Announcing: IGC Publishing Discord Server

Tell your friends, tell your friends’ friends, tell your acquaintances, and maybe your arch-nemeses, too: IGC Publishing has a Discord server, but it’s only going to be successful if you join.  We’ll be offering Q&A, general discussion, targeted discussion groups, and a book club, but none of these things will happen without people to join the server and be part of the conversation.  Pontificating into the void of the internet works for a blog, but not for a discussion group.

Some of you long-time readers might remember a short-lived effort I attempted to run here on the site called the Sententia Discussion Series.  If you look for them, you can still find the handful of posts I made in the category, but you won’t find a lot in the way of discussion.  My goal was for each Sententia post to be a discussion prompt, and for the audience to carry on a lively discussion using the comments section below the post.  It never happened that way for several reasons, the main two I identified being the clunkiness of the comments-section interface, and the lack of readership to engage with the material in the first place.

A philosophical discussion group is something I’ve long wanted to foster, though, and the idea has lingered in the back of my mind, nestled next to another idea that I’ve always struggled to realize: a book club.  I know a plethora of book clubs already exist, many associated with far more famous names than mine, and plenty of people manage to start book clubs amongst their friends or colleagues.  Indeed, I was a shadow member of such a book club for some time, reading many of the books they read without actually joining the discussion (it’s how I came to read some rather odd books, too, like Meditations with Cows).  Unfortunately, the in-person book clubs I’ve attempted to start with colleagues have always fizzled as people get pulled away to other places and jobs, schedules change, and it stops being a priority for most people.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about trying to do more with IGC Publishing.  Though I don’t know what changed, since the start of 2025 the site has seen consistently higher engagement and organic traffic – paltry numbers compared to most platforms, but a notable uptick from last year nonetheless.  My writing is moving along, albeit slower than I might like, and that’s led me to consider more seriously the independent publishing route on a more robust scale than just publishing some short stories for free.  However, a one-author publishing house that just puts out novels and novellas at whatever pace I can manage to write them isn’t likely to gain much traction, and risks being more of a self-publishing or even vanity publishing venture, rather than an independent publisher.  With this backdrop, I pondered alternatives and additional offerings, ranging from podcasts and video series to anthologies and periodicals, and even a wild scheme to create a scientific research arm of IGC Publishing (don’t ask for details – like I said, it was an out-there idea).

The first of these ideas I’m actioning is the Discord server.  I’ll admit, I’m probably not the most proficient or experienced Discord user, but I’ve found it a useful platform for community engagement in writing (Elegant Literature hosts its writing groups, amongst other features, in a Discord server), as well as engineering and 3D printing, which tend to be sympathetic with open-source, discussion-based formats.  There will be a general discussion area, places to talk about IGC Publishing’s stories, and a question and answer forum, but the main focus, and (hopefully) the main attraction, will be three areas:

• Sententia Discussion Series: a channel dedicated to philosophical discussions.  A new prompt will be posted on a monthly basis for the community to engage with and ponder.
• IGC Book Club: I will select one book I read each quarter as a book club book for us to examine and discuss in more depth.  This could include discussion questions, writing exercises, historical comparisons, or whatever else is of interest with regards to the text.
• Test reading: get access to rough draft scenes, chapters, and stories I’m working on, in return for providing feedback.  This may well include spoilers for works in progress, and it means missing out on the same experience of reading the finished, polished product, but you’ll get an inside look into my writing process, insight into what I’m working on, and practice at giving and making critiques, a valuable skill if you’re a fellow writer.

When you join the server, you’ll have the option to select what you’re interested in, whether it’s the book club, the Sententia series, being a test reader, or only the general areas.  These offerings and opportunities will evolve in the future – indeed, the server’s future in no small part is in your hands.  Your engagement, interest, and activity will be a major influence on what the server becomes.  Doubtless I need some disclaimers about acceptable use, being respectful, not spamming the channels, and so forth, and I do reserve the right to moderate as I deem necessary, but I would prefer to keep such moderation efforts to a minimum, and I’m confident it won’t be a problem with such erudite and respectful readers.

After six years of writing at you, I look forward to writing with you. Click below to join.