our initiatives

LitGrid™

What Story is this
System Telling?

Getting published is the dream. What happens next—fly or flop—is rarely left to chance.

Behind every “success” is a complex web of investments, decisions, and support—some seen, many hidden. Authors often assume that being chosen means being championed. But support isn’t standardized, and visibility isn’t guaranteed.

LitGrid™ begins by illuminating those patterns—so publishers, authors, and communities alike can co-create a literary ecosystem rooted not in myth, but mutual investment.

Why Has the System Been Built This Way?

When success looks like magic, you’re less likely to question the systems behind the curtain.

Publishing has long relied on mystique. Its opacity fuels competition, preserves gatekeeping, and reinforces the myth that outcomes are merit-based alone. The result? Uneven access, inconsistent investment, and deeply variable author experiences.

LitGrid™ strives to reveal what’s long gone unmeasured—so we can build new forms of care, transparency, and impact across the literary ecosystem.

What Are We Building Instead?

We’re building the infrastructure behind the dream—so authors aren’t just published, they’re protected, connected, and championed.

LitGrid™ includes more than just LitIndex™, the national author experience survey; it’s an ecosystem of initiatives designed to track what matters: author experience, publisher transparency, literary equity, as well as access and care across the literary ecosystem.

This isn’t about top-down reform. It’s multi-directional systems transformation—shaped by authors, booksellers, libraries, publishers, and communities to build what’s never existed before.

Our Blueprint in Action:

The data we gather through LitGrid™ will empower the larger literary ecosystem to build a new system—one designed to track what matters, confront what’s missing, and transform how care, access, and equity show up across publishing.

LitIndex National Author Experience Survey

A field-defining tool to reveal the author —before, during, and long after publication. Grounded in lived experience, it reshapes what accountability means.

Infrastructure Activation Maps

A dynamic visual tool tracking where access gaps exist—and how communities, authors, and publishers are helping close them. Informed by LitIndex data and powered by HLFN partnerships, these maps tell the story of movement—not just metrics.

The LitIndex Score

A new evaluative standard for the literary ecosystem—measuring access, equity, and impact, ranging from author demographics to genre trends.

Listening Tours + Strategy Salons

Interactive convenings that ensure the work is shaped with—not for—authors, booksellers, librarians, and other ecosystem builders.

Publishing Impact Accelerator Network

The central system created from HBAM’s platforms—LitCanon (reader-powered discovery), LitIndex (author experience insights), and the HLFN (community activation infrastructure).

Create the Literary Ecosystem We Deserve

Whether you’re an author, editor, bookseller, librarian, funder, or reader, join us in creating the tools, insights, and impact measures the industry has never built—but has always needed.

Healing By Any Means (HBAM) is the home of Narrative Systems Design—a new field where story becomes infrastructure, healing becomes measurable, and care becomes an engine for economic and systemic transformation.

Through our six initiatives—StoryBank™, LitCanon™, LitIndex™, HEALIT™, the Healing Literary Futures Network (HLFN), and the NSD Impact Studio—we build tools, train leaders, and generate real-time insight to design more just, imaginative, and healing-centered futures.

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Narrative. Systems. Design.