I am forwarding this to this list for Tony Baechler. Cindy Lou ----- Original Message ----- From: "Tony Baechler" <bookshare@xxxxxxxxxxxx> To: <bookshare-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> Sent: Wednesday, August 15, 2007 3:13 AM Subject: [bookshare-discuss] Announcement: third annual book drive, call for scanners Hello all. Please feel free to forward this to other appropriate mailing lists, blogs, etcc. Especially please send this to the bksvol-discuss list. I do intend to join that list in the next few days but I wanted to hurry and get this out since it is now August 15 and there is a fairly tight schedule to follow. Finally, please excuse the rough edges. I'm still working on things and details. Again, I wanted to get this out for discussion. This might be a bit long, for that I apologize. There will be several sections to facilitate easier discussion and questions. If you have any concerns, comments or questions, feel free to respond on the bookshare-discuss list or write directly to me. There are different addresses to write to depending on your question so please read carefully. For general questions, write to bookshare@xxxxxxxxxxxxx If you want to volunteer to scan or have a book request, please hold on a couple days. Eventually you'll write to bookrequest@xxxxxxxxxxxx but that address isn't up and working yet. Now, on to the announcements! I. Third annual book drive As some of you know, every year Baechler Productions purchases books to be scanned by Carrie and the in-house Bookshare volunteers and submitted to Bookshare.org. In the past, all books were purchased out of our own funds and no donations were requested or accepted. Also, the books were only sent to Carrie Karnos and the Bookshare staff. In 2005, a total of twenty-two books were purchased on old time radio. I know of at least one or two people who joined Bookshare directly as a result of us making those books available. I won't mention names, but you know who you are and I'm greatful for your kind words thanking us for the books and your story of how you joined. I'm sure there are others who we don't know about and to them I say a sincere thanks for joining as members and hopefully becoming volunteers one of these days. In 2006, there was a small amount of money to work with so only about six books were purchased and none on old time radio. Among them were a Star Trek book and a classic Ellery Queen mystery short story collection. No press release was issued because there was little point, however an announcement was made to this list last year. Now, it is August 15, 2007. I am speaking only for myself here but I want the third annual book drive to be better than ever. I feel that it can be with your help. Before announcing changes that will happen this year, I wanted to give a summary of the past. After a great deal of thought and consideration, Baechler Productions wants to do things differently. In the past, we didn't accept donations. While we still do not require donations, we will accept them this year if there is a book that you want to buy or if you want to pitch in with others to buy a certain book. In the past, we didn't let anyone but the Bookshare staff scan books. This year, anyone can scan and we are actively seeking volunteer scanners. Finally, perhaps the biggest change of all is that we are going to be totally open. By that, we mean that in previous years, we didn't allow anyone to post lists of books we purchased on their sites and were going to shut such sites down. While we still feel that we should get credit for what we have done, we are going to openly post lists of our books here and elsewhere. We are now encouraging anyone with a site or blog to post entries on what we're doing and what books we purchase. In fact, we are asking you, the members of Bookshare, to create your own list of what you want us to buy within funding limitations. We would like to openly apologize here to Jake Brownell. Again, while we feel that he could have done things differently, we realize that he meant well and he is more than welcome to put lists of our books up in his own structured formats. That brings us to why we are posting this announcement openly to this list. We believe that being open is the best policy and we shouldn't try to keep things from the people who are in the best position to help us, you the readers, you the members and you the volunteers. II. Call for Scanners From August 15 to September 15, 2007, we are seeking people to scan books. We will have a required survey which must be filled out. We don't ask for any personal information and we will not share it with others but we obviously can't mail books without an address. There are some optional questions also. Currently, the survey is not up yet. When it is up hopefully by the end of the week, an announcement will be posted here and it will be attached. You will need to fill out that survey and email it to us. We will contact you and go from there. We are hoping to find about three people to do scanning but this isn't a hard limit. It depends on how many books each person is willing to do and how much funding we have. It's impossible to predict in advance how many books will be purchased. The person scanning the book will be allowed to keep the printed book when they are done with it. You may give the book away or join a swap site like paperback book swap. We will not ask for the book to be returned unless otherwise noted. Also, the person scanning the book is responsible for submitting it to Bookshare so you would get the $2.50 submission credit. We might ask for the .rtf copy but we will not submit it. We ask that all books are scanned in the .rtf format. There is not a hard time limit on scanning but we would like the books scanned fairly soon. We would like to see books start showing up in mid to late October if possible. If you cannot get a book scanned by then, please let us know and we will have you mail it to someone else. Finally, we will ask what state you live in on the survey. This makes it easier for us to match people geographically with the book sellers. It makes no sense for us to have a book mailed from New York to a scanning person in Texas when we could get that book from a Texas seller. III. book requests We will shortly be accepting requests for books to purchase. You don't need to scan a book in order