Hi everyone,

Just an update on the latest goings on at Skillshare as I feel it only fair to offer you some kind of explanation. Some of you may have noticed that quite a large quantity of classes have suddenly disappeared from the platform. Skillshare have suddenly decided, with no advanced warning to their teachers, to strictly enforce their (possibly changed?) guidelines, even on popular classes with high percentages of positive feedback. And even on classes their own personnel reviewed in the past and deemed of good quality and worth promoting to the community. Classes that the majority of teachers involved believed DID meet the platform's guidelines. Just to be clear, we are not talking about the few who try and flog spammy, poor quality clickbait classes, but people who genuinely want to do good with their content and were actively encouraged by the Skillshare team to publish as much as possible.

No one is disputing that improving the quality of the platform's content is the right way forward -- we all want to produce content that is relevant and valuable to you that you will enjoy. All the teachers I've spoken to have stated they would have happily worked with Skillshare to make any necessary improvements. It is lamentable that none were given the opportunity either prior to the purge nor in its aftermath. Ironically, I had been rescripting and re-recording parts of many of my classes that have been closed with a view to improving them but didn't manage to publish those updates in time.

Why this mass purging is occurring, we don't know. Maybe it's an algorithm trawling the site, maybe it's a change of business model or maybe a lack of funds on Skillshare's part and they need to reduce the number of payouts they make to teachers -- it's a mystery; we don't seem to be able to get any specific details out of the Skillshare team.

In light of these developments, unfortunately, for me personally, it means that I must entirely rethink my online teaching strategy and, depending on how the research into my options goes, it might end up that Skillshare is no longer a part of that strategy. I'm sure you understand that this will take time to work out and there is no overnight solution to the problem. I hope you understand under these circumstances that I shall not be publishing any new classes for the time being. I will respond to any comments and projects in the few remaining classes I have, of course, but the last part of the Story Arcs series will now not be published on Skillshare in the foreseeable future.

If you've been taking the How to Plot Your Story Arcs series and haven't yet finished it, I can only apologise on behalf of Skillshare that you are unable to continue and to take it up with them if it is a class you valued or were looking forward to participating in or rewatching.

All I can say is that if you are interested in which direction I take in the future, then please do find me on Social Media (FB or Twitter) or on my website (https://thestorysmith.wixsite.com/thestorysmith).

This is not the end, it's simply a setback. I've learned a lot from Skillshare and it's put me onto a path I wouldn't have naturally swayed towards, and I am thankful for that. But this seems to be a nudge to rethink, replan and do something different. Different is good! Especially for a writer! For now, I'm going to focus on my own writing, my local workshops and my one-to-one clients.

I wish you all the very best of luck with your writing endeavours, and I hope some of you will reach out to me in the future.

All the best,

Charlie

Charlie Aylett

www.thestorysmith.com

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