Book Publishing - Phase IV - Compilation

I learned early that part of being a good leader is having an open communication with the people who follow you. It serves many positive things. In this case it builds trust. For the past few weeks I talked to you about publishing a book and setting it for profit, except the profits go to charity.

It takes a certain degree of trust placed upon me by you, and I do thank you. Now we come upon the hardest part - the wait. I want to get back in touch and reaffirm that I am still working on this. And after a few very minor changes that I'll explain below, I continue to work on this. So, have faith, because this part is the longest part.and I promise you, that this will happen shortly.

As for the changes, I have had to change the title of the book. I wanted to title it:

Newsvine: A Collection of User Selected Works From Across the "Vine", Vol I.

After some consideration and suggestions on a few of the legal areas of the project, I have reconsidered the title and named it something a bit more to the nature of the book. It is now titled:

The Unofficial "Vine": A Collection of User Selected Works From Newsvine.com Vol. I

Another change was that Blurb had notified me of an inability to have a check sent directly to The American Red Cross. I wanted to avoid having any money sent to me at any time because I felt it may give question to my purpose and weaken the trust of the community towards me. I'm happy to say that there is a workaround to this - and that at no point, will a check be sent to me, to send to them. The prior served two problems, the first being that I would have to have the check sent to me and Blurb would then 1099 me at the end of the year meaning I'd have to be taxed on charity or have at least more paperwork to do than I'd like. It sounds selfish and trivial in the grand scheme of things, but I'm sure you can understand not wanting to do more work if you don't have to - work smarter, not harder.

The second problem it poses is the most obvious - other than my word, you have no way of knowing if the donations were made. While this is still the case to a degree, I'm working with Blurb to see if there is a way they can send an email to me notifying me of when a check is sent out. If they can, then my plan is to keep a copy for records, and then forward a copy to the authors via NV.

All in all the project is moving along relatively smoothly. The authors were very quick to respond to the permissions letters (many responding within a couple of hours of asking). Still, 5 or 6 of them have yet to respond. I will send a second round of letters to those authors through the following week and keep the compilation window open for 14 more days. This will allow me to make sure that every detail has been looked over, all permissions are given and on record (digital and printed here in my 'office'), and that I can get a jump on the advertising for the release.

My advertisement plans include reaching to people from Flickr (There is a Blurb Book Group as well as the photographers who's images I used), Tumblr (there are a great deal of people whom I read that also read Newsvine), Vox (there is a very large community who talks at length about books and literary works), Newsvine (through a final meta article and hopefully through the efforts of people like you), and finally - my local Walden Books and Books A Million via a flyer. I intend to talk to the local Red Cross Chapter and see if there is something they can do to also spread the word and help drive sales. If any of you know of another outlet that I am unaware such a literary blogs, or communities that would have a serious interest please let me know. Unfortunately I'm not made of money, and I can't at this time send free copies to groups for them to look over but there will be a 15 page preview on Blurb.

I thank you all again for your time and patience, but most importantly the trust you've placed upon me to follow through with what I've said I was going to do - I will not let you down.

The next Phase, Phase V, I will announce the book, the price and give the location for which to purchase a copy.

If there is ANYTHING anyone would like to add, announce, suggest, detract from, or question - now is the absolute best time to do that, before I go through and start finalizing thing. Once I get the permissions in I have to start finalizing the project and for me, this book has then reached a point of no return - it can't be undone with out a tremendous amount of work.

To go back and see the project from the beginning:

Phase I

Phase II

Phase III

Also do not forget, in order to make the project easier next year I've opened up a new group: Unofficial Vine, Vol. II

The group is public and has no joining requirements. I would however, like to eventually set up a panel of judges to help resolve matters such as how an article would categorized (i.e. is a narrative, social commentary, or political - because the article touches on all three).

This group is for people to clip articles into as a form of year round nomination. This time next year Phase I will already be done and we can start at Phase II (which would then technically be Phase I). I'm open for suggestions as to how we can stream line this project in the coming year(s) because frankly - I enjoyed this and have thus far been happy with the results, but also know they could be better.

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