"It started to feel more real as I read these, and I felt so much better,
somehow more healthy, reading these first-hand accounts,
than I felt watching the news on TV."
-steev
The book is now available for $10.
I propose a project for us. I would like to see the daylogs of
September 11, 2001 compiled into a
book and have it published, with all royalties being paid to the E2 donation box. I suspect that there are noders with
legal skills,
publishing experience,
publicizing skills,
print-buying experience, and other stuff that will be required but of which I'm not currently aware. This is an
opportunity to
donate using your
mind and your skills. Let's work together and see if we can create a workable model for future E2
fundraisers.
Tasks:
- Determine what entity will publish the book. If coming up with this idea necessitates it, I hereby grant permission to the Everything Development Company to take this role. If it seems more appropriate to you to set up some other entity, send an email to my account at yahoo - my username is the same there. For the time being, I will assume that EDC will find out about this idea and either accept this role or else inform me that we should get some other entity to do it. I believe there may be some legal ramifications of publishing a book.
- Find a mechanism for us to use in coming to a consensus on various choices such as the title of the book and the image on the cover.
- Obtain releases from the noders that contributed to the three nodes (I, II, III) for that daylog.
- Choose the cover art.
- Choose the title.
- Choose the format of the writeups.
- Find a company that will print the book for us.
- Collect orders for the book to get an idea how many copies to print.
- Advertise the book.
If we do all those things, I think people interested in making money will take care of the rest. There will be lots of problems to solve, and I'm sure that each one already has a solution locked inside the head of a noder who doesn't know about it yet.
I will be attempting to manage this project, but I've never really managed a project before, so anyone who can help, check this node from time to time. Since I have a full time job and three small children, I will likely be pretty slow, but I will do my best to move us along. I will continually be maintaining this list of things I expect to see and respond to in the near future:
- Naysayers who have had experiences with community projects gone awry will give me reasons why this idea will never fly. Hopefully, these reasons will be detailed enough to provide some insight into how to avoid letting this project die.
- One or more lawyers will send me email about legal costs and how they can help defray them.
- The reputation of this writeup will increase to justify further effort on my part.
- Someone from EDC will email me on how they feel about this idea and about taking the role of publisher.
- Noders with print-buying experience will msg or email me.
- Noders with a 9/11 daylog will msg me about how willing they are to give permission to use their work.
My idea for finding cover art, a title, a good format for the writeups, and anything else we should agree on about the book is this: I'll create a
nodeshell for each item, and a noder with a proposal can add a writeup. The 5 writeups in each full node that have the highest reputation on some specific date will be candidates. We'll then use
Condorcet Versus Approval Voting to choose the winning candidate for each choice. I'll create a ballot template that voting noders will be able to fill in and add to their
homenode. I think I'll be able to write a program that will visit those nodes and calculate the result. Anyone else willing to write such a program could provide independent
verification. I'll add a list of noders interested in voting to this writeup, so just /msg me or send an email if you don't see yourself on the list.
Whatever mechanism is used to collect orders for the book to establish the size of the initial
printing run should require those orders to be backed up by a
deposit, say $5/book.
I imagine that this will be a
hardcover book.
Since there will likely be monetary costs to this project, but costs that will easily be recovered, I propose that the entity that publishes the book set up a "
donation box," with a promise (or something more binding if it would help) to pay donators back with some
interest when the required sum has been collected as after-taxes profit (lawyers? accountants?).
Update
Jet-Poop says:
I think E2 books have been considered before, in the site's long-distant past. I can't remember who was trying to put it together, but the main stumbling blocks were:
- getting permission to republish their writeups
- finding book publishers who were even a little interested in website stuff
- finding publishers who were interested in material that had already been published.
Catchpole also mentioned the permissions as a problem, and
Posmella noted that some writeups occurred before the attack. No one mentioned
Hermetic, at least
not with words. His story is already here, and it's a hard one to learn, but it is, to me, the opposite of worthless and the opposite of something to be hidden. Talk amongst yourselves, downvote if you must, but please help the other half of us understand.
Ouroboros asked what I was thinking for the size and number of pages in the book, one writeup per page or what...
I was thinking of an 8 x 10 hardcover book with each writeup starting on its own page. If many very good images are proposed for the cover art, some of them could be used inside. I imagined a price around $40 or $50, but I have never studied the book market, so if someone who has feels that a book like this would do much better in a different price range, please speak up.
Update on Aug. 8, 2003
Noung suggested that
September 11, 2002 daylogs be included. This is an interesting idea, especially since there are number of 9/11/01 dayloggers who have been away from E2 for so long that it will likely be impossible to get in touch with them. If there just don't seem to be enough contributions to fill out a memorial book, this might be a good solution. I haven't read them yet, but Noung mentioned that some are a bit shameful.
Walter suggested a paperback for around $10. This made me realize that I should probably go to a bookstore and look around for models of this "book as memorial" idea. If anyone has purchased such a book (about 9/11 or anything other great suffering), or went to a bookstore and was tempted to buy one, please let me know what style and price range it had.
Enwhysea suggested that E2 be scanned for other writeups relevant to 9/11, and perhaps a really moving one by hermetic.
Daylogger Matrix
Agreed to
Noder Contacted Release Acting as
6Venus6 N
AaaPha Yes Yes*
Alias_Mother_Jonez Yes Yes
apegirl25 N
Aratir N
Ariston N
aznin N
BtS N
captainno N
Cassidy N
ccunning N
Davidian Yes with real name
Devon_Hart Yes Yes
drenny N
DrSeudo Yes Yes
drummergrrl N
editor_b Yes Yes
enwhysea Yes Yes
evilrooster N
Falsch_Freiheit N
generosity Yes Yes
goneaway N
graceness Yes Undecided
guinea pig N
JediBix783 Yes Yes
jerm N
Jet-Poop Yes Yes
jm229 N
johnnyx Yes Yes
k_hokanson Yes Yes
kaytay Yes Yes
Kit_Lo N
Lady_Midnight Yes Yes Editor*
LordNathan N
mblase Yes Yes
melknia Yes Yes
Miles_Dirac N
mkb Yes Yes
NightShadow Yes Yes*
Nordicfrost N
NothingLasts4ever Yes Yes*
Oolong N
PopeFelix Yes Yes
Prophet4 Yes Yes
Pseudo_Intellectual Yes
rischi Yes Yes
Sasuke N
SEF Yes Yes
sgs N
Shanoyu N
steev Yes Yes
Stromgald39 N
swankivy Yes Yes Editor
thax N
The_Custodian Yes Yes
The_Hegemon N
The_Prophet Yes Yes
Thuper Ranger Yes Yes
Tiefling Yes Yes
uberman N
Void_Ptr N
Walter Yes Yes
WeamsCarnival N
wertperch Yes Yes
willpo Yes Yes
XCthulhu N
xmatt Yes Yes
Yablo N
yam N
yerricde N
Zzzzzzippp N
*On condition of receiving a free copy.
Last update: November 14, 2005