A membership for working creators
The Bindery is 1,840 people who make things for a living, in one quiet room. Weekly critique, a monthly numbers night, and a library of everything we have figured out since 2021.
1,840 members · 212 online now
What membership is
Every Wednesday
Post work in progress before Tuesday night and four members respond by Thursday. Structured, signed, and never anonymous — which is why it stays kind and stays honest.
First Monday, monthly
Three members share a real profit and loss statement and answer questions for twenty minutes each. It is the least glamorous hour of the month and the one people say changed the most.
Always open
Four hundred and twelve documents: contract templates, pricing teardowns, launch retrospectives, and the recording of every numbers night since the first one.
Twice a year
A spring and an autumn meet-up, thirty people, one long table. Members pay for their own travel; the room, the food and the schedule are covered by the membership.
Look inside
Membership is not a Discord with a paywall. Here is the actual structure.
Every channel has a stated purpose and a person responsible for it. Threads close after fourteen days so nothing rots at the top of the list.
#critique
212 open threads
Work in progress, four responses guaranteed within 48 hours.
#pricing
88 open threads
Quotes, rates and the conversations where you raise them.
#launches
41 open threads
Pre-launch reviews and post-launch numbers, in public.
#contracts
26 open threads
Clause-by-clause help. Not legal advice, but close enough to be useful.
#tools
63 open threads
What people actually use, with the receipts.
#quiet
no replies
Post and move on. Nobody responds. It is the most used channel.
Attendance is never expected. Everything is posted with a transcript within a day, and the archive goes back to session one.
Wednesday critique
Weekly · 60 min
Live version of the critique channel, four pieces per session.
Numbers night
Monthly · 90 min
Three members, three profit and loss statements, no slides.
Office hours
Fortnightly · 45 min
Open room. Bring one question, leave with an answer.
Co-working
Twice weekly · 3 hrs
Cameras optional, microphones off, timer running.
Indexed, searchable, and maintained. Anything that goes stale gets flagged and either updated or removed.
Contract templates
34 documents
Retainer, project, licensing and kill-fee language.
Pricing teardowns
61 documents
Real quotes, what was charged, what was learned.
Launch retrospectives
78 documents
What shipped, what it made, what would change.
Session recordings
239 recordings
Every numbers night and office hour since 2021.
On the calendar
All times Eastern. Everything is recorded and posted within a day.
04 Sep
Daniel Whitlock, Obi Nwosu and a third member to be announced walk through a full year of figures.
18:00 ET · 90 min · Live
Monthly
10 Sep
Four pieces, twelve minutes each. Submit by Tuesday 20:00 to be included.
12:00 ET · 60 min · Live
Weekly
17 Sep
Open room. Pricing, positioning, and the paragraph you have rewritten nine times.
15:00 ET · 45 min · Live
Fortnightly
02 Oct
One long table, one schedule, no lanyards. Travel is yours, everything else is covered.
Two days · 30 places · In person
Twice yearly
Member spotlight
I posted a rate card in #pricing that I was embarrassed by. Six people rewrote it with me over two days. I have charged the new number eleven times since.
Numbers night is the only place I have ever seen another creative business's real profit and loss. It reset what I thought was normal, in both directions.
The #quiet channel sounds like a gimmick until you have used it. Some weeks you need to say the thing and not be helped with it.
Membership
Same room, same library, same critique. The difference is how much of Martin's time is in it.
2 months free
$0 $0
free, forever free, forever
The public rooms and the monthly recap. No critique, no library.
$29 $290
per month per year
Everything the membership is. This is what 94% of people choose.
$89 $890
per month per year
For teams of up to five, plus a quarterly hour with Martin.
Before you join
Possibly, and we would rather you found that out in month one than month twelve. There is no annual lock-in on the monthly plan, and the #quiet channel exists precisely because not every week is a participating week.
Members who get the most out of it spend about ninety minutes a week: one critique post, one thread read, one session attended or watched. Plenty of people spend less.
Roughly half the room is not. Writers, developers, ceramicists, photographers, one luthier. The common thread is selling your own work, not the medium.
No. Numbers night is voluntary and there is a waiting list of people who want to present. Watching is the default.
There is a permanently free Reader tier instead, which shows you the tone of the room without a countdown attached to it.
The Studio plan covers five seats and adds a private channel. Beyond five, email us and we will work something out.
1,840 members · 41 countries
Join today and your first critique thread goes up on Wednesday. If it is not for you, cancel from your account page in two clicks.