to request one, but people who are willing to scan books they request will get priority. In other words, just because you want a certain book doesn't mean that you will be obligated to scan that book but if you are willing to scan it, there is a better chance that your book will be purchased. We are only interested in classic mystery, science fiction and fantasy genres at this time. If funding permits, we would like to buy old time radio books as well but they tend to be more expensive. The definitive book on "Gunsmoke" is about $75 used and a book on CBS Radio Mystery Theater is about $43 used. We do not have a hard limit on what we will spend per book but all books will be bought used. We are not interested in romance or horror and will not purchase those types of books. We would like to avoid religion at this time but would consider buying Christian fiction. Except for old time radio, we would rather avoid nonfiction in most cases. You may request books in one of two ways. The best way is to write directly to the bookshare-discuss list with a CC to bookrequest@xxxxxxxxxxxxx You should get an automated response from us. If you don't, send your message again in 24 hours. Sometimes email delivery can be slow. Make sure to look through your junk filters and all of your mail folders to ensure that our response didn't get misfiled. For maximum safety, add both bookshare@xxxxxxxxxxxx and bookrequest@xxxxxxxxxxxx to your address book and white lists. By also posting to the bookshare-discuss list, others can respond and can get books which might not be available to us. This also avoids duplicated effort. It is frustrating to someone who is scanning a book only to find that someone else just submitted it. The second way is to write to us directly at the above bookrequest@xxxxxxxxxxxx address without posting to the list. If you know others can't get your book and it falls into the classic mystery or classic science fiction genres, please feel free to write to us directly. We will let you know if we can't handle that particular request. Note that just because a book is requested doesn't mean that we will or can buy it. IV. Schedule This is just a preliminary schedule for now, but we would like to follow this schedule fairly closely. Obviously things can change at the last minute and funding issues do arise but this schedule should be considered official unless revisions are made. August 15: Public announcement is made. August 20 to September 15: Call for scanners and book requests. The book request address will be closed on September 15. We plan to have the book request address open before August 20 and will post when it is working. September 15 to October 1: Books will be purchased and mailed to people doing scanning. It might take up to a month for all books to be shipped. October 1 to November 1: Scanners should be scanning and submitting books to Bookshare. The November 1 is not a hard deadline but we do not want months going by before books start showing up. October 15-November 15: Baechler Productions will work on press release and post progress reports. Other books will show up on Bookshare that couldn't be done by November 1. V> Donations I would like to stress here that all donations are optional. I am not going to pressure anyone into giving money. I realize that many blind people are on a limited income. However, if you want to donate, you are encouraged to do so. We can accept PayPal or personal checks. Checks are probably best for now. If you wish to donate a large amount, we might be able to accept credit card but that is not our preference. All money will go towards purchasing books or helping to offset subscription renewal costs. If you want your donation to only go towards a certain book or genre, let us know. We will return all unused funds except for credit card donations. If more than one person wants to pool their money to jointly purchase a book, we are happy to do that. We would like to get some books but they are very expensive. We will leave it up to individuals to make their own arrangements but once money is pooled, contact us and we will go about purchasing the book. Money left in the pool will either be returned or applied to other books. If you want to only donate a partial amount of a book price, you may. We will hold your donation until other money comes in. Please don't discuss donations on the list, write to us directly. VI. Final words Before I go, I would just like to thank all of you for putting up with me for the past few years. I know that I have not been the easiest person to deal with in the past. This is my attempt to make up for the past. I would also especially like to thank the person who has submitted the many fantasy novels with the excellent synopses. I don't know who you are but it is a pleasure having so many fantasy novels available with such detailed descriptions. I would like to join forces with this person as our interests run in similar lines. I would like to avoid duplication of effort. I am amazed at how many books this person has submitted, especially considering their large size. Watch this space for updated information as final details fall into place. Again, your suggestions are welcome. Please feel free to discuss this announcement on the list. I am very behind on my email so please allow up to a week for me to reply to you. I will personally try to reply to as much as I can. I would like to find someone who is willing to scan magazines. There is nothing in the Bookshare rules against posting magazines except a lack of interest on the part of the scanners. The in-house staff will not scan them. I am interested in classic science fiction magazines such as Analog. ---------- Tony Baechler Baechler Productions To unsubscribe from this list, send a blank Email to bookshare-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx Put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the Subject line. To get a list of available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line. __________ NOD32 2463 (20070815) Information __________ This message was checked by NOD32 antivirus system. http://www.eset.com To unsubscribe from this list send a blank Email to bksvol-discuss-request@xxxxxxxxxxxxx put the word 'unsubscribe' by itself in the subject line. To get a list of available commands, put the word 'help' by itself in the subject line.