The Undoing of Impossibility
Why education needs what Second Draft Labs is Building
Second Draft Labs: #0008
We publish the best ideas in AI and education, from the people doing the work.
I just emailed all What Education Becomes contributors our first quarter update and royalties breakdown.
They were beyond thrilled.
To be clear: This is still a self-published book. There are production costs. There are thirteen total contributors across ten chapters.
The revenue share is real and beyond what essentially everyone has said they have made from publishing entire other books! But nobody is buying a lake house off of their What Education Becomes royalties.
Still, sometimes I forget just how different what we are doing really is.
A Formula for Success
Because—by all measures—the launch of What Education Becomes was so successful, I did exactly the same build for the launch of Emerging Approaches Volume 1: Transparency & Reflection (September 1, 2026).
I set up a Notion page as a quick website. I included an overview of the contributors and their arguments. I embedded a sign-up form so that we could keep folks who are interested informed along the way.
And then I hit publish.
It only took a few minutes because I had a template already created for What Education Becomes.
But as soon as I finished, I realized it was the wrong approach.
The New Question is Why Not?
I think of AI more as a reconciliation of possibility.
Generally, we’ve been trained to believe things aren’t possible for us. We can’t build a website because we don’t code. We can’t launch a book because we’ve never published. We can’t get 12 strangers together for a project because it’s too complicated.
With Notion I was already doing things that most people had never thought of or taken the time to learn and try—building a multi-asset website that looked professional enough in very little time, without having to set up a WordPress or Wix page.
So in some ways the Notion web page was ahead of where a lot of workflows would be right now.
But then of course I realized our own story—we transcribed a meeting about an idea. I put that transcription in Claude. Claude coded a website. I put that code into Lovable and we launched SDL 90 minutes after the meeting.
But my first attempt at publishing a page for Emerging Approaches was still my old workflow. Until I realized it didn’t have to be.
Just Freaking Try It
So here’s what I did:
I started a new chat in Claude.
I shared a screenshot of the Notion page I had just built.
I copied the style guide from the Second Draft Labs website and added that to Claude.
I dictated to Claude my goals for the original Notion page and how I realized that the website was a better place to host this, without giving too much of a finished vision—just what I was trying to achieve in Notion and what I thought might be possible on the site.
Claude created a plan of what it could be.
I approved the plan.
Claude built a version.
I edited it through dictation.
When I was satisfied, I copied the code from Claude into Lovable.
Lovable added the page.
Less than 30 minutes from idea to launch.
The page was just like Notion, only branded and more professional. It had a stylized overview of the book and cover. It had the contributor overviews. It even had a sign up for community members to add their name and email to get the latest updates on the book.
As an unexpected bonus, we created a “Team leaderboard.” The community wasn’t just signing up for interest and info, they were voting for which argument they thought would win.
The community was now involved in the launch!
Self-Limiting Beliefs
I took a walk with the dogs. I was so proud of what I had just built.
And then, as always happens on a good dog walk . . . new possibilities.
I came back and asked Claude how to create something where participants not only voted for the person that they liked but could actively share and grow the awareness around and excitement for the book.
I wondered, “if contributors have a leaderboard, could the community members also?”
I thought, what if instead of signing up for alerts just for this book—because I hoped we would do do things like this for future launches—we created a system for “logging in” to the Second Draft Labs website, where you actually have an SDL account and you are involved in all the projects we create and share? Could we include SSO with Google?
This was crazy! Was this possible? Should I even ask?
It still seems crazy to me. It is possible. And I did ask.
Doing it Together
A few hours later, this is what we had done.
We created Google sign on. We created user accounts. We created gamification that gets users involved in sharing on socials, talking about the book—promoting their TEAM for the next 90 days to get real interest and excitement around the project.
Check it out: Transparency & Reflection — Second Draft Labs
But, as with all things SDL, there is something else operating at the meta level here.
Traditional publishing is entirely one-sided.
Sure, the publisher gives you a venue and eventually makes the book available. But the publisher puts up the gates along the way. It is entirely up to the contributor to write the thing, edit the thing, promote the thing, sell the thing. And the worst part is, the publisher is the one who owns the thing!
At SDL we are creating a community around this entire process. We are helping authors get inspired about the ideas they already have. We are putting together collaborative volumes where your big idea can become part of a larger conversation without you having to write the entire book. We are doing the heavy lift of editing, formatting, distributing, and promoting. We are creating a community that cares about the ideas and helps them have the impact they deserve.
We’re still new. We’re still figuring out what’s possible. But, what gets me most excited, is that we’re doing it together.
SDL appreciates you being a part of this.
I appreciate you being the best part of this.