Why Matthew Weinberg Founded Grammar and Stone Publishing After Writing Eight Books

By the time I finished my eighth book I had learned something that nobody tells you when you start writing.

The publishing industry is not built for authors.

It is built for publishers.

That sounds obvious in retrospect. But when you are a first-time author you tend to take the process at face value. A publisher offers you a contract. You sign it. Your book appears in the world. What you do not fully understand until later is what you gave away to make that happen.

What Publishing Contracts Actually Say

I am not going to pretend I read every line of my first contract carefully. I did not. Most authors do not. The documents are long, the language is technical, and the excitement of having a publisher interested in your work makes it easy to skim past the parts that matter most.

What I eventually understood is that a traditional publishing contract transfers the rights to your work from you to the publisher. Not temporarily. Not partially. The publisher owns the right to publish, distribute, translate, and license your work. You receive a percentage of the proceeds. That percentage is called a royalty, and in most traditional arrangements it is a small fraction of what the book earns.

You wrote the book. You own almost nothing about what happens to it next.

Vanity publishing is the opposite problem. You keep your rights but pay a company to produce and distribute your book. The costs are substantial and the services are often mediocre. You end up with a professionally printed book and no real distribution, no marketing support, and no pathway into major retail channels.

Between traditional publishing and vanity publishing there was, for a long time, almost nothing.

Why I Built the Alternative

Grammar and Stone Publishing exists because I got tired of the gap.

After eight books I had enough experience with both sides of the publishing world to understand exactly what was missing. Authors needed a company that provided professional-quality production, including editing, cover design, illustration, interior formatting, and worldwide distribution, without taking their rights or their royalties.

That company did not exist in the form I wanted. So I built it.

The model is straightforward. Authors pay for the services they need. Grammar and Stone provides full-service production at a professional level. The author retains complete ownership of their work and receives every royalty the book earns. Grammar and Stone does not take a percentage of ongoing sales. It does not hold rights. It does not insert itself between the author and their readers.

Every policy at Grammar and Stone was developed by asking the question I wish someone had asked before I signed my first contract: is this what I would want if I were the author?

What This Has to Do With Education

There is a through line between Grammar and Stone and my work as an educator that I find more obvious every year.

In both cases the fundamental problem is the same. A system has developed that rewards the institution rather than the person the institution is supposed to serve. Traditional publishing rewards publishers. Traditional education rewards administrators and test designers. The student and the author, the people doing the actual intellectual work, end up optimizing for the system's metrics rather than their own genuine development.

My doctoral research on game theory in education was about redesigning incentive structures so that the environment rewards what it is supposed to reward. Grammar and Stone is the publishing version of that same idea.

If you design the environment correctly, you get the outcomes you actually want. Authors who keep their rights produce more work, take more creative risks, and build more meaningful relationships with their readers. Students who are not constantly performing for grades develop more durable understanding and more genuine intellectual curiosity.

The design principle is identical. The domain is different.

What Grammar and Stone Publishes

Several of my own books have been published through Grammar and Stone, including Where Agency Belongs and What Remains: Living Well in the Presence of Death.

The company works with authors across all genres, including literary fiction, nonfiction, children's books, academic writing, and professional titles. First-time authors and experienced authors alike. The only requirement is that the author wants to publish professionally without giving up ownership of what they created.

All books published through Grammar and Stone are available through major retail channels including Barnes and Noble and Amazon.

Why It Matters

I founded Grammar and Stone because I believe authors deserve better than the choices that currently exist.

That conviction comes from personal experience. Eight books. Multiple contracts. A clear view of what the industry offers and what it takes in return.

The gap between what authors need and what the publishing industry provides is real and significant. Grammar and Stone is my attempt to close it.

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Dr. Matthew Weinberg, PhD, MEd is an educator, author, Vice President of the Gloria C. MacKenzie Foundation, and founder of Grammar & Stone Publishing. His books are available at Barnes & Noble. Follow him on LinkedIn, Instagram, and X.