Picture Book....

[Max Spevack]

On Sat, 3 Jan 2009, Ian Weller wrote:

>> Lightning Source would then send us a royalty check, I think it's 
>> every three months. We can just have them send it to Max and he can 
>> disburse any funds.
>>
> You OK with this, Max? We could just plan for this, and it would make 
> me feel a lot better if we got this problem out of the way first ^_^

I am ok with this, if Lightning Source is what everyone wants to do.  I 
know nothing about Lightning Source, but I trust the judgement of the 
larger group.

>  3-4. Introduction by current FPL (if Paul doesn't take up two pages,
>       make page 3 blank)

If there's 4 books, I'd be honored to write an introduction for one of 
them as an ex-FPL.  :)

>  5. Introduction of the foundation whose story is being told in this
>     book, with wonderful Four Foundations livery provided by Mo
>  6-77. Photos and stories of contributors
>  78-79. Index of contributors across all books published so far
>  80. Left blank because LSI told us to (they stick an internal barcode
>      on here)
>
> I envision the pages being in full color. LSI will print a full color 
> book, sized 8.5" x 8.5" (whoa, another parallel to The Love Book!) 
> with 80 pages, for $8.20 per unit (book). Setup for the title comes 
> out to $75 (half for the cover, half for the pages), and to make the 
> book available to Amazon and the like, we are charged $12/yr for each 
> ISBN.

Sounds like a beautiful project.

> The initial cost, then, is $711.80 for the four books. Setting the 
> wholesale markup to $15 keeps the price reasonable for both buyers and 
> us -- we can recoup the cost for all four books with 105 sales.[1] Add 
> to this an additional $48/yr after the first year -- and remember, 
> this isn't including any additional books that we may want to produce 
> after these four. Also, keep in mind that we still have six more ISBNs 
> to do whatever with. The initial cost for the next six books would be 
> $87 plus $12 per year after the first year.

At this dollar figure, is it better to just produce them and hand them 
out as gifts to the community?  We're not talking about huge amounts of 
money here (comparatively).

> 1. Does this sound reasonable? Does it seem viable that we can sell 105
>   copies in a year? For those who will be in the book, or other Fedora
>   contributors, or other Fedora fans, the $60 for the first set of four
>   price seems a bit large. I'm not really sure.

I think demand would easily surpass 105.

> I'm quite excited that we're seeing life to this project :)

Definitely.  It's a great idea, and a great exercise in collaboration.

--Max