Cool idea alert courtesy of a high school English class in California (a.k.a. a bunch of published authors). Smashwords is a totally DIY online self-publishing platform for e-books. You can seriously write and release an entire book for free and then sell it to big names like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. (No joke!) Thanks to some help from their teacher and local public library, this group of students created an awesome anthology of poetry that’s outselling some actual famous novels online. The whole project covered everything from writing and editing to formatting and illustration. The results are even going to help them fund their prom in 2017.

But we’ve got even better news for you: The founder of Smashwords put together a helpful slideshow about how to make this project work with students. Maybe a little side project for when you’re spending time with those TXGU students? And let’s be honest—“published author” isn’t exactly the worst thing to include on a college application…