intriguing ways of thinking about a story -- who are not making a sustainable living.
That is the primary problem at which this conference takes aim.
Say Hello To Our Speakers
We couldn't be more excited about our lineup. Which talks will you be checking out?
Your Host
I'm Daniel David Wallace, an award-winning writer and teacher. I spent four years of a PhD researching new ways to help writers tell a great story.
Since then, I've built a highly-engaged mailing list of 13,000 writers and a six-figure business that supports my family on part-time hours.
I am hoping to share what I've learned with you at this event!
Ready to learn from great colleagues?
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